Playing piano and other news

Finally! I'm updating again! No excuse, really, why it's taken me so long, just busy, I guess. Here is some video of the kids playing piano. I don't know what they were doing, but they really weren't concentrating all that well. They can play better than this, but this is what I taped. If I haven't said it before, they're taking piano with the Suzuki method. Which means, they listen to the music, then learn it by rote (without reading music). The advantage to this is supposed to be developing a good "ear." My mom is doing kind of a hybrid of Suzuki and traditional method (i.e. teaching them to read music). So far, it's working well.

Things really haven't changed much with 3 5-year-olds in the house, instead of 3 4-year-olds. They've been really absorbing any information you give them. They're spending HOURS a day playing the stupid video game we gave them for Christmas. Luckily, they're educational games. It seems their favorite one is a earth adventurers one where they travel around the globe and learn about the continents, etc. There are occasional fights over it, but they're pretty good about sharing. Their new favorite book is an encyclopedia. That's right, an encyclopedia! Santa brought Will a kids' encyclopedia for Christmas. (He likes to look at the pictures of Grandpa Dale's fact books, so I thought he might like to do that with a kids' fact book.) Turns out, they are eating up all the information about anything and everything. Brian reads them 2 to 3 entries every night. Grace's favorite new thing is to point out all the animals she knows that are vertibrates or invertibrates. Ask her sometime, she knows them all. We've also been spending lots of time reading, doing workbooks and projects. I think we have 3 kids who are ready for kindergarten!!!

We've started planning spring activities, and believe me, they cannot wait for spring! We drove by a park yesterday, and Will asked (wistfully!) "Mommy, when will it be spring? I really want to go to the park!" I agree, Will, I agree! We have done some sledding and playing in the abundant snow, but it's just been so cold that we haven't spent a ton of time outside. I hate going to indoor play places, because we always seem to bring home an illness (although, knock on wood, we haven't been sick since New Years!)

They're all signed up for micro soccer starting in April. This is where they are on a team of 4 kids (all the same age). They practice for 25 minutes, and play a 25 minute game. After some deliberation, we decided to put them on all DIFFERENT teams. This may be a scheduling nightmare, we'll see when the schedule comes. But, it just seemed better for them to all fend for themselves and learn how to be independent. And it didn't seem really fair to the one other kid who had to play on their team and be the odd one out.

The other day, Grace announced she wanted to be a ballet dancer. Xander announced he wanted to play football, and Will said he wanted to be a golfball player (we've corrected him 800 times "it's golfer, Will"). This led us to decide to enroll Grace in a dance class at the Y (starting in 2 weeks) and then search for activities the boys can do by themselves. For now, they're taking another round of swimming lessons at the Y (lucky for me, they're at the same time as Grace's dance class for 6 weeks.) Hopefully they will pass this round and they can all be in the same class in the summer. We've been thinking about having my dad give Will some golf lessons, but this doesn't really give him a chance to do something with other kids. We've also considered enrolling Xander in an art class later this spring, but haven't decided. They're still a little young for any Tae Kwon Do or karate at the Y and everything else is just so expensive. So, we're still looking, but hopefully we'll find something for them soon. Grace is really excited about her dance class, by the way. I bought her a little leotard and ballet slippers and she is in love! We'll see if she actually does what the teacher tells her too. Apparently, there's a little recital in April. We'll see.

This post has gotten really long, I apologize. I guess I had lots to share (sorry Chad!) I'd like to post some video of them at 5, answering some questions. Don't know when I'll get to that, though. I have 4 concerts in 5 days next week at school. I'll try to get updated after the busy week is over. Stay warm, everyone!