Our house has been full of music, movies and math lately. I will try to get you caught up quickly with some highlights.
G played the keys in a funk band for about 10 weeks. This was our favorite band yet...maybe because Andy got to join the band, too. G learned a lot about improvisation and played four awesome solos at the final concert. Andy was psyched to be in a band playing his saxophone after so many years. He's still really good. One of my favorite things about this band was that Andy and G would jam at home in the evenings and on the weekend.
Jazz-man G tearing it up on the keyboard!
Father and son getting their funk on.
Gregory also had an opportunity to sing in the Maine State Ballet's production of The Nutcracker. This was truly magical. Not just the fact that he was wearing a tux, but the music was beautiful and brought tears to my eyes. His chorus also had their winter concert in December. Having been to all of the rehearsals (two hours every Monday night!), it was very cool to see everything pull together into a wonderful evening of music.
Harry has been working very hard on the saxophone and earned himself a spot as a first chair alto sax player in the district honor band. He is very excited about this and will audition to see if he can make the jazz band next week.
Harry's horn playing took an exciting turn this Christmas when Nana and Papa Don surprised him with a tenor saxophone. WOW!! Both Harry and his teacher are very excited about this. He has switched to playing exclusively the tenor sax for now because it will help him improve his technique on both instruments. It has a wonderful, rich tone and we love hearing Harry play it. Another benefit to this new horn is that Harry, Andy and G can all play together, which they have done on a few occasions (as I type, they are playing "Don't Get Around Much Anymore" in the basement). Very cool.
I can even join in the family band thanks to Gregory's Christmas gift of a new drum set! I am no drummer, but I can at least keep the beat and try to take some tips from G. Gregory has started playing the drums in his school band and seems to be enjoying it.
Movies and gaming have become a bigger deal at our house (literally) thanks to a new projector and screen that have taken the place of our upstairs TV. The TV was too monolithic for our small living room, and I can't see very well and wanted a bigger screen for my video game addiction. :O) The 100+ inch screen pulls down from over the piano and is virtually unnoticeable when it is put away:
The picture quality is amazing and Andy attached everything to a surround sound stereo that we are still fine-tuning. We have really been enjoying the Blu-Ray version of David Attenborough's new series, "Life." It is spectacular. The experience is heightened by our new popcorn maker and Harry's new milkshake maker, which he has become very skilled at using. We're all going to gain 10 pounds.
The math part of our news is that Gregory is finally old enough to be on the school math team and is LOVING it. He has the most amazing group of friends who all think that doing math after school is the best thing ever. He won the individual award at his first math meet and the team earned the first victory in the school's history! I love this cute picture of the excited team:
This isn't even all of the kids--the team is so big (14) that only a few of them can compete each time. This is a bummer because G would love to go to every meet.
Also (kind-of) under the "math" heading are Andy's new master computer programmer classes. The huge screen is awesome for this. Andy can demo from his computer on the big screen and the boys follow along with their laptops! They are currently working on a Blackjack program. G has already written a few programs for me that will calculate mean and standard deviation for my grading!
Christmas break at our house was very mellow. We hung around the house (making music and watching movies...), had some wonderful times with friends, and the kids did some building...
Harry built a line-following robot:
G built his traditional huge Lego set. This year it was a big ship:
And the Tower bridge of London (you can see the completed ship in the background)
We've had some fun times with family, most recently a great visit with the cousins in the snow.
That's about it for now...except for the monkey puppet. Finally I can upload a picture of the final product!
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