Concerts galore!

We've gotten to attend some phenomenal concerts recently.  I feel so lucky about the programs our kids are involved in.  The teachers and directors have got to be some of the best there are out there.

First off, we attended the Spring Choir Concert.  Sariah finished up her year in Cantabile and has already been accepted into the next choir called CMS Singers.  She worked hard this year because she knew that CMS Singers sing more challenging music and they sometimes get to go on little trips around the state.  Congratulations Sariah.  Elijah and May will continue singing in MSU Children's Choir.  Their choir has taken huge strides this year and are sounding incredible together.  Nathan's Young Men's Chorus got to work with MSU's A-cappella group, the Acafellas, which has been a dream of mine for him.  They sounded phenomenal.  The three older kids are rewarded with a week of choral camp in Ithaca, New York with other choirs and choir directors, staying with host families.

Next, we attended Nathan's Orchestra concert.  Nathan's orchestra teacher and his intern do astounding things with the orchestra and the concerts are always enjoyable.  It's no secret that I love the sound of the cello and Nathan and his cello cohorts always provide great sound at the concerts.

Sariah had her first jump rope show this year!  Like May, Sariah didn't know much about jumping rope when she started with the Jump Rope Club.  By the end of the year, she was jumping like a pro and plans to continue with the club next season.

Brigham and Sariah performed songs and dances tonight at Red Cedar's annual International Festival of Cultures.  Mrs. Melissa Sigh is an amazing elementary music teacher (Elijah has her for orchestra this year in fifth grade too!)  The kids learned songs in several languages and my favorite dance was performed by the third grade class.  It was an Indian Dance with music in the background and a chant by the kids (I should post a video of this, but they take so darn long to upload).

Mrs. Sigh writes grant proposals so that she can pay for amazing Michigan musicians to accompany the kids' singing.  We are so lucky.  This was Brigham's first year and I'm so proud of both Brigham and Sariah for learning so many songs and performing them.  Our school has kids from many nations who speak many languages.  They wear clothing from their countries of origin and do this musical event every year!

May also had her final band concert for the year tonight and I was sad to miss it.  She continues to enjoy flute and Joseph and Nathan both told me that the seventh grade band was better than the eighth grade band.  Go 7th Graders!!

Elijah plays the viola and his first orchestra concert is next week.  The night is open so that the whole family can enjoy that.

The four oldest kids have recently started taking art classes from their teacher named Stormi.  They all love her and all four of them have begun painting masterpieces.  They all want to work on birds almost every time they go to art.  Coming up soon, they will get to take part in sidewalk chalk art (you know those really cool 3D sidewalk art pictures?).  I can't wait to see what it looks like.  May also entered art into a contest at school.  I'll have to take some photos of their work and share it here

The final thing that's been going on is not a concert or a show.  Nathan is doing a big conservation/community benefit project at our local nature center.  So far we've put hours into service for the nature center and also a couple of hours a day doing point counts for birds around the part.  Nathan chose seven locations according to their varied ecology.  He goes to each location daily if he can and takes a five minute point count.  He's come a long way in identifying birds by sight, but also by ear.  It's great to see him work as I accompany him as often as I can.  We have made some cool discoveries of plants, butterflies, caterpillars, insects and mammals.  I thrive in the outdoors and it seems that Nathan does too.  Here are some photos of Nathan taking his point counts and a couple of the cool critters we've found lately (Mourning Cloak caterpillar and Painted Turtle).

Nathan is being given the opportunity (by Kalamazoo Nature Center) to come try out bird banding on the weekends.  If the guy who runs this is impressed with what Nathan can do, he'll let Nathan help out with Fall Migration bird banding.  This is an exceptional thing for Nathan to be a part of.  Go Nathan!

S-p-e-l-l-i-n-g

Sariah was using the Magna-Doodle to draw signs for Brigham.

Sariah: How do you spell "enter" Mom?

and then before I could even speak...

Brigham: E-N-T-E-R

To the other three

It's been so long since I blogged. Can't say when I'll be back again. There are three other kiddos I didn't say much about. Here are pictures of their beautiful faces!

A Bunch of Things

1. Nathan turned 13 in October. So, we have a teenager now. Nothing has changed. I'll keep you posted.



He really likes birds. The thing is he really likes birds! For his birthday he received some John James Audubon books and new binoculars with a harness to facilitate this passion of his. He dressed up as a birdwatcher/ornithologist for Halloween, but the truth is he looks like this a lot.

2. We love our Michigan bridge--The Mackinac Bridge. Brigham especially loves it and talks about it all the time, plus recreates it with our wooden railroad toys and his toy cars. We got to visit recently and I thought it was cool that I could get a picture of this old lighthouse and the bridge (and fog!) together.



3. This is a bird Brigham made out of playdough all by himself. I was impressed!



4. Since Joseph was home yesterday, I had him remove the window air conditioner, which is always a perfect opportunity to do some cleaning (DON'T begin to believe I like this). Anyway, while I was pulling out furniture to vacuum and dust, I found this little drawing on the wall and decided that it is one of my prized possessions. I couldn't clean it off! Sariah did it a couple of years ago.


5. This has to be the fattest squirrel I've ever seen. Is that a beer belly? And a belly button???

Head Pick-up Hiccups

Last night Sariah informed me that she had hiccups and that when she laid her head on a chair and then hiccuped, the hiccup would pick up her head.

I'm always looking for an opportunity to be sarcastic or play a joke, so I ran with it.

I said excitedly to Joseph, "Oh no, she has the head pick-up hiccups. You better take her to the hospital."

Joseph, to Sariah, "Go get some socks. We gotta go!"

Sariah runs to her room.

Joseph said, "Oh! Never mind, we don' t have time for socks, we've got to get to the emergency room!"

They run to the door where the shoes are kept and Joseph can't stop himself from laughing so the joke is over.

But, the really funny part was that Sariah's hiccups were over too!

The "Girlie" Turned 6!

I can't convince Sariah that she is four and not six and so I concede. She wins! She is six. We had a fun time as a family on her birthday and she relished (you have to know Sariah to get the full effect of "relished") the day that was set apart just for her!

Here's the cake (from the book "Hello, Cupcake" by Karen Tack):


Here's the birthday t-shirt (her favorite book is "Little Pea" by Amy Krouse Rosenthal):


Here are the cupcakes that she took to school:


Oh, and this has nothing to do with Sariah, but here is the opossum that was in my backyard about a week ago. It let me come up close to take a picture and didn't even bare it's ugly spiky killer teeth at me. Isn't it cute?:



Oh and while I've got you on the subject of wildlife, here's the merlin we saw in our pine tree a while back. We were so excited!:

Ground Zero to Heaps & Mounds

Last week, I was a little bit worried that we might not have a white Christmas. But then,

it started snowing!

Yesterday was a snow day for the kids. 2-3 inches overnight and 5-8 more yesterday. We spent a good deal of the day shoveling. Not all driveways and walks, I assure you. Elijah and Sariah created an amazing maze in the front yard.



My camera seems to underexpose or overexpose at night despite all the adjustments I tried. I looked out the window last night and thought the maze looked so cool, like a little world of it's own.

Still Surprised

It's so fun to have a two-year-old. He doesn't have enough experience to expect the change in seasons, so it is all new, surprising and wonderful to him. First, it was the leaves falling down and now, with a tiny snow storm, he's amazed by the snow on the grass.



It was fun to watch Elijah experiment with riding his bike through the big piles of leaves (you can see him in the background of the picture if you double click).



Sariah spent the whole summer (even with all our beach trips) wishing it was winter. So, you can see that she will use the leaves to her advantage. If there is no snow, at least you can still make an angel!



And finally, this last picture. I need throw this question out there...What do you do with a boy like this?

Halloween. Bah Humbug!!

I was a real scrooge about Halloween this year. Nathan and Brigham didn't even have costumes. The kids participated in their school parties, but we didn't trick-or-treat, or even (gasp!) carve a pumpkin. I regret that one. We did read a couple stories out of "Haunted Lake Superior." I'm not so sure I'll read too much more of that one or I won't want to visit any locations around Lake Superior for fear I'll see a ghost. I think the day turned out o.k. anyway, but you'd have to ask my kids to find out how truly deprived they are.

Here are pictures only taken because my sister requested them. Bad, bad mom!

Sariah is "The Monkey of the Day"

Sariah's kindergarten teacher (same as Elijah's 1st grade teacher) celebrates each child in her class by giving them the title, "Monkey of the day" (monkey is their class mascot). Sariah has been so excited for her day to come up. She helped me choose pictures of herself from when she was a baby and from current photos too to share with her class.

I made rolls so she could share them with her class because that's one of her favorite things and since I made Elijah a t-shirt, I had to make one for Sariah. She was all smiles with excitement about that part.

She also picked out two books for me to read to her class. First, Manfish, a book about Jacques Cousteau. I was truly surprised that she chose this book because it seemed to me that it was a little above her level. She is a girl after my own heart!


Second, He Came with the Couch by David Slonim. This one got the kids laughing. It's a fun book. You can read it here. Your kids will love it. The Lookybook website (previous link) is fun because you can read books online. You can search for books by keyword, look through lists of authors and illustrators, or choose from a list of subjects to select a book to read.

School Girl

Today Sariah dictated a letter at school to her favorite lady from church (Megan Finlay, called 'Miss Finlay' in the letter). I read it quickly before we dropped it off at her house. If I remember right, she talked about how she likes going inside the Finlay's house. The next line is where I caught the excited air of Sariah's school pride, "I won't be able to come to your house anymore because I'm in school all day." So cute!!

Off They GO!

Everyone looked superb and they all were excited for the first day of school, especially the littlest one! I cannot convince her to stay home with me for another year...

Nathan had a minor surgery last week and a lot of people asked if he was nervous beforehand. I didn't really notice him being nervous, but I would reply that I think he internalizes things a lot. (His surgery went marvelously well and he's doing fine!) This morning, I realized just how much my comment was about me.

I had this yucky anxiety feeling this morning while helping the kids get ready for their first day of school. It was really no big deal. We had bought a new set of clothes and shoes for each kid last week. We bought school supplies a couple of weeks ago. They already had backpacks and lunch boxes (Thanks to L.L. Bean. Those things last forever.) I got up early and even had clean laundry for myself. There was cereal and milk in the house. By all accounts, I should have been fine, but I wasn't. Truth be told, change is hard for me. I don't cry, I just agonize inside. Hey, wait a minute, this post isn't about me!!!

Today was an open house for Kindergarten and a half day for the rest. Our tradition is to go to lunch on the first and last day of school. Chili's. This will help us ease ourselves back into school after an adventurous and appointment-free summer!

P.S. Look at Sariah's face in the b & w picture. She really is that excited about school!

P.P.S. May is 9 and still wants to wear dresses and skirts to school. I love it!

A Pink Backpack

This might not mean much to you, but to me it carries deep, deep significance.

Inexperience

This morning, Nathan ran outside where I was cleaning out the van to tell me that a bird had hit the window. Hard. There were feathers stuck to the window. This happens often enough and the bird is usually o.k. Nathan ran out a few minutes later to tell me that it was a robin that hit the window and showed me where it had landed. Sadly, there it was in my hot poker plant. I picked it up and found that it was a juvenile robin that probably died on impact. Nathan gently buried the bird in his garden and then picked flowers to lay on the top of the grave. Sariah asked me if the bird was already in heaven.

Life and death. Poor little inexperienced bird that gave my kids a 'life experience' in its death.

A Sunday Evening Post

These guys (lady bug larvae):



And these guys (painted lady caterpillars):



are both in the "nap" stage of their existence. Soon they will break out of their pupal state/chrysalis state and become the beautiful creatures nature intended them to be. Did you know that when you bother a chrysalis they actually shake? I think it's to ward off predators. Seems to me that some predators might be attracted by that?

My kids have been spoiled this first week off school by a nature walk, a trip to the library, a trip to the zoo, a trip to the beach and a trip to the local science museum. Sariah would like to know where we are going next. I would like to know when I can have a nap!

May cried last night because she didn't want to sing with the other Primary kids in the sacrament meeting program for Father's Day. With her dad away for the weekend, she just couldn't bear to sing. I told her "no problem." I don't do sacrament meeting alone. My two youngest each need an adult in that meeting.

We are all so intrigued by the world of birds. Nathan now knows that an "ornithologist" is a scientist who studies birds. Currently he's more drawn to this world than to the world of marine biology. He's reading a 1000+ page book about birds, taking snap shots, trying to coax them to eat out of his hand, making plans for bird feeders and drooling over the birds that visit other people feeders. We're hoping to make some new sightings this summer at the local nature center. All of my kids are trying their hand at drawing. Nathan and May can sketch a bird faster than I can. That's what comes of practice.

Here are some images from the last week or so.

Our own house and yard:








Nature walk:

Painted turtle

Damsel fly

The zoo:

Bear cat (Binturong)

Peafowl