My Piano Man...I Mean Men

Karl has taken piano for the past three years now. This week he has been putting in extra practice time because he had a piano guild performance. Mike and I are not real sure what a guild is exactly but we were proud of Karl for working so hard preparing for it - he was ready. He looked sharp too - ever since Karl was little he enjoyed dressing well; Karl likes neck ties and nice shoes and when he is wearing all of those things he walks a little taller...it is awesome to watch.

What else is awesome to watch is my other piano man pounding on the piano. When I say pound, I do mean pound. Sam LOVES the piano. When Karl or Abby are practicing, he will crawl up to the piano, stand up, and stretch with all his might to reach the keys. Both kids get a kick out of this and often pick him up, sit him on the bench, and let him pound away. He plays, laughs, plays some more, laughs again, and just goes and goes. When you take him down off the bench he lets out a blood-curling-don't-even-think-about-taking-me-away-from-my-favorite-thing scream that just makes you take notice and is so intense it kind of makes you laugh at its extremety.

Regardless of the noise the piano causes - music, laughter, or screams - I am thrilled we have one and love to watch the kids use it any and every way they can. Mike wants to leave it here when we move (whenever that is) and well, that's just not going to happen...unless he wants to buy us a new one ;)


Results are in - Karl got a perfect score on his guild!! Wow! Way to go Karl!

Summer Plans

Mike finalized reservations for our summer vacation. I am so excited. We are taking the kids and traveling to South Dakota with Mike's parents. We do not get to see Mike's parents/family as much as we would like and so we wanted the kids to have a lot of great memories with them and figured it would be a lot of fun to take a trip with them. We are driving to South Dakota with my parents' RV thing and camping at a campground for a week while we travel on day trips to Mt Rushmore, Bear Country, Reptile Gardens, Dead wood, and the like. Our campground has parks and water parks and all sorts of fun things.
Anyhow - we have been talking about this for months and the finality of making reservations kicked our excitement into high gear. Cannot wait!
While we are there we are going to be able to go to a free Lone Star concert. When I told the kids, Karl and Abby both started singing "Already There" which is "Daddy's' song" from when he was gone for 14 months overseas. I was really tickled they remember that and can't wait to experience all these great things with my awesome husband, wonderful kids, and crazy (in a good way) in-laws! It will be a blast.