May 6 "Singing Through the Year!"

Wednesday Evening:  What a great concert the second graders put on tonight. It's difficult to describe the amazing music teacher these kiddos have. Her name is Jackie Schoon. She is so fun to watch, and some how or other, she actually gets a group of 70+ second graders to perform excellently. 

"Singing Through the Year!" (Second Grade Style!) was a collection of seven songs from various seasons and holidays of our calendar year. The children played simple instruments, did some choreography, sang solos, read interesting paragraphs describing the songs ... and basically followed every instruction of Ms. Schoon right down to the minute details. So impressive!

We arrived early to drop Erin off at her designated spot with her class prior to the concert. I took a quick picture of Aidan as we were situated and waiting for the singing to begin.

The program was held at the Forest Hills Fine Arts Center, a super nice venue for concerts, plays, and other performances. Doesn't it look so professional? 

Here are all of the second graders from Meadow Brook Elementary ready to perform. 

Ms. Schoon is a very entertaining and completely at-ease person as she introduces the theme of tonight's music. It's obvious the children adore her. AND it is so apparent she absolutely loves her job and loves these children. How wonderful.

Aidan, who was sitting right beside me, knew every word to every song ... and sang along!

Can you find ERIN? She is on the second level of the risers, just about in the middle, wearing a pink skirt and a kind of animal looking top, which is difficult for me to describe. Erin would tell you that it is soft and comfortable!

Here is Erin ready for her solo part ... consisting of FOUR words (which I cannot remember) but the words were SUNG. She did great.

Oops ... the picture below is when she does her solo ... the prior pictures were of the entire group singing "Sing About Martin" and doing hand motions. Erin did every single motion very enthusiastically.

They sang a really beautiful song, "Mo Li Hua" which I think was about a flower. They sang it in Mandarin (Chinese?) and then sang it in English.

This was such a nice concert. I'm so glad I get to attend these. Brendan has an upcoming concert right here this coming Monday!

May 5 With the Kids

Tuesday:  I took just a few photos today. By the time the kiddos are finished eating their cinnamon toast and telling me about their day at school, there isn't a whole lot of time until Dylan and Kelly return from work. I did bring the remaining "Charlie Brown" books back over so that they could exchange the ones they had from last week.

Brendan and Aidan get such a kick out of these books. I do too! Charles Schultz was a comic genius. His ability to jot a few lines that change a facial expression or a chaotic situation are epic. We laugh and laugh at these characters. What a gift Mr. Schultz had.

Aidan challenged me to a game of "Chess", Jurassic Park style. I am a half-way decent Chess player with REGULAR looking pieces--but these dinosaur equivalents really confuse me ... like constantly! They don't seem to bother the younger kids a single bit! Aidan is a very good Chess player (surprise, surprise) but I finally Check-mated him.

Little Gregory was absolutely certain he could humble me one more time, especially since I was so obviously handicapped by these ridiculous looking Chess pieces (or as Gregory says, "ChesT"). However, it turned out that I actually was able to win this game in spite of my extra challenges. It didn't help that I had an absolutely splitting headache and had no Tylenol with me. Sigh. It was OK, though, because these guys are so much fun to be with, no matter what.

I have no idea what Erin is conveying to me here unless this is when she was telling me about her second grade Spring concert (which is Wednesday night). 

Erin even has a SOLO! She is very excited about this. I bet she will do a great job!

May 2 Aunt Candy's Toy Company

Saturday:  Cal and I arrived at the Rockford toy shop at just about 10:30 this morning. I was careful to explain that we were here on a RESEARCH MISSION ONLY and that we were not purchasing anything from the toy store today. I told Cal I was going to take pictures of the stuff he found interesting, and that way I could buy the stuff next week and get them wrapped for his birthday, which is only 13 days from now. Here are the items I photographed:

Cal picked these to stretch animals and announced that he DEFINITELY wanted them. They are $6.99 each.

This Octopus stuffed animal was REALLY liked by Cal. I watch him for awhile as he is checking each toy out to see if he is serious about it or not. He kept coming back to the Octopus with a BIG smile on his face. I think the octopus was $32. Hmm. We have a $75 budget, so I'm just taking pictures and adding things ($$) up later ...

This little key-ring is a duck dressed up like a dinosaur. He loved it. A real bargain at $3.99. !!

And this small snake was also $3.99 -- what a total deal !!

This is kind of a soft plastic dinosaur labeled "Colossal T-Rex" and it's price was $18.99. I told Cal this was a "possibility." He very seriously squinted his little face up at me and asked: "What does 'possibility' mean?" I responded that "possible" meant I could probably get it for him, depending on how many more things he was deciding he wanted.

Cal's favorite dinosaur has always been the T-Rex--so it is not surprising that he likes this.

There were LOTS of hard plastic animals to chose from. I could not believe what some of these were priced! The higher up on the shelf they went, the more expensive they were! Some of them were marked $62.99! Those expensive ones were very detailed dragons with very cool markings on them. I told Cal if we got one of those, it would use up most of his budget; so he (wisely) relinquished.

This albino tiger caught his eye ...

As well as these two saber-toothed tigers . . .

These guys are $13.99 each. I asked Cal what on earth he would do with them if he had them. He said they would FIGHT all of the other animals he had! Hmm. Two tigers would cost about $28. When I add these unusual choices together, it comes to about $101--so I'm going to have to strike a few out to stay within my $75 budget. I'll go back to the toy store on Monday and make my purchases. I love birthdays celebrations! 

PS  I was very impressed with how Cal did in the toy store. He never even once BEGGED for me to buy him something right there and then. He was quite systematic about his choices too. He is a very logical little child, but he has been like this since he was really really young! Good job, Cal.

May 1 and 2 Gregory's sleepover

Friday:  I picked Cal (Gregory) up right after school today and brought him over to my house for his much-awaited sleepover. I've calculated, and if things go smoothly (!!) I can invited one child every other Friday for a sleepover--which would give each of the four kiddos SIX sleepovers per year. So ... that's my goal. However, schedules do get in the way some times, so this is tentative planning at best. 

Cal loves my portable foosball table. He calls it SOCCER, and I guess that's okay. The balls look exactly like soccer balls. I won the first game by one point--Friday night. But then Saturday, we played and Cal creamed me.

Cal has his own unique way of scoring points, so you have to be aware of some of those "odd" calls he makes. But overall, he is growing in his sportsmanship and doesn't mind losing now and then (as long as it isn't too often).

Cal also enjoys my "Battle Box" game. I purchased it at the Grand Haven toy store. We've had a lot of fun with it, but there are things I would change about its design if I could. Cal likes it just like it is. He's a very tenacious little person who does not "give up" on anything.

When it was "movie time" Friday night, we had a difficult time choosing a movie to watch. Plus, my VCR is kind of "iffy". We finally gave up on movies that I had here at my house and went on Prime to see if there was anything acceptable to watch. Cal chose "The Minecraft Movie" which he told me he "loves", but about 25 minutes into it, it was just too much for me! I told Cal it was scaring me to pieces! So we switched and watched some Minion "shorts" and then we just watched "Tom and Jerry" for awhile and Cal ate two huge bowls of popcorn.

Getting Cal to bed was a little bit tricky--I think it's because he fell asleep in my car on the ride over to my house -- and so he "recharged" and wasn't tired enough to go to sleep very early. I finally put on some pretty music and he fell asleep at about 10:30.

Not one to sleep IN, Cal was awake and ready to play basketball at 6:30 AM. I didn't take any pictures of us shooting basketballs, but Cal is convinced that he had more points than I did. 

We played a LOT with my puppets. Cal even brought a puppet from his house!

We built some race tracks too, and had quite a few exciting races.

Here is the kitty puppet Cal brought over. His name is "Windy" and he is a cousin to my "Cocoa Cat!" Windy is a little bit chunkier than Cocoa and his mouth opens easier too. We played and played with these puppets.

CAL!!! You are the cutest little person!

We also played three Chess games (which Cal pronounces "CHEST" with a very distinct "T"). I clobbered him on the first game, but he was sharper Saturday morning and actually Check-mated me!!!!

Look at his excitement when he won the game! He kills me!

I told him he was too smart for his old grandma!

Cal wanted to learn how to play CHINESE CHECKERS, so we played a game. It's not an easy concept actually. I don't think kids play this game too much since there are more fun games out there; but this is still a good game to teach strategy. Look at Cal sizing up the board ...

We also got out the PlayDoh to make "monsters" out of. I'm not big on monsters, but I was so tired this morning that I just followed whatever Cal wanted us to do. My PlayDoh is old and not very soft ... so I decided that we didn't need to be hyper about mixing the colors. Cal made snake monsters, "water" monsters, and I forget what else! We had very intense battles. The one whose monster got the most squashed was the loser.

Cal's birthday is 13 days from now and I haven't any clue what to get him. So I suggested that we drive out to Aunt Candy's Toy Company (Rockford) and have a look around at their toys to see if Cal could give me some ideas (see next Post).

This is Cal eating his mint chocolate chip ice-cream at Culver's after we finished our shopping.

I enjoyed having you over, little Mister. You are a delightful person. I'm going to enjoy spending time with you as the years progress ... what a blessed grandma I am.

April 30 Meet Sir PURR

Thursday:  Chris is home from college. He graduates this spring, and the actual Commencement date is May 16 down at Olivet University. Chris is kind of in-between places to live, so he has "parked" his ginger cat over at his dad's place.

Meet Sir PURR . . .

Jesse was housing another cat, for about a year, and her name was Willow. She was one of the littlest full-grown cats I have ever seen. She was also very old and frail. So ... she finally had to be put down. Jesse does well with cats! Sir Purr is about 3x as big as Willow was, and he has the softest and tiniest purr you can imagine!

His hair color almost identically matches MY hair color!

Sir Purr is definitely a curious cat--but all cats are curious. Jesse tells me that if there is something to be climbed, Purr will climb it no matter what!

I just had to chronicled about him since I get to see him at least 1x per week. He sleeps most of the day, but races around the house at night and makes himself a menace. But he is super soft and cuddly, so he is worth it.

See you later, Sir Purr!