week ending march 1, 2009:

Week ending March 1, 2009: This week was Alex’s last violin class. The shop we went through sells lessons one month at a time and Alex was so interested in his violin that I thought we’d give it a shot for a month. The teacher was great and Alex learned something new in each class, but was never interested in practicing and it got gradually harder and harder to get him to play the violin outside of class. He was warned that if he didn’t practice I wasn’t paying for any more lessons, and then he still sobbed at the end of his last lesson. I told him that if he practices 8 times in a month, I’ll sign him up for more lessons and he hasn’t taken the violin out once. Oh well.
Now it is Chloe’s turn to pick the next class and she is thinking about swimming lessons at the indoor pool. 3 of the 5 girls going to the Outer Banks with us this year know how to swim, so I’m encouraging Chloe in this direction. Although I’m a little hesitant because I paid for swim lessons last year and neither of the twins would put their face in the water and the teacher said he really couldn’t teach them anything more unless they were willing to put their faces in the water, and I wouldn’t let him push them to do it before they were ready, so this year I’m thinking I’ll take them to the pool a few times before and make sure they are ready before we pay for lessons.
Alex had the opportunity to buy a toy recently with money that his MomMom gave to him. These days Legos are mostly sold in sets which have a picture on the front of the toy that one can build with the Legos included in the box and a set of step-by-step pictorial instructions. Alex chose a small Star Wars flying vehicle and started building it by his self. Each step in the instructions shows the 3-6 pieces of Legos that one must find by sorting through the whole contents of the box, and then shows a picture of how the product looks with the 3-6 pieces attached. The box said the toy was for kids aged 6-12 and Alex put it together with almost no help while I made dinner. I was pretty impressed.Snow storm March 2, 2009: In the morning as we watched it snow, Casey was teasing the kids telling them that although he didn’t go to work, they still had to go school. Chloe paused with a thoughtful frown and then said, “We can’t possibly go to school.” She’s so precocious. We all had a blast in the snow as you’ll see in our pictures at: http://picasaweb.google.com/constance.phelps/Mar2009sled#

and by viewing our video above by clicking on the triangle below the picture.