Another Semester, Another Family Music Night

I have mentioned before, I am sure, that we have been taking our daughter to a music class regularly for a while now. It's done by semester, and we just wrapped up our fifth semester of the class. For each semester you get a CD of songs that will be sung throughout the term, each CD focusing on a different instrument. This semester the focus was bongos. It's a ton of fun, and Baby Girl seems to love it. The class we attend is actually also taught by a dear friend, so that makes it even better. At the end of each fall and spring semester, there is a Family Music Night, which is an extended session that all of the teachers and students in the program attend. They get a live band to perform the songs from the semester as well as a few other fun tunes, and everyone basically parties down. Family Music Night for this semester was this past Wednesday, so I have a new crop of photos and videos of Baby Girl being super cute and getting her groove on.

Here she is dancing it up with her shaker eggs:

She loves to see the band. So much so that she tried to sneak up on to the stage with them:

Here she is dancing with her daddy:

Here are some more moments of awesomeness for you:

Eggs?

I'll be honest, I have no idea, but so cute!

Oh, hello there.

She really dug the ceiling fixtures.

Dancing with Daddy.

Um, I may have closed the egg in the car door,
purely on accident, mind you.

Whee!

Shake shake shake!

I love maracas!

I must organize them all...

...just right!

Time to climb on Mommy!

Stealing Daddy's hat now.

What?

Family shot!

Playing with her new frog guiro, spoils of the evening.

This frog is awesome!

It was raining like nuts, which is why we are all a bit bedraggled, but it was still oodles of fun. They had an instrument "petting zoo" set up too, where you could peruse various types of bongos and chimes and other such percussion instruments. We checked it out afterwards (since we arrived a little late due to said rain) and ended up getting Baby Girl a really cool wooden guiro carved in the shape of a frog. This is awesome because she loves frogs and because we bought it at TCU.

If you are wondering about the poor mutilated shaker egg, I had it in an outside pocket of my purse and when I was getting Baby Girl out of the car, it fell out unbeknownst to me and landed just inside the door frame. So when I went to shut the door...oops. The dent doesn't really seem to be hindering its performance at all, so there's that.

Anyhoo, that's another semester of fun music and memories wrapped up. We start back up in January. I think this semester the instrument of choice is bells. I'll be curious to see what the musical selections are. I do love the CDs we get with the class--you get two copies of each album so you can play one in the home and keep one in the car, which is kind of neat. They always include a great mixture of old folk songs from lots of different cultures, as well as the "Hello" and "Goodbye" songs that we sing at the beginning of each class.

If you've got little ones and are looking for a fun developmental course to do with them, I highly recommend this one. Our class is mixed ages from zero to four years, and the program we use (Music Together), which is phenomenal, has programs designed for up to seven years old. We take ours at TCU, as I mentioned, through their Music Preparatory Division.

All in All I'd Say It's a Good Start

Well, despite my daughter deciding to kick off 2011 by waking up several times in the night on New Year's Eve/Morning screaming her head off and all but inconsolable (she is in the process of cutting three very large teeth), so far this year has gotten off to a pretty good start, I'd say.

Saturday was just plain awesome.  I hung out with my husband and daughter all day long, which is actually a much rarer event than you might expect, given Hubby's normally busy schedule.  We finished off watching the first season of Stargate Atlantis together (we've been working on that for a while now), I finally started in on watching my season four Bones DVDs (I got them for my birthday back in August), and, there was something else...what was it?  Oh, yeah.  My alma matter, TCU, WON THE FRAKKING ROSE BOWL!!!!!!!  Dude.  I am not a football person.  I seriously only watch two football games a year (and as someone who lives in Texas, I promise you, that takes some dedication), but even I can tell you that was a GREAT game.  So yeah, heck of a way to ring in the new year.

Yesterday was a pretty nice day as well.  I realized that I definitely need/prefer to go to the earlier of the two available services at our church (they started offering a later service in November), despite the fact that it means I have to get up early.  Going to the later service has just had me dragging.  So.  Did that, and then had another day of hanging out with my family.  Hubby mostly napped on the couch while I played with Baby Girl and watched some more Bones.  I also watched the first episode of the new season of Primeval on my DVR and enjoyed it quite a bit.  I am so so glad that show has come back.  Good times. 

Lest you think all I did was laze about and watch television (though I did do quite a bit of that), I also got in some good "puttering."  I finally, finally, pulled out all of my yarn and went through and cataloged my stash, then put it all on my Ravelry account.  I also pulled out all of the kits I have yarn for (crochet and knitting) as well as making a list of the other patterns I have that I want to make in the coming year and put those in my Ravelry queue.  I will definitely work my way through the patterns/kits I have the yarn for first, and then start moving on to the others.  While I was going through my stash I also at long last took the time to go through a stack of vintage patterns my mother-in-law had given me earlier in the year.  Most of them are for crocheting with thread, which I might want to try at some point, but while looking through them I also found the pattern for the blanket she has at her house that I have been admiring for years.  Yay!  As it is a rose motif, I told my husband that if the Frogs won the Rose Bowl (we were watching the game at the time) I was going to make the blanket this year and make the roses purple.  So.  Yes.  That will be happening.  Sweet!  Right now I am just dithering over the decision of whether or not to start my first attempted knitting project or my crocheted sweater first.  I think I may go with the knitting because it is a pair of slippers and darned if I don't just really need a good pair of slippers right now.  So I will hopefully get started on that this week.  I am sure you will hear much about it.

I haven't said much about Kingdom Hearts II yet, but that is mostly because I was still slogging through the beginning of the game, which was incredibly slow (I kid you not--I was five hours of playing time into the game before I got to the title sequence).  I am (mostly) enjoying it so far, I think the story is an intriguing one.  I was chagrined to find that even though the designers seem to have lessened the amount of time you have to spend in the Gummi Ship (yay!), they managed to make the time you do spend in it about three times as obnoxious as it was in the first game.  Sigh.  Also, I ran into this new addition yesterday called the "morale gauge" that was giving me some problems and is a huge pain in the rear-end.  But other than that, I am having fun with it overall.  I feel the strong urge to brag about the fact that I have thus far not once cracked open a walkthrough either.  I have a few bookmarked, just in case, but I am gonna see how far I can get before I break my resolve.

I made the first steps on the path toward achieving a few of my goals for the year as well.  For the "read more books" goal, I have made the executive decision (then told it with my husband and am now sharing it with you so that I have people to hold me to it) that since I am getting up early on Sunday mornings again, I will just rule Saturday nights a non-game-playing night.  I can read a chapter or two of my book instead of wittering away hours on my game.  It's a baby step, sure, but a step all the same.

I made some slightly bigger strides toward my writing goal yesterday though.  I've started giving some serious thought to the story I will be researching/starting this year.  I spent a large part of the evening bouncing ideas off of my husband last night to see how crazy any of it sounded.  I have definitely decided that this one will be straight up science fiction, not fantasy, which is a break from my normal MO.  This also means, flat out, NO MAGIC.  This is gonna be a challenge for me, but I think I can do it.  Sadly it also means no dragons, but I will find a way to make sure they are represented in the story, never you fear.  *cough*spaceships*cough*

So I would say I am pretty pleased with how my first weekend of 2011 went.  I hope each of you are as satisfied with the new year thus far, and if not, I sincerely hope that things start to look up for you soon! 

Oh!  And before I forget, I did manage to finish my cowl on Thursday.  I am pretty pleased with how it turned out, even though it was not as I expected.  I think if I made it again, I would half the width of the circle and double the length of the tube.  But still, it is super warm and cozy and I love how the colors came out.

Cori's Cowl by Cori 2010.

This is how the pattern photo suggests it be worn.

Though I like wearing it as a hood to keep my ears warm too!

Pattern:  Vintage Cascade Cowl by Lion Brand
Yarn:  Red Heart Super Saver in various shades (I used remnants from other projects).
Hook:  J