Jingle Bell Jukebox

Back in December, the 3rd graders at our school put on a holiday musical called Jingle Bell Jukebox. It was set in the 1950s and the kids all sang and danced to songs from that time period. Samuel's class did a dance to Yakety Yak, where some of the kids had to be the kids and some had to be the parents. He was one of the kids who was supposed to be cleaning up his room and making that dust fly with that broom. etc...:

His favorite part of the show, though, was his other song, where he got to dress up like the one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people eater. The class sang and danced to that song, and had some dialogue about how the Purple People Eater was not real. Samuel's role was to then appear at the end of the song, walk on stage and say "hey guys! wait for me", as the kids were running away saying "he is real!". Here is how he looked:

He was supposed to walk down the center aisle of the auditorium and give high-fives to people sitting in the aisle (he instructed us to sit on an aisle seat for this very purpose). When he came to our row, he actually stopped and gave Becca a hug, which was so sweet. Becca really enjoyed watching the show. In the past, she has always been fine during the singing numbers, but really restless and wiggly during the talking parts of any show we have seen. This time around, she was really into it, and at the end of each number she would clap enthusiastically for the kids. She was a treat to watch. She can't wait for it to be her turn for a show next year when she is in Kindergarten. 

side note: As of today, she REALLY cannot wait for it to be her turn to be in 3rd grade because today Samuel brought home a recorder from music class. She wants that recorder very badly. Not sure how we will all feel about the recorder after we have to listen to him practice on it for the rest of the year, but tonight she wanted it to be her turn very very much. Watch for an exciting blog post about Hot Cross Buns on a recorder coming soon :)

Catching Up

I have not posted anything on our blog in months, 5 to be exact. It's hard during the school year to find the time to post, plus since we moved to a new house in September, most of our free time on weekends has been spent unpacking and doing house-related projects. I am going to post a bunch of things today that have happened since last summer.

1. Lake Michigan: we drove up and met Meg, Timothy, Erin and their families there. My kids had never been to Lake Michigan before and had an absolute blast!

2. Swim Team: Samuel was on a swim team this summer for the first time. He spent 1/2 hour each day working on different strokes, and then had a few meets throughout the summer. His favorite stroke was the butterfly.

(I'm not quite sure why Becca decided she had to throw a toy directly into his path in the above video. Just doing her job as a younger sibling, I suppose).

3 Science Central: we visited our local science museum one day over the summer. There is a giant slide there that runs down 3 stories in the center of the building. Every time we have been there in the past, Samuel has been too short to go on the slide. This time he was excited he was tall enough! There is a video below of him going down the slide, and one of Becca having fun with the Echo Tube.

4. Both of the kids had birthdays in October. Samuel had a Star Wars party for his 9th birthday, and Becca had a baking party for her 5th birthday. Samuel's party was slightly insane with 9 little boys running around bopping each other with light sabers made from pool noodles. Becca's party was quite a bit calmer since she only got to have 5 guests (and zero light sabers).

5. Halloween: Continuing our Star Wars theme, Samuel was Darth Vader and Becca was Princess Leia:

That catches us up through October. I will work on another post in a bit with Christmas things, and Samuel's musical at school.