Divertemente Trio ~ Gabriel's Trio Actually Sounds Pretty Great!

This is the first time that I saw Gabriel and his group play, I had heard for weeks about all of the challenges of boy musicians working together and I was afraid that I would want to crawl under the chair when I heard them. But this is great! Diane had some great comments which aren't in the video, she is PACS's new director conductor, and is seen sitting in front in this master class.

Spelling Bee with Village Home 2010

Its been years since we participated in a Spelling Bee. So we jumped at the chance. We started studying the words with exactly a week until the Spelling Bee. Each kid had many challenging words, and we worked a little each day...and we worked late the night before...so I let the kids sleep in the morning of the Bee.

Gabriel had a more difficult time with the words, his mind is more mathematical, the spelling words are not intuitive for him. Isaaiah has a pretty easy time knowing words without studying them...but calculating area of a triangle is not intuitive for her. Well anyway...Isaaiah knew all of these words cold, she is a fast speller...and not a little cocky about it....so I cautioned her to slow down and think and spell slowly. Gabriel views each word as a new Mt. Everest for him to conquer carefully. So it was an amazing twist when Isaaiah spelled laundry wrong...and Gabriel made it to the top four. She was upset, but it was a perfect humbling experience which will benefit her in the future...she will be more cautious and won't underestimate test questions, spelling bees....etc.

Gabriel learned a great lesson too...that he has a great mind for competing in areas that are not a natural talent for him. He is able to pave new sidewalks into areas of learning and compete as well as the "naturals" do. He almost made it to the Regional Spelling Bee..he missed "ineffable"...which he had trouble with memorizing the "in" or the "en" previously. He was excited with his placing and it broadened his perspective about what he can accomplish.

The audio is bad and Gabriel spelled quietly...so I put some music to the clip...

Regional Chess for Success Tournament!

Sorry I haven't posted in a while,

Chess Club is great fun again this year! Here is the video for the tournament...:) If you read, please comment so that I know that it is worth it to take the time to upload and maintain this blog:) The kids love to hear your comments also and feel more connected to their supportive grownups when they read your comments:)

A Lazy Sunday at Home

This video is embedded from Facebook....you might have to be a FB friend to see it...(which is great, just ask me)....so that is an experiment. I love lazy no school days...the kids learn so much. Gabriel spent hours at the sewing machine...Isaaiah practiced a piece on the piano that she learned yesterday.

Isaaiah also designed a barbie skirt and sewed it today..and I relearned how to put a snap into clothing. I haven't done that since the kids were babies and I sewed their clothing. Well the Barbie skirt turned out very stylish. Now Isaaiah is learning Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer...on the piano......

Dreaming Good Things

Ever since watching Jalon play football, Isaaiah has been wanting to play football. I have taught her about the secret power of visualization and she has always been good at making things happen.
She also loves the Voetburg family, making friends with lots of good hearted people and enjoying music. So it wasn't until I was home again in Portland that I realized that Isaaiah and Gabriel created 2 days of magnificent football with the Voetburg family in the beautiful fall weather underneath the magnificent oak trees.

Gabriel seems to be visualizing amazing things as well. His musicality has improved so much over the last year that many people can hardly believe that this is the same kid. Gabriel is putting alot of excellence and heart into his music..and seems to be willing to make it all his own. He has been practicing completely on his own for more than a year now and is really maturing in his discipline and willingness to take responsibility for his music and his studies....and it is showing.
His fiddle scores were so high at this Red Bluff contest that even though he had a 20 point deduction for time...he still won the Jr. Jr. division at this competitive and well attended contest. There were 27 9-12 year olds who were very respectable musicians in this division this year.
I hope that the astounding musicality of the music he and Isaaiah played is apparent in the videos that I will eventually post...

here is a video and photo montage that I made tonight...This includes pictures of friends, Teacher Eileen and Jeff...award pictures...and pictures from stopping to look at Castle Crags and Mount Shasta on the way home...





Here are some videos....my camcorder is getting older and sometimes it doesn't record...it seems that I missed Isaaiah's first round...oops...This is Gabriel's first round...after all of the excitement of the falling microphone etc...the round restarted and this is where that video starts..but you can see Jeff Walters break a string on the guitar on the last tune and back away. Gabriel played solid as a rock...

Here he is playing Shuckin the Bush, Crying Waltz (you really have to commit to those high harmonics..it takes skill to land them sweetly and in tune), Runaway Fiddle



Here is a short compilation of the green room practice just before going on stage...and the slow start by the accompaniests, and the slow attack of the microphone...kind of funny..





Here is a short clip of Isaaiah in the Green room before her Round 2. This is Isaaiah first time in the Jr. Jr. division ages 9-12. She has been 9 for 6 and 7 days.....so she is barely old enough for this division. Pretty cute and she did a great job.






Here is Isaaiah's second round! YEAH Zayah!
Here she is playing Shuckin the Bush, Blue Valley Waltz (boy this is hard waltz people), Runaway Fiddle




Isaaiah's first round was great too...She played Soppin the Gravy, Velvet's Waltz and Crafton's Blues

Here is another Green Room video of Gabriel's second round. The Green room is the bathroom next to the stage (great acoustics)...The second round of the Jr. Jr.s was later in the day Friday...one day after a 9 hour drive...and then the kids were on stage earlier that day in Round 1...they spent most of the day playing football and catching frogs. Then about an hour before round 2 (We were excited that we even made the second round)....Gabriel forgets how to play Fidudulin..

This is where Mommy is the stage and kid manager and realizes that this has nothing to do with music and everything to do with chocolate chip mint ice cream cones and half a cup of chai tea. So we put the violins away and got ice cream QUICK!...a half an hour later....it was time to go on stage..and Gabriel remembered Fiddudulin again...

In the green room Gabriel is assuring himself he remembers this tune and the Guitarists are working out where and when they are going to play and stop...all very last minute..




And here is Round 2 for Gabriel...the magnificent Gabriel Man.



A little later after this round...Eileen (one of the 5 judges) told me that Gabriel played great but that she thought that he went over time....she just heard a snippet of talk. So I decided to tell GAbriel so he would have enough time to digest it before the awards. (Which I thought that I filmed)....arrrg.....He was alright with the news, he knew that he played his best was happy with whatever was going to happen. Isaaiah was very happy with third, and by then Gabriel knew that the time deduction didn't knock him below Isaaiah....He was very straight faced as Eliot got second...and the MC asked him why he didn't have a medal yet,....and he said...."I must have won first." ...and he did win first. I was so happy for him....and so was Isaaiah....Eileen and Jeff were so happy for him too...

The next days was mostly free, just round one Twin in the morning...again we didn't expect to make the second round of twin...so I let them play football and frogs all day. The Voetburg Mom after watching me trying to nap in the grass, invited to take the kids under her care for a few hours while I got to go to the hotel and take a nap...I went back to the hotel and was hard asleep for two hours....it was great. The kids loved pretending that they were part of giant functional family.







Spaghetti Rag and Princess of Wales has been good to the kids...they won Oregon State Twin Fiddle (all ages ) with it, played it on the Weiser Stage, and the tunes were still solid for this contest as well.




So it seems that I also didn't film Isaaiah's Jukebox performance ( more therapy for her when she is older I suppose)....She dressed up as an old time servant girl and sang and played the fiddle breaks to MockingBird...it was cute...You can find a video of Isaaiah and Summer singing this together at the Cider Squeeze on the first Cider Squeeze post.... Isaaiah got a nice second place medal for this trophy and some of the adorable older crowd fell into great consternation and controversy about how she should have had first....Isaaiah didn't care...this way she got a medal of each color.

Hey Waddya know....I found the missing videos.....
Technology is great....mysterious....but wonderful....So my camcorder when I load the pictures onto my computer...will put large chunks of video...more or less in chronologically order...I notice that if I load the videos into my extra sketchy, crash phillic, software that came with the camera...that the software will "find" videos for me...it puts them in actual complete chronological order (then after 3 or 4 seconds...the computer goes black and unresponsive). So this time the computer resurrected itself bravely after this insult and I was able to see the missing videos. ..............I just had to share all that...........thanks for listening.

So here is Isaaiah's first round!



and here she is singing and playing in the Jukebox division:





and here are the Jr. Jr. awards.....I was to excited to hold the camera still and in focus to get a close up of Gabriel's face when he won...but it is still priceless to see him win first place.

The Grandparents visit and the kids LOVED it!

Here is a movie maker video I made with the pictures and video from the Grandparent Birthday Party for Isaaiah yesterday. My adorable nephews also came. Zion and Gabriel enjoyed playing MonsterPocalypse for most of the time. Zion sure is a fine young man. Zeke played with Isaaiah and had a lot of fun scaring Grandpa John with the ribbon on Isaaiah's present. Higgens rode around in a puppy sling for part of the party to ensure that he had a successful party experience...and then later in the party Higgens fell in love with Grandpa John... Later when Grandpa John sat in a different chair, Higgens was unsure whether he was friendly or not again. Gabriel and Isaaiah were so excited to show Grandma Janet their Italian lessons and they learned a new word from her in their dictionary. Later the kids showed Grandpa John and Grandma Shelly their laptop studying and even signed up to play Chess with Grandpa. Thankyou everyone for fun time!

That's Cuz Your Awesome!

It was our first girl sleepover at our house, there was pizza and a movie. We watched Annie! In the morning the girls had croissants and yogurt with granola and sparkling cider. They played dolls and we did a fabric painting craft. The girls painted pillowcases...and I painted their jeans (and mine with white flowers)...so we all matched. Thankyou Summer and Isaaiah for being awesome!