Blog fun

You Should Play the Harp

You are a sensitive soul, with a great admiration for beauty.
You definitely have what it takes to make beautiful music, but most instruments are too harsh for you.

You are subtle, shy, and even a bit spoiled. You're very picky about most aspects of your life.
It's just your style to play an eccentric, hard to transport instrument like the harp that few people consider.

Overall, you have the relaxed demeanor of a leisurely upper class person, and your music would reflect that.
Your calm yet soulful harp playing would be sure to help people forget their troubles for a while.

Your dominant personality characteristic: your zen-ness

Your secondary personality characteristic: your quiet independence

Take the test, and let me know what you get!
http://www.blogthings.com/whatmusicalinstrumentshouldyouplayquiz/

Ordinary time

I haven't updated the blog for a while. Things around here have been very.....normal. We are thankful for being healthy and busy enough but not too busy. Here's a little update on each of us:

Andrew: Playing his new violin and sounding great! Has a new teacher for a few months, while Mrs. McCann is on maternity leave, went to a bowling b-day party yesterday.

Sam: Can't wait for baseball season to start, playing his "twinkles", having a lot of fun in school. Got to go bowling on a preschool field trip a couple of weeks ago with Dad.

Alan: Working on dissertation in every spare moment (it seems to be going well), almost got stuck in Spokane this week in a snowstorm, heading to Colorado Springs later this week.

Shannon: Played Brahms 1st Symphony this week with SSO, and decided it goes on my "top 10" pieces of all time list (if I had such a list - maybe I'll make one).

Here are a few pictures of "ordinary time"....Andrew with his new violin (which looks so big to me compared to the other one I keep think he's playing a viola), Sam getting a haircut, and boys playing in the little snow we had today.

Violin news

As of yesterday, Sam is officially a "Twinkler", i.e. learning his Twinkle variations. He's been in "pre-Twinkle" for about a year, and he's very excited about finally playing Twinkle.

In other news, Andrew is about to get a new violin. He's grown out of the 1/4 size that he's been playing. We have a 1/2 size, but it needs new strings, possibly a new bow, and a shoulder rest. We'll have to make a trip to the violin store (here's where we go - www.applebaumviolin.com) sometime this week to get him set up. Andrew is about halfway through book 2, and sounds really great. Teacher Patty is having him do some things that I think are pretty difficult, like playing some of his old songs up or down one note (transposing). But, since Andrew doesn't really know what transposing is, he just figures it out and thinks it's no big deal.

How I Spent My Weekend....

I spent a weekend away, hanging out with the Haslim girls (and Bill) in California! Baby Rebecca couldn't be sweeter, and Sarah just wants to "go, go, go!". She's full of energy and fun. Krista and I snuck out for an evening of shopping and, in her words, "wow, a civilized dinner."

The boys at home were fine, though Andrew was wearing the same shirt today that he was wearing when I left on Friday. He's kind of oblivious about certain things. They ate out a lot, and went to a hockey game last night. Now that the Seahawks are done, we're all going to be rooting for the Packers with Sam this coming week!

Ready for the game

Sam will be happy on Saturday regardless of the outcome!

Stats

Sam had his 5 year check-up today. He is 3'9" tall and weighs 49.75 lbs. At the same age, Andrew was 3'8" tall and 45 lbs. Sam had 2 shots, and was completely traumatized (I felt bad for the nurse, though I'm sure she sees it all the time). Sam's dr. noticed that he has a lot of muscle. I told her she should see him hit a baseball!

Both boys had a good day back at school. Andrew did a worksheet where he wrote 3 sentences about 2007 and 3 sentences about 2008. The first sentence about the new year is "Uncle Art is getting married." I thought that was nice. He's also looking forward to "seeing my cousins" and "having my birthday".

Stir Crazy

We've ventured out the past couple of days to avoid going crazy around the house. Swimming on Sunday and bowling yesterday helped break up the last couple of days of winter break. School starts again tomorrow (hooray!).

Yes, Sam has worn his new Hasselbeck jersey almost every day since Christmas. But, it could be worse. We saw in the CNN crawl line that a boy wore his Brett Favre jersey every day for 4 years until he got to go to a Packers game this past weekend. The amazing thing is that we can relate to this.

Happy New Year to all!