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Showing posts from April, 2014

End of the Year Recital

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We had our end of the year recital again.  We miss having Will perform there too, but we attended his band concert. I have a video of it, but Will is back there in the center with the trumpets and you can't see him -- when your kids are choosing instruments, think about where they'll be performing and how well you'll be able to see them! Think violins and basses and marching band instruments, for example. This is always a time when Sebi and I sit down and madly start polishing his piano piece, using the metronome and working on dynamics and phrasing. He's usually able to pull something out of a hat. This time, though, he was playing a piece that he absolutely loved, but was really too advanced for him: the theme from The Hobbit. The left and right hands were each tougher than he's used to, and there were some key changes with a lot of accidentals. This meant that there were a lot more tears involved than usual, and it was a bit of a white knuckler. After a fa

Joss joins the UVRays!

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Just like his older siblings, Joss wanted to be on the swim team. He has taken swimming lessons in the same pool during summer and winter and he has gone to splash around during practice, but it just wasn't the same. Over Christmas, Rob took all four kids down to the rec center and they swam laps in the competition pool. The UVRays head coach happened to be there swimming too, and she talked to Rob as they watched Joss paddle 25 yards down the lane through sheer doggedness. She was impressed that he wanted to do what the others did, and told Rob that is what swimming is all about -- having a sport or exercise that the whole family can do together. In April Rob brought Joss down to the pool and he swam for one of the coaches, who, winking, said he'd do just fine if he wore his fins. So he's started attending swim team three times a week for 45 minutes. He is completely worn out (and cold! they keep the competition pool cooler) by the end of practice. He was excited for ex

Online Course Kickoff Weekend

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 Rob reluctantly agreed to write another couple of online courses. When I say reluctantly, what I mean is that he can only write the content for them if he is given an equal and opposite amount of time to bellyache about how he hates language courses, he hasn't taught them in years, shouldn't be expected to, doesn't believe in online coursework, blah, blah, blah. I am the recipient of these hours spent offloading the pain only his enemies should know. At least I hope he isn't going on to anyone else!  I decided that in order to jump start the process, I would get us a hotel room in Salt Lake so there wouldn't be any kid interruptions and we could break down the online textbook into chapters for the class. I got a room at the Little America, even though I figured it would be run down. But it wasn't!  It was big and swanky and had that whole workroom where we laid out a laptop, an iPad and two iPhones and got to work.  When we needed breaks, we'd