A few nights ago Ashton rocked his sax in his first ACB concert. The concert was short and sweet since they haven't learned too many songs. The clarinets were a little off in some of the songs, but I'm sure everyone will be great in a couple months.
I was a video recording master at the performance (Brad had to work) with the video camera as well as my phone going at once so I could instantly text Brad each song that was played. It was like he was watching it live. So, these are videos from my phone which means they are not zoomed in. If you look close, and make the video full screen, you can see Ashton's big head third up from the back row on the right side.
As we get closer to the gates of purgatory the start of Ashtons eleventh year of life, I've been noticing a definite shift in our house. According to my mother in law, I have about 3 months to live. She describles ten as the last tolerable year for boys unti I assume adulthood, she has never actually given me and end date for that. I have been noticing a change in Ashton's personality lately. We have seen a SLIGHT shrink in irrational teenage girl meltdown, and a huge increase in sarcasm. I love some good sarcasm, but 7 hours of it a day is a little much, so I came up with house rule # 23:
For every day you are awesomely sarcastic
you will spend 10 minutes in the evening meditating, isnt that fantastic!
He found out he loves meditating, which to him means imagining himself as a wizard taco fighting whatever wizard tacos fight, and I enjoyed my quiet time.
Lately, Syphr has been the king of pouting. He pouts for many reasons, some are justified pouting circumstances like when he can't have his way, and other times he pouts for silly reasons. Here are a few pouting episodes over the last week that I find irresistable. He is just so good at it!
Pouting becuase we forgot to put on his rain boots so he couldn't jump in the puddles:
Pouting because they don't allow Lightening McQueen matchbox cars on the pinewood derby track:
Pouting because I came to pick him up from his best friend Reagan's house:
Pouting because he found a random water bottle and asked me if it was his. I told him no and tried to give him his cup, but he only heard no:
I'd like to say pouting doesn't work, but look at how cute he is! How could you not give in occasionally to this professional pouting master.
In the card that Talan made at school for us was a really sweet poem. What he kept a well guarded secret until a few days after Christmas was that he had been working hard to memorize the poem at school. The sweetness of it plus his 5 year old speech impediment makes for a melting heart.
I am so glad the world kept spinning a few days ago because, and even though I say this every year, this has been my favorite Christmas. Ashton rarely gets excited about anything we do (year 11 is upon us. According to my mother in law I have about 5 months left before all hell breaks loose and my pre-pre teen is amplified into a fire breathing pre-teen. I've been trying to enjoy year 10 as much as I can so I can remember the rare moments of joy when they start to disappear.), Talan is so overly into Santa that he nearly came unglued with excitement when Santa sent him a special video message, or that Syphr said that every present was his favorite thing and just about beamed with excitement until he crashed. Mostly this Christmas is great because Brad is here to celebrate with us. I know someday there will be another Christmas that he has to be away, so we try to always enjoy him as much as we can.
This year Santa's family gift was several Wii and Playstation 3 games. Santa can never go wrong when video games and boys are paired up.
I think Talan makes the absolute best excited faces.
Even though Santa brought video games, if you are a 10 year old two extras might be the icing on the cake.
Talan might have nearly died of excitement when he pulled a sprite out of his stocking.
"What! I HAVE ALWAYS WANTED THIS! I KNEW I WOULD GET THIS! WAHOOO!" Once again, best excited face ever!
Two of Syphr's most favorite things are backpacks and Mario. That makes this his most favorite present:
These are apparently not stacking blocks, but Syphr has been making towers with them all morning. All three boys are pretty sure they have the best aunt ever, and also, that toys from Thailand are the best.
After much excitement, we found Syphr curled up in an empty box with his two Mario guys pretending to sleep.
The two big boys rigged a Mario kart track (can you guess we like Mario in this house?) with the train tracks. Pretty awesome actually.
Merry Christmas!
Love, B.R.A.T.S.
In case that wasn't enough of us, Talan insisted on singing for 8 minutes. His teacher told him he had a beautiful singing voice. It has gone to his head. Enjoy.
Every day Syphr is obsessed with one of the three following things:
Lightening McQueen
Mario
Ninja Turtles
I just never know before I go to bed if I should find the ninja turtle dvd, locate his red car that he thinks is Lightening McQueen, or have his mario costume ready for the day. It is always a mystery and heaven help me if I am not prepared.
Today, we watched 5 episodes of TMNT on Hulu to feed the addiction, dug the Michelangelo mask out of the abyss that is Talan and Syphr's room, devised a holster for Donatello's bo staff so he would stop sticking the pool noodle in his underwear, fought a million bad guys that looked a lot like Ashton and Talan minding their own business, and Syphr made me call him Raph for most of the day. Today we were the ultimate Ninja Turtles.
I'm not sure if it is possible for Ashton to contain any more academic awesomeness.
A few weeks ago Ashton was re-routed to the gifted math class. He was insanely bored, and could multiply decimals in his sleep so his teacher kicked him out to give him a new challenge. In a matter of three days he went from doing fifth grade math to sixth grade honors math. All I can say is I am so glad Brad is home to help with math homework, and I do not have enough patience to be a teacher.
Other than Ashton's huge excitement over being introduced to graph paper, and extreme fractions and decimals, he is also thrilled about his new seat in All City Band. All City Band is basically like honors band. It is comprised of kids fifth through eighth grade who audition, and if accepted, meet once a week for a 90 minute practice, and several concerts throughout the year. It is kind of a big deal, and he is so excited he was sitting at the door 2 hours before his first practice started.
I hope the academic/musical awesomeness always continues!
Mrs. Cox is encouraging all the kids to try to spell words themselves by sounding them out. Talan loves to do this more at school then he does at home, but I figured he wouldn't complain if he was having to sound out words for his Christmas list. I was wrong. He complained, took several days, and even more breaks, and might have added more to his list if he didn't have to write it.
In the end, I think he pretty much did a great job.
Talans Christmas List
remote control car
hex bug
remote control helicopter
poke-bol and guy
toy story claw
vet medicine bag
stuffed spiderman
After writing 'hex bug' Talan stared at his paper for a bit and got a discouraged look on his face and said,
"Santa is just not even going to read this because my letters are so good he will think it is from an adult."
I assured him this was not the case and I would even send Santa an email to let him know that the author of this Christmas list is 5, not 25.
Right before school started I found out Talan was not in the class with the teacher I requested I was livid. I felt like I had a really good reason for requesting this certain teacher. I wasn't just requesting her because she and Talan both have blue eyes. I wanted her because I knew she had experience with allergies in the past.
Three months later, I am so glad I didn't pitch a fit with the principal about it. I am so in love with Talan's teacher. She, not only, can handle Talan's allergy, and take it seriously even when the principal doesn't, but you can just tell she loves what she does. If you have been doing the same thing every day for 33 years and still love it and go the extra mile, you know you're in the right profession.
Mrs. Cox not only planned a fantastic Thanksgiving program, which included running up to the middle school to bring her own teenage son back to play keyboard so the kids could have some music to their songs, but also planned and I'm sure purchased with her own money refreshments for after the program. She even had the class make their own butter to serve. She is seriously amazing, and the only teacher to do this.
Sometimes I can't believe this guy is in Kindergarten which is already almost half over:
