Traeton's Junior Piano Program

Traeton has been studying piano and everything about piano for two-and-a-half years. We go every week for an hour to the music school, Children's Music Academy. It is an amazing program. I am still, after two-and-a-half years, quite impressed with it and everything about it.

A few days before CHRISTmas Traeton and his classmates performed their first program. The students were able to show-off all their hard work through solos, playing as a group, performing songs they wrote themselves, playing games that demonstrated thier ear training, their recognition of notes through three octives and nearly all musical symbols. Yes, I am very, very proud of Traeton. It has been a lot of hard work for him, for myself (since I did not know how to play the piano before this) and for our relationship.

Here are a few pictures of Traeton at his program.



Thank you to all our supportive family who attended his program. We are also greatful to each one of you who have taken him to class from time to time and helped him practice. Each one of you is a piece in his puzzle of success.

One Of My Favorite Christmas Traditions!

This past Sunday afternoon BeBee (my mother-in-law, Jan) and Great Grandma Schilling (Jan's mother) came to our home for the afternoon to make Christmas cookies with the children.





They've been doing this for many years. It began when we lived away from home and they would travel to see us for the holidays. While BeBee was staying with us she'd make cookies with/for the children. Well, now that we are living back home we've kept up the tradition but without the expensive plane tickets.






This is, without a doubt, one of my most favorite holiday traditions. I know you're thinking this is true because of the plates and plates of cookies we have afterward, but you are only half right. The recipe they use is a family recipe passed down from Great Grandma Schilling. It is amazing and the time spent with their grandmothers is a treasure that will never perish. Thanks so much Grandma and BeBee!

Pretty Near Perfect Thanksgiving!

There isn't much I would have changed about this Thanksgiving. It was a blessing through and through. We hosted at our home with the Burmeisters, Readys and some dear friends, the Schrocks.

>There were four generation present. The youngest at the party was Elias at two years and a few months and the eldest was my mom's dad, Bud, who is 88 years old. There were actually three great grandparents in attendance. In addition to Grandpa Bud was my dad's dad, Harold Ready, and Todd's mom's mom, Marian Schilling. Whew!

At one point we tried to take family photos.

My favorite pics are when there is total mayhem happening with the subjects of the picture. Most of the time is the children trying to wiggle out of the picture and the parents trying to make silly noises and faces or promising crazy things to get them to stay, bribery, hmmm...

Except for the turkey that took about an hour longer to cook than I had originally calculated the day was blissful, a pretty near perfect Thanksgiving. Oh, yea, and except for the well-intentioned idea of having Traeton and Addison help with serving the meal to our guests. The hope was that they'd catch the vision of serving others, especially our guests, and how wonderful it feels to do so and how it makes our guests feel. When Addison and I barely made it around with the soup I figured this may be more challenging than I had thought through but as soon as Traeton grabbed the red jello and headed for the dining room I knew this was a totally stupid idea!!



Until next time...