Decorating for Christmas

Today we helped decorate the church for Christmas. Lily spent most of her time running and playing with the other little girls that were "helping" whith the decorating. However, she also managed to do her share of the work....

Thanksgiving on the Farm

We're spending Thanksgiving in Kansas with my side of the family. This year Lily is old enough to play with the puppy and watch all of the animals. (One of her favorite farm pastimes seems to be moving the gravel around in the driveway by the barn.) The weather hasn't been too cold, so she's gotten to go outside quite a bit. We've taken lots of pictures, but I think this is one of my favorites....

Lily's First Haircut

Today we said bye-bye to the baby curls!! Aunt LB, who is a stylist, gave Lily her first haircut. We sat Lily in a high chair, pulled out the laptop, and turned on an episode of Tigger and Pooh; as a result, I don't think she even realized that she was getting a haircut! Lily sat perfectly still, and Aunt LB gave her a cute little baby cut complete with little layers.

"Apple, Apple, Apple!"

I bought Lily some little puzzles a few months ago, and she's really beginning to take an interest in them. One has fruits on it, another vegetables, and another sweets. When we put the puzzles together, I read the names of the items as she either hands the pieces to me or attempts (occasionally successfully) to put the pieces where they belong. Today, she apparently decided to "read" the piece to me; I heard "apple, apple, apple...." However, she was very excited when I gave her apple slices for supper.

Lily's also attempting to say her ABCs now. She can't say them very clearly, and I don't know that she manages to get the right number of "letters" in her song, but it sure is cute!

Library Book Sale Finds

The local public library has been having a book sale this week. We found out about it yesterday when we went to get a new stack of books for Lily. (She likes picking out new books and playing with all of the toys in the library.) Anyway, Jimmy and Lily and I returned to the library today to sort through the room of "for sale" books to see what all we could find. We spent about an hour and a half browsing books. (We went at nap time, so Lily fell asleep in the car and then slept in her stroller for about the first hour. She browsed and shopped with us for a while though...and she did a relatively good job all things considered.) We ended up with two boxes of books: a good assortment of children's books for Lily, some things to resell online, some things to keep, and some things to take to work. The treasure, I think, is a copy of the book Copland on Music that is autographed by the author, Aaron Copland. I haven't figured out how much the book would be work if I were to try to e-bay it, but I think maybe I'll just keep it.

Halloween

I had camera problems (a corrupt memory card actually), so I didn't get many pictures from Halloween this year. And I certainly didn't get many decent pictures!! Anyway, here's my little fairy princess....

Army Band Concert

Lily went to her first concert tonight. The US Army Field Band & Soldier's Chorus came through on part of their fall tour, and I got a pair of tickets for Lily and I. (Jimmy had to work this evening. It's not like we just didn't invite him....) Lily did well through the concert. We sat in an outside aisle seat near the back so we could make a quick exit if necessary. We didn't have to make the dreaded quick exit, but we didn't make it to the end of the show either. We made it through about 3/4 of the program (or about 1 hour and 15 minutes), so I was generally pleased. The music was amazing and it had been quite a long time since I'd been to a concert of this caliber. It makes me miss playing....

My Little Queen of the Remote Control

The little one has figured out that the remote controls make the television do things...and she certainly likes to experiment with them! She doesn't really much watch much TV (we try to limit her to Tigger & Pooh and Sesame Street), but we do have the television on sometimes during the day. Regardless of whether the TV's on or off, the remote controls still seem to be entertaining....

Chimes

I was told when I took my music teaching job to expect resistance from the junior high crowd. (And no, it wasn't a warning about my particular junior high group, but just a warning about the age group altogether.) While I was expecting resistance and daily battles, I've had surprisingly few. When I was digging through the closets in the music room, I found a 3-octave set of hand chimes. The previous music teacher knew they were there and pointed them out to me, but she also told me that most of them were broken. As it turns out, very few of the chimes were actually broken (3 had to be replaced) and the set was is pretty good condition. At that point, I decided to turn my junior high music groups into bell choirs...and the response has been amazing! The kids are actually enjoying music class (to the point of begging not to be pulled out of music to go finish math tests!) and they're learning a lot about reading and playing music. One of my groups played an arrangement of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" in church today. They did really well, they were very proud of themselves, and they managed to earn root beer floats as well....

YAY Football!!

Lily attended her first major sporting event -- the TU vs. OU football game in Norman. Jimmy's uncle had tickets, and he invited us to go along with him. We initially looked for a babysitter for Lily, but we were unable to find one...so we took her along with us! I was a bit concerned about how Lily would handle the crowds and the noise, but she did wonderfully. She watched everything that was going on, clapped when music was playing and when everyone else was cheering, and even seemed to enjoy watching the fireworks that were being set off merely a half a dozen or so rows behind us. She did get a little played out by the fourth quarter, so she slept through part of it (fireworks and all). I love my little sweetheart; she's such a good sport!!

My Poor Neglected Blog....

My, it's been a while since I've been on here.... And now there's the question of whether to go back and attempt to fill in some gaps or just attempt to jump back into the blog-o-sphere now. I guess we'll just have to see what happens....

A John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt Headache

Wow - I ended up with a headache today like none other; I think it's days like this that keep the Tylenol people in business. I got the brilliant idea over the weekend that it would be fun to have my little music students (K-3rd) do some activities with music and volume -- singing softly and loudly, playing instruments softly and loudly, etc. Anyway, I decided that we'd sing the "John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt" song and then do another similar activity with instruments -- drums, mini cymbals, triangles, etc. To make a long story short, the activity was a huge success -- the students loved it and I met the objectives that I had set for the day. However, after 2 hours of hearing ""John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt - LA LA LA LA LA LA LA!!" I ended up with the most awful pounding headache that I've had in a very, very long time....

First Day of School

Today was the first day of school.... I'm teaching K-8 music (part time, two days per week) at a small private school this year, and today was the beginning of the year. The day went relatively well, especially considering that I'm still feeling yucky from the flu and yucky from the medicine that they gave me to get rid of the flu. I quickly discovered, however, that I'm going to have to do a lot of work to figure out how to keep kindergarteners occupied for half an hour....

Flu

I have the flu. And it really sucks.

Family Picture

One of the things that we did on the cruise was have some family pictures taken. The last pictures we had done were our engagement and wedding pictures, so it was certainly time for an updated picture. Though there was really only one pose that we ended up liking, I think it's a keeper....