Weekend Top Five 1/11/10

Yeah, I'm bringing it back. I realized last week while I was reading through my old blog posts, both here and at the old site, that I like reading the weekend top fives to remember the things we had done as a family. Unfortunately, the Weekend Top Five does not come with pictures this week, since my camera got injured sometime this weekend and I am now without a picture maker. A blogger without a camera...not a good thing. I'm so sad. We also started out church search this weekend, but I will be writing a separate post about that later this week.

Moving right along. It was an okay weekend. Much needed after a very long first week back to school last week and lots of new extra curricular activities to boot. Here is what we were up to this weekend.

5. Scouts
Noah started cub scouts last week. Apparently, cub scouts is going to require a full family participation, and quite a large pocket book as well. In order to get started, he needed a $25 shirt, handbook, and several patches. I spent much of the weekend trying to learn how to sew patches on the shirt in a straight-ish pattern. Friday night was also a parent meeting for upcoming events. We have three weeks to build Noah a car for the pinewood derby, give up another Friday night in a few weeks to literally build a ceremonial bridge, and two Saturday field trips, in addition to the regular Tuesday scout meetings. Wow!

4. Movie Night- Stuart Little
When we got home, I rewarded the boys for a great week at school with movie night. We watched Stuart Little. It was really a cute movie, but Steve and I were both dismayed that they had to have the wild cats use several words of profanity. Why do they do that? These movies would be just as entertaining without using swear words that we have to worry about the kids picking up on. Luckily, the only one the kids noticed was "stupid" which is by far NOT the one that caused worry to us.

3. Concerto Competition
Saturday morning a piano student of mine auditioned for the symphony piano concerto competition. It was quite an ordeal since she had to learn and memorize a 14 minute piece and I had to learn to play an orchestral reduction on another piano with her. She had some struggles and it was very nerve wrecking with the Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestra conductor standing right there while we were playing. She made some mistakes and most likely will not win, but it was a good experience for her (as well as myself). I am just glad it's over. The music was more difficult than anything I played in college and I generally do not like to perform.

2. Chuck E Cheese
After Aaron's birthday party in October, we still had a pile of tokens left over. Steve had a concert with his singing ensemble Saturday night so the boys and I headed out for a couple of hours to Chuck E Cheese. It's kind of interesting. When we go as a family, it usually costs us upwards of $30 to go so we don't go very often. When I took the boys alone, we got away with one small cheese pizza and a drink for me (bringing juice boxes for the kids) and we ended up only spending $12 for our entire visit, using the money I received as payment for the piano competition above.


1. Skating
Steve's dad was singing in a barbershop quartet at a local nursing home Sunday afternoon and Steve was required to go. I knew that it wouldn't go well to take all of us, so Steve took Aaron, the more artsy of our two children, and the one more likely to sit and listen. I decided that Noah and I had to go do something, so I took him to open skate at the local roller skating rink. We had only been there twice for birthday parties and it was definitely different going just on our own. It was VERY crowded, but Noah is little skating machine and was thrilled. At one point, they cleared the floor for "races". I called Noah off the floor but he insisted that he wanted to race. So he went and lined up for the 7 and under race. He came in 6th out of 7 but was so proud for his race that he talked about it for the rest of the day. He also tried some "tricks" by jumping up and landing and attempting one foot skating. Too cute.

The Week Ahead:
I'm having lunch with someone from our old church today. I have my first chorus rehearsal tonight that I am a little nervous for. It's going to be another busy week for the kids as well, but we'll just take it a day at a time and get through each challenge as it arises. That's the Wheelz way.

Have a good week.