Seventeen !

Sophia is SEVENTEEN. She’s in eleventh grade and doing very well in classes. She’s still taking private flute lessons and enjoying marching band followed by concert band. This year she really nailed her audition and made it into Wind Symphony. The concerts are pretty amazing.

She has some great friends as well! I haven’t seen them in awhile though, since marching band ended, so I hope they come around soon!

She’s doing really well in school, and enjoying most of her classes. I enjoy when she brings me pie or cookies from Foods class. This week she’s off with Wind Symphony to UNI for a clinic with some skilled musicians and she’s working on solo and ensemble pieces for State contest in April as well.

Sophia - horseback riding

Twelve !

I am a terrible blogger, here or anywhere. Oh well.

Lexi is twelve, nearly twelve and a half. She’s in sixth grade and smart with some good friends. She’s playing the trumpet and taking private lessons, is in SOAR band in addition to regular band and recently got into Coe College Honor Band. Let’s hope this year she can actually attend and not catch an illness the morning of. She’s recently also gotten braces and we can already see them straightening out the top teeth. She needs to have another bottom tooth removed, which is happening this week. I think we’ll see big moves with her teeth on the bottom once that one is out of the way.

She’s stopped playing softball for Prairie and instead we enjoy a more leisurely softball season with Brian coaching her at Cedar Hills. It’s been fun to watch all the girls improve without the pressure of high competition in club ball, it’s been a really nice change. She’s getting private pitching lessons as well which is really helping her hone her skills. Hopefully she can strike some players out this season, that would be awesome to see.

Eleven.

Sophia is eleven today. She is almost certainly in the tween phase, but she’s a great kid. She has good friends, she’s mostly kind to her sister and she loves school. She took cookies for her classmates today. We got her a new tablet (shhh she hasn’t opened the gifts yet) and a new webkinz and a cover for the tablet. Aunt Emily sent her a rubber bracelet maker thingy – look up Rainbow loom if you want to see. She’s going to love it all I hope. We’ll see more family on Saturday when they come over for came, I’m sure some will bring gifts.


Sophia


Sorry, I’m apparently really terrible at keeping this up to date now that both girls are in school and time actually flies by.

Spring Break

Really I am just getting worse and worse at keeping this up. I think I’m going to scrap the whole thing and start fresh maybe, with just a blog piece that I insert photos into vs a whole separate gallery. It’ll be awhile before I get to it though. We headed up to the Mall of America for Spring Break for a couple days. The girls had a great time, and we got to do a little bit of shopping. The girls really enjoy the Nickelodeon Universe area so they ride as much as possible on Monday. Sunday we head out in the morning, eat breakfast in the car, stop for lunch and check into our hotel. Then we head over to the mall to do a little shopping and check out the rides. Monday the girls ride as much as possible. Sophie mistakenly rode the swings around and around and then she had to stop for awhile. She won’t be riding those again, but she did right the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Shell Shock, which surprised us, and loved it. This year, Lexi could ride alone as well. I did ride on the Orange Streak with her so she could try it, but she’ll have to be bigger to ride that alone in future years.

 

 

Happy Holidays

Sorry about the delay. Hackers have really messed up this site. I have cleaned up this side of it, so you shouldn’t get malware warnings anymore, but the photo gallery is sort of out of commission. I’ll have to replace that and start fresh. Since Halloween Sophia has turned 10, Alexis is 5 and doing well in preschool. and we’re just about into Christmas and 2013. It’s been a very fast year. We went sledding yesterday after the first blizzard. Enjoy these pictures – I’ll post some videos as well as soon as their ready.

Away in a Manger from Melissa Anderson on Vimeo.

Jingle Bells and We wish you a Merry Christmas from Melissa Anderson on Vimeo.

Rudolph from Melissa Anderson on Vimeo.

Sledding from Melissa Anderson on Vimeo.

Family Pictures

We managed to get out to Palisades park again this fall. Most of the leaves had already fallen, but that wasn’t really my picture priority. I just wanted a family picture I could put out over last year’s and some individual pictures of the girls to show who they are at five and nearly ten. There are more in the album.  They turned out pretty well.

Baseball dreams

Lexi really really really wanted to practice baseball last night. We have a tee and balls and a bat, so Brian agreed. She talked about it all day. Sophie and I practiced some soccer while Lexi took up the bat. Turns out she’s pretty good. Maybe we found our softball player…





Sophie took a few swings as well…but prefers soccer.



Soccer season starts up, practice tonight and Sophie’s first game is Sept 8. I think next year we’ll get Lexi into t-ball.

Some videos ….



Cheerleading – 4th Grade

Sophie went to the Prairie Cheerleading clinic on Thursday to learn the cheers and hang out with her friends. She said she loved it except for the part where they had to cheer and do the moves. So…perhaps not a cheerleader in the future. Anyway, on Friday night we went to watch her cheer before the varsity game. So we pay for game entrance…and then leave before the game even starts. She had fun, in spite of her complaints and I’m glad she did it.