Busy Weekend

We had a busy weekend! However, its December... so I think everyone has a busy weekend. Tis the season I guess. Thursday evening the kids had their piano recital. I was so nervous. Oh, wait.. its not about me this time.... Ok, THEY were so nervous. They each had 2 songs to play. They each had 1 memorized and needed their paper for the 2nd. Well, I guess Sariah had both memorized, but her teacher used the paper to play the duet part. The duet part made it much nicer to listen to. In the future, we are going to invite her teacher to come practice each day. This is Sariah playing her songs. She has improved so much the last few months.



This is Corrine. She had a VERY hard Christmas song. A couple of months ago Corrine had many displays of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. It was a painful experience for her and I because she was "NEVER GOING TO LEARN THIS STUPID SONG!!!" Yes, that is a direct quote. Sorry for those of you with sensitivities to that particular s-word. For the record... She MEMORIZED it and did it BEAUTIFULLY. I have even caught her playing that very song FOR FUN!!! I know!!




This is Jakob playing his songs. He had two very hard songs. He is doing really well in piano. I don't mind listening to him practice at all. His songs are so fun now.



This is Hayden NOT being good at the recital. He found a piece of paper and made a ball with it. This is him tossing it to himself. His "tossing" got a little wild and the ball had to be taken away. We do not play ball at piano recitals. We sit still, forget we are 4 year old boys, get refined and have some limited culture.



This is the kids with their piano teacher, Sister Fox. She is so nice and we all love her so much!! Thank you for being patient with us!



Keith got this old table from his mom. I have wanted a table with more rounded corners. The table we were using was rather LARGE and we have a small kitchen. With the wood stove, it was rather tight. I wanted a black table so Keith and the two big kids sanded and refinished the old table. I was being a bit of a control freak and didn't want the nice black table in my kitchen until I had some black chairs to go with it. So, on Friday, we went to IKEA and bought some cheap black chairs. I say cheap because they will probably break soon. However, we have decided that we will not actually own any nice furniture until all of the kids have left the house. Since the youngest kid isn't even here to start destroying things... we have a while to go. I love the new to us black table. Keith and the kids did a great job!!




On Saturday morning, Sariah had belt testing for Tae Kwon Do. I was very nervous. I mean, she was. She was testing for her green belt. This is a very cool thing for me. I mean, her. Because I have 4 kids taking TKD, they ended up being in 3 different classes. This means that 2-3 days a week, I sit in the car for just over 2 hours each day. Then, we have about a 20 min drive to and from. It is NOT so much fun. Because Sariah has passed her testing, she moves up into the class with Jakob and Corrine. This is awesome because I get almost a full hour back out of each TKD day. I ment to say... this is awesome because Sariah is progressing and I couldn't be prouder.

This is her doing her form.



This is her sparring. Its the funniest thing in the world to watch. I have to admit, its my very favorite part of TKD. I don't know how the Master does it with out laughing out loud at the kids.



This is Sariah getting ready to break her board. She is having WAY to much fun destroying things. Should we really be teaching her how to do this?? She LOVES TKD. Thank you so much Master (uncle) Kim.



We also had the Schramm family Christmas party on Saturday. I got a few pictures... but I didn't really like any of them enough to sit and wait for them to load. The kids had a blast at the party. I got to hold a 2 month old baby. She is the cutest baby and I just kept lovin' on her. I realized its been a while since I held a 2 month old baby. Im way out of practice.