April Birthday Girl

April brings us Honor’s birthday. We really mixed her up this year as we had plans on her actual birthday – which was ok with her, we asked – so we had multiple days of celebrating. On one day, after piano lessons, we went out to Coal Fire pizza. Good choice!

Brother and sister goofing off at the music school.

Brian practicing before his lesson.

Perfectly good pizza, but she has to try the lemon!

Ah! That’s better!

For her birthday dinner, Honor chose The Melting Pot. A local fondue restaurant that she’s been wanting to go to since we moved her and she saw it! It was really good, and the service was beyond excellent! We’ll definitely go back.


And finally, we had a day for cake and presents! I remembered to get the cake stuff, but totally forgot candles!

She got some videos that Brian thought she’d like, and her dad picked out the little turtle for her.

We also got her a bunch of paint and supplies to fix up her clubhouse.

Other than celebrating Honor’s birthday, we’ve  been doing normal stuff, like going to school…this is Brian at the bus stop.

Practicing piano

And teaching the cat to drink out of a cup.

January–Sunshine, Snow, and Music

Catching up on posting photos to my blog. These are from early January. Early morning at the bus stop is chilly on snowy days.

I love how the sun shines on the snow, and we get tons of animals walking through the yard.

The snow melting off of my truck decided to get artistic one morning.

Honor has been sledding so much that she wore a hole in her sled. Fortunately, I know how to use duct tape. Ninja made sure that I did it right.

Brian demonstrates how to play piano with a Pixie. She likes to sing along.

Heigh Ho! Here’s a Skyrim Ninja Duet!

I haven’t shared any videos of the kid’s piano lessons in quite some time, so here’s an update.

Brian is working on a piano version of the theme music for the PC Game Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.  We found the sheet music from the website of composer Joyce Leong who shared her cover of the music. Brian started working on this piece with his last teacher in Kuwait, but hadn’t got too far on it when we packed up to move July of last year. We didn’t get the keyboard here until the end of October, and we just found a new teacher here in Maryland at the start of the year. They’ve had about 4 lessons with the new teacher and so far seem to really like him.

Brian decided to continue with this song, and has picked it up where he left off and marched on! He’s almost got it and it’s sounding very nice. One of the challenges of piano practice in this house though, is sharing the piano with cats. Ninja decided this particular performance should be a duet.

Honor is playing the pop song “Heigh Ho” by The Lumineers. This is one that she had wanted to learn for school for a project, and she started in Kuwait, but then she broke her arm and after healing, went on to other things. Then, like Brian, she had to wait awhile to start lessons again here. She had a lot more interference from Ninja on her first attempt at the song, so we tried a couple more times. This first video is Honor and Ninja trying the song together – Honor reads the music, Ninja tries to eat it. The second is Honor playing on her own.

and

One Year Ago – piano lessons

The kids have been taking piano lessons now for about one year and are still enjoying the classes very much. We’ve even had a few lessons during the summer, although our R&R, their teacher’s vacation, and now ‘Eid has meant many classes were skipped, but here are some of the songs they are learning now.

One of Brian’s newest assignments:

 

When I asked Brian to play me a song, I thought he’d pick one he was more familiar with, but he chose this one, a song he was only recently assigned. That was fine with me… I like his serious look of concentration as he’s reading the music :)

Honor played several songs for me, and I chose this one to share as she managed to play along without getting distracted, despite the cats having a smack down behind her on the table!

 

We have also kept busy these past couple weeks finishing up our (late) spring cleaning. The kids have learned that taking a big job and breaking it into smaller pieces makes the work easier, as is enlisting a buddy to help you out a little. Kitties are excellent at sorting through boxes.

Brian did have to lecture Pixie about finishing her work before playing with the toys she found during clean up (she has a marble under her paw).

I’ve been working on several sewing projects, and cooking.

One cookie recipe I made was this one for very easy, and totally delicious, Ginger Spice Cookies. You probably have everything in your cupboard right now. Go make them, you won’t regret it! Of course, me and my inability to follow a recipe means I added more of the spices than the recipe called for, plus a bit of anis powder, and rather than following their ‘drop a teaspoon of batter onto the wax paper to coat with sugar’, I used my method of rolling a small ball of batter in a bowl of sugar… but do whatever you want. It’s a very flexible recipe and yummy!

I also made these:

We called them ‘Chocolatey Bars of Goodness’ and Honor says they taste just like a (forget the brand name) chocolate chip peanut butter cereal bar that I sent to school snack for her last year. I made this up because I had things in my pantry that were in my way and I didn’t know what else to do with them. Specifically, some cocoa puff type cereal the kids haven’t been eating and a jar of marshmallow fluff. The fluff was something given to me, and I have NEVER used it before. I really had no clue what to do with it! Here’s what I came up with:

Melted 250g butter in a small casserole dish (by microwave)

Stirred in the whole (small) jar of marshmallow fluff

I stirred in 1/2 to 1 cup of creamy peanut butter… I didn’t measure, I just added and stirred until it looked creamy and yummy.

Next I added in 3-4 cups of the cereal. Again, I did not measure. I just stirred in as much as I could until I couldn’t add any more and still coat it with the peanut butter-fluff mixture.

Then it went into the fridge to cool off.

It wasn’t super sweet, like the marshmallow & krispy rice cereal bars. Those are good for about the first 4 bites and then get to be ‘too much’ for us. And while they had the chocolate peanut butter taste of a Reese’s candy, it wasn’t solid and heavy and ‘too much’ in that direction either. Like Honor said, it turned out more like a cereal bar (which makes sense, because it is made with cereal… but it looks more like desert than a cereal!).

We are on a long weekend currently. Blessed ‘Eid to all! School starts next week and I think we are actually ready for it. It’s been a very long, very relaxing summer, but it’s time to get back to a routine!

Spring Break and more

We broke for Spring Break, and I’ve been stuck in the relax and do nothing gear. It’s a good thing. We have been doing bloggable things, I simply haven’t blogged about it.

To catch up a little,

At the end of March, Brian and his grade participated in an international virtual science fair. The project is talked about here, at the NESA website, http://www.nesacenter.org/page.cfm?p=380 if you’d like to check it out. His team worked hard on their research, paperwork, online reports, and poster:

They also did an amazing job on their verbal presentation the day of the fair. All teams gathered in the library and were interviewed and judged. I was impressed by how well all of the kids did! The hard work paid off for Brian’s team. They made the top 4, finalists, in the local judging, and their project is going on to compete in the international competition. Go Team 6!!

Honor had her 8th birthday during spring break! She had 3 of her closest friends over for a party and sleepover. It was a perfect group and the girls were great together. They watched movies, played with the art supplies, played with toys, and eventually, Brian called them outside for a little surprise…

4 little baskets with notes…. orphaned kittens! (plush, not real!), each a different color, each with its own mattress, sheet, pillow and crocheted blanket. I’m sure you can imagine the ‘Awwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!’ chorus! For the rest of the night the girls included their kittens in their play and sleepover.

Dinner was pizza, and I turned the kids loose with the decorations for the cake and cupcakes and they had a blast. Eating the cakes with homemade ice cream was fun too! 

Honor opened her gifts with her friends, then they watched another movie or two and settled down for bed.. with kittens.

Grandma and Grandpa also sent a box of goodies for Honor and Ninja to open. Technically the gifts were for Honor, but Ninja really liked them too. Honor was ill the day the box arrived and was bundled up on the sofa, but she enjoyed opening her box!

Ninja had fun too.

 

The end of our spring break was marred by cooties. There was a stomach bug going around and each of us had a turn with it. Fortunately it was a 24-48hr bug. Honor ended up missing a few days of school, but we got through it. We’re getting back into the swing of things. Even got the taxes filed… amazing. I even managed to teach the kids a couple of very important life lessons – how to make coffee!

  and how to properly package a cat:

(ok, technically, the cat packaged herself… )

Spring has sprung here and I’ve got some flower photos to post, and we joined some friends for paintball this past weekend and I’ll share that too…. Later :)