Lizzie recently had her annual “Singing Hands” performance and Jaina was so enamored with one of the songs that Lizzie’s class performed that she took it upon herself to learn it so she could perform it for her kindergarden class. She’s spent countless hours listening to this song and practicing pretty much all on her own (Mom helped a bit with the some of the signs, but she really did most of it herself).
She got her opportunity one morning to perform, and had everyone it tears evidently. Since that morning she’s been asked to perform in different classes and become a minor celebrity in her school. I went to watch her one morning, and it was quite funny to watch the school staff fall over themselves to get into the classroom to watch her. The kids loved it so much she had to repeat it five times that morning.
Jaina has a very outgoing kindergarden teacher that volunteers with a local youth service group consisting of high school students from the surrounding area. They put on a talent show each year and Jaina was asked to perform. So she and Lizzie performed last night at the show. Jaina admitted to me that she was pretty scared, we were in a local college performing arts center that was full, the other performers were all high school kids, and they were first. They did pretty well if I do say so myself!
Click on the Vimeo link if you want to see it larger.
It’s been a long time coming but I’m finally posting some picture of our summer vacation adventure. We had a wonderful time on our journey this past July and August. We spent a week in Utah visiting family and friends, then spent a week in California with some of Cheryl’s family, and finally wound our way back to Michigan through the southwest, visiting friends in Arizona and Texas.
It’s that time of year again – baseball/softball/t-ball season. It’s a lot of fun for the kids, but it sure makes a for a busy month. Jaina is playing her first year of t-ball, Tabby and Lizzie are playing their first year of softball (thankfully on the same team), and Jared’s playing baseball again. Enjoy the pictures (if you click on the Flickr slideshow, it will take you to the photostream).
Sorry we’re so late posting pictures, but here they are. Jaina had a great 5th birthday. She had a lot of fun, and loved her presents (direct quote from Jaina). She actually had three parties. We had cake and ice cream for the family the night before her birthday, then we took her to Rainforest Cafe with a friend on the night of her birthday, and finally she got to go get breakfast the next day with Dad at her favorite restaurant for breakfast Bob Evans. So here’s a bunch of her pictures. By the way that fancy jewelry she’s wearing, she made herself! She’s awfully proud of it.
Jared and I decided that there was way to much estrogen in our house so we decided to find something that we could do together that would help raise the level of manliness and combat The Flood of Femininity(™) that we are over-exposed to every day. So we put our heads together and tried to come up with something.
First we tried bowling, and that was fun, until the kids just got to busy at school and we had to cut back.
Then we got into Legos, and that was fun as well, but no matter how many Star Wars battles we had, it just didn’t rise to the level of manliness we need to combat The Flood.
We were always able to fall back on the Wii and Super Smash Brothers for survival. But I didn’t want to be stuck in front of the tv all the time (and I was getting tired of Jared crushing me). So as we were huddling together one day in a mutually defensive position as far away from the hair “pretties” and Barbie movies, and various pink things strewn about the house by The Flood, I had a sudden thought, “I have a rocket.” I’d bought a rocket a couple of years prior to build and launch with the Boy Scouts from our church. But with the change of church assignments, I didn’t work with Scouts anymore and the rocket was still boxed up unused in my office at the funeral home.
I asked Jared if he’d like to put it together with me and he excitedly agreed, after all what could be more manly that missiles and launch pads and fire! So I brought it home the next day. We put it together one night while Cheryl (the leader and chief instigator of The Flood) was away teaching at CMU. As we bent to the task at the dinner table gluing fins, assembling the parachute, and connecting the various lengths of tubes, the smaller less dangerous members of The Flood kept hovering about trying to horn in on the festival of testosterone that was on display. But we fought them off (well, distracted them with a Barbie movie) while we completed our work (and tried to unstick our fingers from the super glue we’d been using), and our mighty weapon of manliness was born! It is only with this rocket that we have saved ourselves from The Flood and from a life bereft of anything manly. With this weapon, we are free from the tyranny of Barbie, and hair pretties, and the pink weapons of mass destruction. We have won, and we have contained The Flood.
Ok seriously, it’s a pretty cool rocket. It’s body is in sections that you can connect together so you can vary it’s length and see what effect that has on the flight profile. It’s a beginner rocket, but it will still reach heights of 750ft. with the right combination of body length and engines. It’s got it’s own little launch pad, and it’s fired electronically. It’s been a lot of fun. It flies really well for something that I built, in fact in a couple of pictures you’ll see a brown house in the distance. A couple of time we launched the rocket ended up well behind that brown house. I’m not sure which was more fun, launching the rocket, or making David run and get it.
Anyway check out the slide show, and if you’d like you can click here and see the photoset on flickr. Please excuse Jared’s poses in some of the pictures, evidently the rocket makes him want to punch things… we are still adjusting the testosterone levels.
