Weekend Recap

We started out with a busy weekend planned, but we got lots of rain on Friday night and all day on Saturday. Anthony's cross-country meet (at 8am) was cancelled, and so were Eric's and Alex's soccer games (at 9am and 1pm, respectively). We didn't have to take Natalie early to her friend's birthday party/sleepover. Patrick and I were able to have plenty of time to get to the wedding we were invited to.

Because of the more open schedule, I was able to take Anthony shopping for a new dress shirt on Saturday. He wanted a black dress shirt that was more fitted, and then a creme-colored tie or something like that to match his date's dress. This was all in preparation for Homecoming which is next Saturday. We spent a good hour and a half trying on various shirts. The selection was a little more limited with black shirts that with white. It didn't help that his neck is only 14 1/2 inches around. Several of the shirts had arms that were too baggy for his liking. Finally, we found two that he was happy with. One was $69.50 and the other was on sale for $45. I asked him if he liked the $69.50 one enough to warrant the price difference. Luckily, he said no and we got the $45 one. I asked him remember this reasoning when it comes to choosing colleges. ;)

After shopping with Anthony, we picked up Alex from a birthday party/sleepover that was located near the mall. I have to say that it was weird dropping him off at a girl's house for a birthday party/sleepover, but he went last year and we saw no reason he couldn't go this year. After all, there were 20+ other kids there. He had a lot of fun and he even got about four hours of sleep. We are glad when he gets out there and socializes instead of playing video games at home all of the time.

Since Patrick and I were at the wedding, we couldn't take Anthony to a party he was invited to on Saturday evening. Instead, he was picked up by one of his friends, the girl who he is taking to Homecoming. The party on Saturday was a big shindig for another friend's 18th birthday party. Patrick picked him up after we got home from the wedding.

On Sunday, Alex's soccer game at 4:15pm was also cancelled, but Eric's soccer game at 1pm was still on. Figuring out when we were going to church wasn't straightforward. We ended up going to the 11am mass and Patrick and Eric had to leave after Communion.

I picked up Natalie from her sleepover just before going to church. She claimed to have gotten about 9 hours of sleep, but she ended up taking a nap after lunch to rest up for her swim tryout at 4pm. I may have mentioned this briefly already, but she's been swimming at our gym for a while (2 1/2 years, maybe?). She's had really good coaches there and she's gotten a lot of attention (meaning small groups) but she has always been lacking good competition. In August, she went to her first really big swim meet, and she did really well. The best part of it was she got "official times".

There's been some recent coach turnover at our gym, and the experienced coach (Coach Kris) is now at a local swim club. Our gym now has a very inexperienced coach and they haven't been able to tell us when they'll get another one. Partly because of Coach Kris, and because of those "official times" in August, Natalie was able to get one of the spots on their team. It'll be a little cheaper, although the location is farther. They have practices on Mondays through Fridays for 1 1/2 hours instead of the one hour she's been practicing. The best part is that two of her friends from our gym swim team are also going to be there, and so will be her previous coach. She's pretty excited all around. She went to the "tryout" today, but that was more of a formality. We'll be going to a lot more swim meets in the future. She starts tomorrow.

For those of you needing an "Eric fix", here's a picture I took tonight. I had asked him to show me his muscles, which he did with his right arm, but he made this weird shape with his left hand. When I asked him about it, he acted upset and said that it was something he had made up. I'm still not sure what that had to do with making muscles, but he loves making up his own stuff.

Speaking of making up stuff, Eric and I have recently modified the words to "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star". Basically, every time you're supposed to say "star", we say "dinosaur" instead. He gets all giggly every time we sing it, which is every night at bedtime. For a long time now, he's had me sing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" to him whenever I put him to bed. He likes that song so much that we sing it twice each time.

Tomorrow will be the first time in the four years or so that Patrick will not be picking up Natalie from her school for piano lessons. Eric will have to take the bus without her. He did fine last Wednesday for Natalie's first cello lesson. Lots of growing and changing around here!

Got Cello?

Patrick went with Natalie to rent her cello this past Tuesday. He went to a store called Antonio Strad that specializes in stringed instruments. They also apply a good part of the rental price there on the purchase of an instrument, which is wonderful considering the expense of a good stringed instrument. We were able to rent Natalie's cello (3/4 size) for $41 plus the protection plan. In this picture, she's very excited about getting it, and she still seems excited about it today. Several kids in her class are also taking Strings, including her good friend Margo, who also lives in our neighborhood. Can you say potential "carpool"?

Natalie had her first cello lesson on Wednesday. She didn't have too much to say about it, but that was probably because I was only able to talk to her for a few minutes on the way home from her friend Margo's house. Margo's mom had picked them up from Strings, so all we had to do was pick her up at their house. Natalie only mentioned that they were still learning how to read music, but they did get to pluck the strings of their instruments to play two notes. The rest of the ride home she was talking non-stop about how she and Margo had thought of another project to do together.

The rest of the story is long, so feel free to skip this paragraph if you're not interested. After Natalie's first lesson, her friend Margo's mom picked them up because Patrick had to pick up Alex around the same time. Margo had a dance class after Strings, so they took Natalie with them to that and then to their house. Meanwhile, I was working late and I didn't pick up Anthony until almost 5:30pm. We went by Margo's house to pick up Natalie on the way home, but they were doing homework, so I came by later, around 7:30pm, to take Natalie home. Patrick, meanwhile, had to take Alex to soccer practice, all while dragging Eric along with him. We finally all met at home when I got home from picking up Natalie. I know we'll miss the chaos one day when the kids are grown! At least that's what I keep telling myself! :)

Speaking of "grown", Eric does not look very "grown up" next to these basses. Patrick took this picture to highlight the size difference. Eric got a kick out of how big they were. I'll have to do another post about some of the things he's been saying and doing lately--maybe this weekend. Our weekend schedule might be clearing thanks to the heavy rain we've received this afternoon/evening.

Last Piano Lesson

I've been reminded that my nieces like to read my blog and that I haven't had a new blog post in a while. :)

Today was Natalie's last piano lesson. She's been taking piano lessons for about five years, maybe? We had originally negotiated with her (because she kept asking if she could quit piano) that she would continue taking piano lessons until she got into middle school. My hope at the time was that she would play an instrument in the band in middle school. She's the only child that has shown any interest in any musical instrument. I was in Band and I loved being in Band.

In fifth grade at Natalie's elementary school, they offer an after school program called "Strings" where the kids are offered free lessons to learn a stringed instrument. They must have listened to the different instruments at school, because Natalie came home one day and told us she really wanted to play the cello because she liked the way it sounded.

We didn't have much warning on when this program would start. We basically were told the week before it started, and it started last week. We were still obligated to have two more piano lessons before we could end them. Patrick spoke with the person teaching the Strings class and he said they were going to cover how to read music first, so we knew Natalie wouldn't really be missing much. She obviously knows how to read music already.

So, this opens another chapter in our lives. Natalie will be bused from her school, on Mondays and Wednesdays, to the middle school that we feed into. We'll have to pick her up from there at 4pm. Eric will take the bus home without his sister. Patrick will have to wait for Eric to get home on the bus, then he'll go pick up Natalie and then Alex.

This is the last picture of Natalie with her piano teacher. I've always thought their body language was interesting. Natalie used to hug her previous piano teacher constantly, but her previous piano teacher was a woman with two small daughters. This one is a single man with no children. There was no hugging. Still, Natalie seemed to do well with him as a piano teacher. Hopefully she'll do well with her Strings teacher too. We'll see if she continues with the cello after middle school. She may want to switch to a "regular" band instrument and be in Band like her Mama.

The Sweetest Thing

Anthony is very good with kids, but I love watching him interact with his youngest sibling especially. He is helping Patrick coach Eric's soccer team, an event he has affectionately nicknamed "midget soccer". The other kids are all over him, and Eric loves having him around.

This is a picture of Anthony walking to Eric's soccer game today. At first Eric was just walking behind him, but he caught up and grabbed Anthony's hand. That was so sweet! I love pictures like this from behind.

When they were warming up, Eric would chase Anthony around with the ball and sometimes he would go in between Anthony's legs to kick the ball. That usually ended up with giggles and hugging.

We set up the chairs, waiting for the game before us to finish. Eric plopped himself into one chair, and Anthony sat in the other one. At one point, Anthony decided to sit on Eric's lap, carefully, of course. Patrick then sat on top of Anthony's lap, briefly and carefully also so Eric wouldn't get crushed. Eric loved it and that just got him more and more giggly and excited. I missed that moment because it happened so quickly, plus I had the big zoom lens on my camera and I couldn't back up quickly enough to get all three of them in the frame. I took this picture later when Anthony sat on Eric's lap again. You can't see the huge grin on Eric's face, but clearly, Eric loved it--again.

As for the game, Eric was totally distracted during this one. Most of the time he spent dancing around or playing with his huge shorts. His team lost again. We lost count, but they scored three of the goals for the other team and didn't score any goals for themselves. We like to think that they still had fun.

Eric had a little too much fun on the bench. Patrick turned around from watching the game and saw that all of his players on the bench were wet. He asked who started it and all of them pointed at Eric. They had been playing with the water that was meant for drinking.

Eric wasn't around when the other kids used to play in recreational league sports games where the parents give the kids snacks after all of the games. Parents take turns buying tokens to give the kids and the kids trade them in for snacks at the concession stand. This time Eric got a red slushy and a ring pop. He finished the slushy there at the field but then had the ring pop in the car on the way home. He sucked on the red and blue ring pop and then opened his mouth and asked me if his tongue was red and blue--over and over again. His tongue was already red from the slushy.

This last picture was from the last part of the game. After the prayer, Eric looked for Anthony. Anthony picked him up and they gave each other a big hug. Isn't that the sweetest thing?

Tonight, Anthony went to a school football game. When Eric was about to go to bed, he was walking around downstairs and I asked him what he was doing. He said that he was looking for Anthony so he could say "good night" to him. I told him that Anthony was at a football game with friends. Eric looked at me like that wasn't a good enough reason, so I asked him if he wanted me to text Anthony "good night". He grinned and said he wanted me to. We waited for a bit after I sent the text to get a reply. Eric said, "But I can't read." I laughed and told him that I would read him Anthony's text back. Of course Anthony texted back to say "good night" back. Eric was satisfied with that. Now THAT was the sweetest thing.

What About Alex?

We are in the middle of our school and extracurricular activity chaos. This is how our next couple of months are shaping up, including school pick up times:

Mondays
6:10am Leave the house for Anthony's Cross-Country practice at 6:30pm
7:04pm Natalie's and Eric's school bus picks them up
7:30am Leave the house with Alex's school carpool*
3:25pm Alex's school day ends
4:10pm--Variable--Alex's bus gets to the local middle school
4:05pm Anthony's school day ends
3pm Pick up Eric and Natalie from school for Natalie's 3:30-4:15pm piano lesson
5pm Leave home for Eric's 5:45-6:15pm swimming/Natalie's 6-7pm swim team practice
5:30pm Leave home for Alex's 6-7:30pm club soccer practice

Tuesday
6:10am Leave the house for Anthony's Cross-Country practice at 6:30pm
7:04pm Natalie's and Eric's school bus picks them up
7:30am Leave the house with Alex's school carpool*
3:20pm Natalie's and Eric's school bus drops them off
3:25pm Alex's school day ends
4:10pm--Variable--Alex's bus gets to the local middle school
4:05pm Anthony's school day ends
5:30pm Leave home for Natalie's 6-7pm swim team practice
6-7pm Eric's soccer practice

Wednesday
6:10am Leave the house for Anthony's Cross-Country practicez at 6:30pm
7:04pm Natalie's and Eric's school bus picks them up
7:30am Leave the house with Alex's school carpool*
3:20pm Natalie's and Eric's school bus drops them off
3:25pm Alex's school day ends
4:10pm--Variable--Alex's bus gets to the local middle school
4:05pm Anthony's school day ends
5:30pm Leave home for Natalie's 6-7pm swim team practice
5:30pm Leave home for Alex's 6-7:30pm club soccer practice

Thursday
6:10am Leave the house for Anthony's Cross-Country practice at 6:30pm
7:04pm Natalie's and Eric's school bus picks them up
7:30am Leave the house with Alex's school carpool*
3:20pm Natalie's and Eric's school bus drops them off
3:25pm Alex's school day ends
4:10pm--Variable--Alex's bus gets to the local middle school
4:05pm Anthony's school day ends
5:30pm Leave home for Natalie's 6-7pm swim team practice

Friday
6:10am Leave the house for Anthony's Cross-Country practice at 6:30pm
7:04pm Natalie's and Eric's school bus picks them up
7:30am Leave the house with Alex's school carpool*
3:20pm Natalie's and Eric's school bus drops them off
3:25pm Alex's school day ends
4:10pm--Variable--Alex's bus gets to the local middle school
4:05pm Anthony's school day ends

There are other things like Anthony's after school meetings or other school or social functions. There also may be some additional changes in the coming weeks. Natalie now says she is interested in the "Strings" group. She says she wants to play the cello because she likes the way it sounds. She seems very excited about it, and because of that, we would like to be able to do this for her, but we have to find out more information. A bus would pick her up from her school on Mondays and Wednesdays. They have lessons/practices at the middle school that we feed into (and that Anthony attended for eighth grade). We would have to pick her up from there at 4pm. If she does this, we would have to drop the piano lessons. There is no way she can do both, from the schedule perspective, and from the perspective of having time to practice both instruments.

We have already cancelled Eric's swimming lessons, at least until January or so, then we'll see. He is tired after having school all day. Yesterday (Monday), by the time he came home from Natalie's piano lesson/his swimming lesson/Natalie's swim team practice, it was almost 8pm. He had to go to bed, but he didn't want to. He just wanted some time to play with his dinosaurs. We have to let him be a kid too.

Unless I'm off or on call and don't have to go to work until later, Patrick has to take Anthony to school for his cross-country practice, then come home and make sure the little ones get on the bus a little after 7am, then 2-3 days a week* he has to take Alex and Jeff, his carpool friend to school. The other days, Jeff's parents take them to school. The problem for the next couple of months is that Jeff has football practice after school, so we are solely responsible for picking up Alex. We pick him up either at his school or at the local middle school, whichever way the timing works better. The local middle school is obviously closer, but the pick-up time is very different and can be very variable.

We also have to add one more factor. My work schedule has changed and technically I have to work until 4:30pm every day. I can still pick up Anthony, but I'll be late, and I can't pick up Alex at either his school or at the local middle school. This is particularly troublesome on Mondays, because Patrick is at Natalie's piano lesson. We forgot about this until this past Sunday. We suddenly went over the game plan on Monday and asked, "What about Alex?" Luckily, my job can be a little flexible. I was able to leave work early, in time to pick up Alex from school. We waited around for Anthony to finish with his after school Model UN meeting, then came home. We had to pretty much turn around and leave again for Alex's soccer practice.

We found a temporary solution, but not in time to put it into effect yesterday. Alex has a friend, Marco, who rides the bus with him but does not live in our neighborhood. Marco's mom will pick up Alex on Mondays and take him to their house (a couple of miles from our house). We will return the favor on Thursdays. We don't like having to rely on a third party for our scheduling, but what else can we do?

All of that above is pretty confusing, so I'll change gears and share something else fun. There's been a cold front and the kids have started wearing jackets to school. The temperatures are only in the mid 60's but they insist that they are "cold". I had to take a picture, of course. They were trying to run away from me, hence the blurry picture. Eric was starting to wake up from all of that running around, which was a good thing.

Tonight, because I'm on call and have to be at work by 3pm, Patrick has to wait for the little ones to come home on the bus, then he has to go pick up the big boys at their respective schools, come home and feed everyone, then go back out for Eric's soccer practice. Natalie has to miss swim team practice.

Kindergarten Art

This was Eric's first homework assignment. On Howdy Night, he got a picture of a gingerbread man to color and turn in on the first day of school. Actually, this picture is another worksheet. The first one he got he barely colored at all. He got more colorful when he had to color another one at school. I like the way he got big and bold with writing his name.

They had a gingerbread man unit. During the first week of school, Eric said that they were going to make a gingerbread man in class. The next day, he said that they made one and he ran away out of the oven and they had to go looking for him. I was tickled when he emphatically told me (complete with hand gestures), "I kept finding footprints!" They apparently found the gingerbread man in the closet. Eric said matter-of-factly, "And then we ate him."

This week he showed me this gingerbread puppet and was making him talk. I couldn't get him to stop moving for the picture, but he was very excited about it. I can't even remember what his puppet was saying, but for once he wasn't talking about dinosaurs, his favorite subject to talk about.

His teacher is an experienced one, and seems to know how to really entertain the kids but have them learn at the same time. They must be learning about what letters are at the beginning of words, because he has been going around identifying that "dinosaur begins with d" and other such phrases.

Earlier this past week, he was asking how to spell "mama". With a little help from his big brothers, he was able to spell "mama" then he spelled "papa". Anthony, always the overachiever, then asked him to spell "disestablishmentarianism". I posted this on Facebook (for those of you not on Facebook). Poor Eric! Eric, surprisingly, seemed unfazed. He actually said "d" to start with and Anthony didn't make him say any more. On Facebook, Alejandro, Anthony's good friend and Eric's "other brother" replied that he would have asked Eric to spell "antidisestablishmentarianism". Later, he posted that he would have asked Eric to also spell "pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconeosis." What a goof.

Most of Eric's art has involved dinosaur teeth. Eric has made up a bunch of dinosaurs on his own. One such made-up dinosaur is called a "Bigasaurus". He said that this picture is of the teeth of a Bigasaurus and that a "huge ship is stuck" in the teeth. He also said that the ship is bigger than a "Megalodon". That boy is fascinated with dinosaurs. In fact, he is behind me on the other computer playing games on the "Dinosaur Train" website with his sister. His active imagination should serve him well--hopefully. In the meantime, I'm getting lots of artwork of dinosaur teeth.

Eric's First Soccer Game

Today was Eric's first soccer game--ever! He was pretty excited, as you can see, still able to smile even after his Mama kept asking him to stand in different places so she could get a good picture of him in his uniform. His Uncle John would be happy to see that Eric's uniform is mainly maroon in color, the color of Uncle John's alma mater. For some reason, when I was changing him into his uniform, he took off his other clothes and then asked if he could leave his underwear on. Yes, silly boy.

Before talking about the game, I'm going to talk about our morning. I took Anthony to school at 6:30 for his cross country meet this morning. I had been torn whether or not to go to Anthony's meet or to go to Eric's game. Anthony, the sweet boy that he is, told me that he had lots of cross country meets, there was only one "first game", so of course I went to Eric's game.

I brought home Benny's Tacos for Alex and Starbucks for Patrick. When I got home I took the little ones to Starbucks--Eric's choice. We came home from breakfast and got him dressed for soccer. His uniform was a bit big. In fact, all the uniforms were big for all the kids.

The game started at 9am. We had an inexperienced referee. Instead of 10 minute quarters, which is the standard at this age, the first quarter ended up being about 20 minutes. The kids who were playing that first quarter were exhausted and asking for water. There were also a few tears from different children during the game, from colliding with each other, or from getting hit with the ball.

Eric did okay during the game. He was totally not paying attention, so he didn't get to play in the first quarter. He did a lot of standing around staring off into space. He got distracted during the opening prayer and started picking up something off the grass. In this picture, he is playing with his huge shorts while he is playing on defense with another boy. He started crying at one point because he had bonked heads with one of his teammates. Natalie was there to help calm him down.

He did play like he was supposed to for part of the game. He ran after the ball and moved it down the field. There were two players on his team that were particularly aggressive, both were girls. One of them basically mowed him down at one point, in order to get to the ball. Patrick had to remind them that they were all on the same team. Eric himself shoved a few kids because they were shoving him.

Eric also got his first taste of the post-game snacks. Each kid got two tokens to spend at the concession stand on whatever they wanted. Eric chose a ring pop and a bag of Doritos. Natalie and Patrick shared some of their snow cones with him too. He dropped his ring pop on the ground, so he didn't really get any of that--not a big disappointment for me and he didn't seem that disappointed either. He really enjoyed that bag of Doritos.

Eric has a total of 12 games scheduled, most on Saturday and a few on Sunday. I hope he still enjoys playing throughout the season.

Starting Soccer

On top of starting kindergarten, Eric started soccer also. The other kids got a chance to try out every sport when they when they were in kindergarten, so we want Eric to have the same experience. Patrick signed him up at our local CYO and also signed himself up to be his coach. The first practice was the Tuesday before school started, but Patrick didn't get any photos then. He took these photos this past Tuesday, the Tuesday after school started.

I love this first photo because Anthony is trying to get his little brother's cleats on, but Eric seems to be insisting on "helping". Anthony helped out at the first soccer practice, but he wasn't there for the second one because he was resting his leg. Apparently, some of the kids asked where "the other coach" (meaning Anthony) was. That is so cute! Eric also noticed at the second practice that one of the girls on his team is also in his kindergarten class. Alex says maybe another one or two are also in Eric's class.

Eric was apparently thrilled with all of the pictures that his Papa was taking. He told Patrick that this was the last picture. That was my fault since I'm always with Natalie at her swim team practice and I haven't been able to see Eric playing soccer yet. Patrick was only trying to do what I asked.

Patrick is a great coach and wants the kids to basically play during practice to get used to moving the ball around and get comfortable with the ball. At least one of the parents seems to be a bit competitive, but hopefully all of the kids will still be able to enjoy themselves. That's what it's all about at this age.

Eric's first game will supposedly be this coming Saturday. We'll see how that will work with Anthony's cross country meet also this coming Saturday. I know Natalie is looking forward to seeing Eric play soccer, because she says "He's so small and cute!"