A Bad Equation

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Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick

The minutes till summer are slipping away - HOORAY!

With both concerts done and school winding down, our family has some more time together and a significantly lower stress level. Not leaving the recorder entirely behind, however, we discovered that Maddie has a good ear; she identified the beloved "Snuggle Puppy" and "Cows" songs from hearing Bob play them on recorder. If you're not familiar with this modern instrument (of torture), it's a plastic tube with open holes that's supposedly simple enough to learn in 3rd grade. We think they pick 3rd grade to send home recorders because the kids are roughly in between the terrible two's and the horrific teen years, and the parents need some kind of test of their patience to keep them on their toes. Maddie's picking it up a little early, though. :-) She can blow through it and lets us finger the notes occasionally, and loves it when we play her songs. Always a dancer. She's also singing along with songs now. The ABC song gets its phrases completed, and she can fill in words in a handful of other songs. Our favorite is the "Whoa-oh-oh-oh-Nose!" part of the song, "Your Nose". ;-) Neil Sedaka fan, we guess.

We hope to do more singing and dancing this summer. We're still counting the days (17 school days or 28 days, 5 hours, 20 minutes total) and making little lists of things we want to do and stuff we want to go see. Zoo, beach, park, backyard, repeat. Gonna be good. Well, happy getting close to summer everyone. Hanging in there till then.

Congrats to Laura!

Aunt Laura graduated from Stockton College on Saturday, May 10th. We're proud of her accomplishments, especially since her intelligence and hard work earned her the title of VALDICTORIAN!!!! Her speech was excellent...definitely beat the seantor guy out for best speaker. We were especially impressed with the VIP seats - ever sat in front of the graduates at a grad ceremony? Very cool.

Here's the pictures from the day. Again, CONGRATS LAURA! You're already a wonderful role model for our little girl to look up to. We love that you'll be showing our daughter that you can have it all cool, beautiful, intelligent, can mix a nice drink, AND do dead-on impressions of our crazed yellow lab.

Laura's Stockton Graduation

Life is good.

Hope everybody is doing well. We're all pretty good here. It's still busy, my concert is Tuesday and that means school is crazy, but the end is near. 20-some days of school left, all standardized testing is done as of yesterday, the weather is (mostly) warm and beautiful, and life is good.

No matter how what kind of days we have at school - and believe me, we've had some scary/sad/plain old agitating events this year - we can come home and hang out with our girl. This usually involves reading, reading, and and playtime outside. Or convincing her that no matter how many times she begs, we're can't go outside again. That kind of thing. Maddie's growing like crazy. She can climb up on the couch (as long as she can get a good grip), learns more words every day, and will try eating pretty much anything we put in front of her. Except mushrooms. She's really loving toys and stuffed animals, and Elmo apparently rocks the house. She names almost all the letters and numbers by sight, and is getting good at counting. She sings parts of songs and does lots of motions. We're having a blast.

We're hanging in till the end of the school year. Then we're all 3 home and loving life. (It's not why we became teachers, but BOY does the 10 month contract life have its perks.) Looking forward to playing, little trips here and there, the beach, the pool, and warm weather.