May Update

This month has been so busy and I haven't been able to get in all the little side posts that I wanted to. I am caught up on our major family events (races, graduation, recitals, etc.) but this is a little update from the other days of the month.

At the beginning of the month we had the most incredible double rainbow right over our house.  The pictures do not do it justice, but Lilly and I were outside in the sprinkling rain amazed by the rainbow.

(This is the view across the street from our front yard. You can kind of see the second band.)

(It was a perfect rainbow arc, right over our street.)

The first weekend in May was my half marathon.  The race also coincided with Spring Fling, a street festival in town.  Before I had even finished the race, Lilly asked me if she could get her face painted. I was running to the finish line and she was shouting "Can I PLEASE get my face painted?"  The face painting line was really long, so I said no.  Luckily for her, she has a really nice Dad who took her back later in the day to get her face painted.

After the face painting and my 3 hour nap we took the kids to the drive in (the only movie theater in Danville) in our "new to us" mini van.   We positioned the car so the kids could watch some kids pirate movie in the back and we could watch The Avengers in the front. 

 Drive-in's are not what they used to be (or so I am guessing, I have only ever been to a drive-in here in Danville, as an adult).  You listen to the movie through your radio, which poses a dilemma when you are trying to watch two movies at one time. 

We had a plan though. We parked the car in front of the screen playing the kids movies and had the kids watch from the back of the van.  The other cars were playing the radio loud enough that the children could hear from their radios.  We put our radio in the front speakers of the car and tuned in to watch The Avengers, our drive-in is fancy and has three screens.

Lilly fell asleep right away, which was always my master plan, to have the children fall asleep right away so we could watch The Avengers.  However, Jack would not be lulled into peaceful slumber.  He climbed all over us and the car and took the opportunity to sit in Lilly's booster seat while she was sleeping (during the movie).  He climbed up and finished the end of our movie with us and didn't fall asleep until we pulled into our driveway.

More May updates to come...

Spring Piano Recital

I held my spring piano recital last Saturday at the local Baptist church.  It was a beautiful church and a beautiful piano.

About 2/3 of my students participated and they all performed beautifully. Lilly, who takes lessons from my friend Heidi, also performed in the recital.  Heidi recently retired her piano studio but kept on Lilly as a swap.  I teach her daughter and she teaches mine.  Lilly joined in my recital, under clear circumstances that I was not her teacher.

(Lilly's teacher, Heidi Parkinson)

It was a great recital, the piano playing only lasted about 35 minutes, then I passed out certificates and called it good.  I have about 5 beginners whose pieces weren't longer than 20 seconds, so that helped to speed things a long.

My mom came and brought flowers for both her performers.

I played a duet with Heidi, who is moving away.  We played "For Good" from Wicked, which is about two friends parting ways.  I attempted to explain that at the recital and just did a lot of crying.

After the recital we went to lunch with my mom and Jim's family and Lilly carried her flowers around like a beauty queen.  People stopped her and asked her what the flowers were for, she had never been prouder to carry those flowers around town.

(She held them just like that as she walked. I told people that she actually had NO pageant training.)

Jim took all the pictures and video from the recital, because I was in the front running the show.  Here is a clip of Lilly's song "All the Pretty Little Horses."

Here is the duet with Heidi:

I will miss my friend!  I need to find someone else to play duets with for next year.  Great year of piano lessons, now I am excited for summer vacation!

Graduation Day

My mom graduated from college last weekend.

She received her associates degree in her early 20's, and 38 years later went back to get her Bachelor's degree in Legal Studies.

She of course graduated all fancy, Magna Cum Laude. 

In preparation for the graduation we brought a bag of iPads (three to be exact) and my mom made cute gifts bags with treats for the children to open every 30 minutes.

Jack held firm to his iPad for the entire graduation while Jim, Lilly, and I rotated through the other two iPads.  You might be judging us at this point (shame on you), but the graduation was in a basketball arena, and it was so crowded that we were all the way in the back and couldn't really hear anything. Oh, and my mom didn't walk across the stage until 2 hours and 45 minutes into the graduation, upon which we all left (her idea).  We would have happily sat for the next hour of graduation, but we had dinner reservations at the Melting Pot!

There were a couple thousand graduates at the UMD graduation.  Thanks to Jim's telephoto lens and cell phones we were able to track my mom down in the huge crowd.

(Huge crowd)

Mom on the jumbo-tron, crossing the stage.

Happy day! Congratulations Mommy, you did it!

Danville Half Marathon

(Photo by Lilly)

Last weekend I ran my second half marathon.  The first one was 2.5 months ago. As my friends husband pointed out, we ran a full marathon, it just took us 2.5 months to do so.

This time Jim ran with Tina and I, we all ran together and had a lot of laughing.  Jim told me if we would stop talking so much we could shave at least a minute off our mile. However, if we didn't talk we wouldn't run, because seriously, running 13.1 miles is soooo boring.

We met up with Lilly and Alysson at the finish line and made them run the last stretch with us.  Lilly told me she was sorry she ran ahead of me, but her legs were just that much faster than mine.

I had a much faster recovery for this race.  I could walk immediately and all my soreness was gone completely by Wednesday. That is a victory!

We all wanted to quit the race, we were actually trying to convince my dad to stay home and NOT do the race so we could all just sleep in Saturday morning and not run at all.  Alas, he would not hear of it, and now we are grateful that we finished.  

Kindergarten Concert

Kindergarten Concert

Last night was Lilly's kindergarten concert. It was the kickoff to our "May" season.  I am shocked at the amount of activities and events that are planned for the last month of the school year. Including my own piano recital. I feel like it's Christmas with so much to do and so little time to get it done.  I have started deleting emails from the school begging for volunteers for Field Day which is different from the Fun and Fitness day which happens AFTER the book fair but before the talent show.  This is Kindergarten!  I digress...

All the kids were asked to wear their yellow kindergarten shirt for the concert.  There are 10 kindergarten classes at Lilly's school, so the concert was divided up into two teams.  Lilly was on the second team to perform.

Ms. Devett did a fantastic job organizing and planning for this concert. Every child had a turn to play an instrument during the show, Lilly played the rhythm sticks (pictured below).  The concert had a horse theme so every song was about a horse.  I am impressed with people who enjoy themes and can execute them properly.  I am not one of those people. Nothing in my life has a theme. If I had a theme it would be "nothing has anything to do with anything else."  I digress....

I do have video, but the video is going to take longer to edit, I will post a few clips later for those family members that are dedicated to the cause of documenting my children. (I was the mom who came with her SLR camera AND her video camera for the 20 minute concert.)

Mater and McQueen

Jim found Mater and McQueen on the side of the road a few towns over.

Jack looks pretty happy but he was actually pretty mad he couldn't go IN the cars.  The first thing he tried to do was open all the car doors.

I guess when you're two, real cars based on a cartoon do not impress.  Jack whined most of the time until we left and he said "Bye McQueen, Bye Mater."

Jim and I were the ones who were pretty excited about finding the cars.

I guess when you're two, the amazing is just expected.