Concerts, Madagascar, concerts, and a broken appliance??

Concerts, Madagascar, concerts, and a broken appliance??
November 23, 2008

Last Saturday: My washing machine broke!! It’s not even that old. I had a load that washed for almost 2 hours before I realized that the knob wasn’t turning like it should be. Sears said they couldn’t come look at it til Thursday.

Monday: Kayla had her fall band concert. Bob took Tyler to the concert while I took Alayna with me to Marisa’s violin lessons. I think her concert went well.

Tuesday: After Alayna’s gymnastics class, we raced to Tyler’s 5th grade musical production. It was an incredible Veterans Day concert. They sang some beautiful pieces along with some incredible slideshows. They also posted all veterans from each kids family on a giant “brick” wall. Tyler and Alayna had Grandpa Cunningham, Grandpa Salinas, Great Grandpa Ribera, and Grandpa Ribera! It breaks my heart that I wasn’t able to get a picture of Tyler in front of it. We had to literally race out when the concert was over to get to his band concert over at the high school!! It was his very first band concert and it went great!

Wednesday: Tyler had scouts and the girls had a game night for YW.

Thursday: I had to get Tyler to the bus at school by 5:45 AM. Their rehearsals started early for OPUS and went all day in Ames. As soon as I finished teaching (Actually my students earned National Treasure, so we watched that this week), we raced off to Ames, Iowa (2 hours away). We arrived at the Iowa State University to attend the OPUS concert in the main concert hall. It was HUGE, even had 3 balconies! Tyler was in the 5th-6th grade group. Only 180 were chosen out of all the kids in Iowa, and Tyler was one of them!! When the concert began, we all sat in awe. It was one of the most beautiful children’s choirs I have ever heard (4 part harmony)! Tyler did such a fantastic job! We weren’t allowed to take a video camera or regular camera inside, so I don’t have anything to share from it.

We went to Carlos O Kelley’s for dinner while Tyler told us about his cool day. Then we had to drive to Ankeny to stay in a hotel (all hotels in Ames were full). We arrived to the hotel with perfect timing- just in time for Survivor!! Then Bob was sweet enough to go track down some ice cream for us.

PS- Oh, and Sears came by to let us know that the part we need for our washing machine to get fixed is almost the same as buying a new washer!!! SO, with company coming this week, I guess we will be hitting the Sears appliance section-major ugh!

Friday: Bob ran Marisa up to the ISU campus bright and early for her full day of rehearsals for Junior All-state. When he got back, he went with the rest of us up to the mall. I found a Hot Topics store and went CRAZY with all the new twilight stuff. I got the girls t-shirts (Team Edward of course!) and I should have gotten Team Jacob for me, that would have been funny for this coming Wednesday when we go see it! I did finally get a poster for my classroom and I am one of the coolest teachers in 6th grade because I have read the whole series! (I got a key chain too-hehe!)

The kids got to play at the arcade, we had lunch at a little pizza place, and then we got to play the coolest game!!! It was an entire miniature golf course all under black light! The kids LOVED it and we had the course all to ourselves so we got to go through twice. It was pretty funny watching Alayna’s 24 strokes be counted as “4”. She would drag it all the way and drop it in the hole. Hilarious!

Then we went to Hobby Lobby, Target, Walmart, and Best Buy. Bob dropped Tyler, Alayna, and me off at the Movie Theater. I took them to see Madagascar 2, which turned out to be pretty adorable. I was so glad we had the theater pretty much to ourselves and weren’t out in the long line waiting with the freezing twilighters! In the meantime, Bob and Kayla attended Marisa’s junior all-state concert. (We were only allowed 2 tickets so there is no way both Bob and I could attend) So, hopefully Marisa can tell you about her experience with that. Then we headed for home.

Other info:
*Marisa joined the bowling team at the high school. (insert giant chuckle here) She tried out and made the JV team. She really enjoys it!

*Tyler was asked to be one of 2 researchers on his lego league team. They have a competition coming up in December. They have been working with some guys from Rockwell to build and program a robot. I should get Tyler to hop onto our blog and tell you all about what he does and what he is researching.


Coming up this week:
*Twilight!! On Wednesday!! The count down begins. Anyone else want to go with me and a giant bunch of teenage girls?

*Bob’s 40th birthday celebration on Wednesday (yes, I am dragging him to Twilight!) and Hart Grandparents arrive.

*Debbie, Trent, and family arrive and we have Thanksgiving.

*Note to self: MUST start thinking about Christmas. Yikes!!

trick or treating

witches brew

Crazy teenagers!

Banana, bacon, egg, Alice, Napolian Dynamite, and Party pooper :) (no costume)

Passing out candy

On way to Trunk-or-treat

Orchestra concert-marisa

She is the 3rd girl on the left of the conductor, on the end.

Exploding grapes, witches brew, and too much candy!

November 2, 2008

Orchestra: Marisa had a concert this week and it was so wonderful!! She has gotten so good. I will have Bob post the video clips we took so you can see her in action. At the end, all the orchestras played the finale together (5th, 6th, and high school orchestras) and played Beethovens “Ode to Joy” – all 250 of them. It was incredible! She was also accepted into the Junior All State Orchestra!!! Isn’t that exciting? It is in Ames the day after Tyler’s OPUS concert, so I guess we will need to stay the night there since its such a far drive.

Trunk-or-treat: On Wednesday we had a bi-ward trunk-or-treat. The weather was so beautiful- almost 70 degrees! Alayna was a Princess, Tyler was a veterinarian, Kayla was Alice from “twilight”, and Marisa was bacon and her friend Jessica was an egg. We took some fun pictures which I will post.

Coe College Science Night: Coe College had an amazing night with cool science demonstrations. Bob, Corey and Hal, and the older 3 kids went. I am hoping one of the kids will step up and write out what they saw. It was some very cool stuff: exploding grapes, ice cream made using liquid nitrogen, fake snow, etc.

Halloween: Again, the weather was lovely. We had lots of friends over. Bob took the younger kids out to trick or treat while I gave out candy here at home. When they got back, Grandma and Grandpa Hart helped us make a witches brew which was a complete success! Then we played with dry ice for a couple of minutes. Marisa and Kayla had their friends over and they all went out trick or treating and hauled in quite a bit of candy! A couple of them stayed the night.

Saturday: We had a crazy busy day on Saturday. We all worked for hours on our sad and neglected yard. We packed up all the deck set, toys, etc. We mowed, Bob and Corey planted 45 tulip bulbs, they fixed our dining room chairs, we cut down all the bushes and shrubs, etc. Everything looks so much better and I think we may actually be ready for winter (not mentally, but you know what I mean)

See the resemblence? Guess who