Finally, an AWESOME Merit Badge

Nolan is in the process of completing merit badge numbers 43-47. One of these is finally "worth while." I am finally personally benefiting from a merit badge. Nolan is working on the Cooking merit badge and he is required to cook several meals! Today for lunch he made me a quesadilla, peeled me an orange (which I hate doing because I don't like the "white stuff" under my nails), and got me some water. For dinner, Nolan made black bean soup from scratch and apple-blackberry crisp. I love having a kitchen slave! Too bad he'll have the badge done later this week; it'll be awesome while it lasts!

Winter Band Concerts

This year we got to attend 2 concerts on the same night! Nolan's concert was first. His band played "Christmas Sing-a-long." He's on the riser, 5th from the left (or 4th from the right).

Jonathan's band concert was right after Nolan's. His band combined with the school orchestra and played "Sleigh Ride". Jonathan was also in a saxophone "choir" that played numbers as the bands were transitioning. Last year took a piano piece that I played and arranged it for a saxophone quartet. Jonathan's arrangement of "Cool Mule" had it's worldwide premier last night!

Verbs!

A new speech milestone for Miles has been reached! He is starting (as of today) to use verbs! We have been working on verbs for more than 3 months. It completely surprised me when I heard him use verbs in 3 sentences today. All 3 had to do with Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (his current YouTube obsession). The first sentence was, "I want 12 beans." He's never said "want" before. The second sentence was, "I watch Tootles." The the third sentence was "Goofy running." While to most people those 3 sentences are complete gibberish, since I am the co-Mickey Mouse Clubhouse watcher, they make perfect sense to me.

Worse Than a Bunch of Girls

All my adult life I've heard about girl drama and that I should be thankful that I have boys so I don't have to deal with "all the drama". Well, either Jonathan is friends with a bunch of girls or boys are no different. Okay, it's not all of Jonathan's friends, but there is one little girl-boy who I just want to slap upside the head. Here's the most recent scenario... Mr. DramaKing is a co-clarinetist in the THS band. He's first chair and Jonathan gets to sit next to him. Mr. DramaKing is very insecure and has to be "best" or his life sucks. THS put on a musical a couple of weeks ago and Mr. DramaKing was in the pit. Jonathan was not. Mr. Morris exempted all those in the musical from the required sectionals this term. Section leaders are in charge of sectionals. Jonathan asked Mr. Morris who was supposed to run sectionals for those who were not in the pit. He was told "You are." Well, that's not sitting well with DramaKing. Jonathan is aware of DramaKing's insecurity and has tried to involve DramaKing by running the sectional schedule by him, inviting him to come and run the sectionals, and to see what DramaKing wants worked on at sectionals. DramaKing sent Jonathan a nasty Facebook message last night telling Jonathan to stop doing DramaKing's job. He's the boss and wants that to be known. "I appreciate the sentiment, and I'm glad you want to help, but I need to do this. Instead of doing all this stuff without me and interrupting me when I make comments, please try to hold back and let me do it. If I need you to do things for me, I'll let you know." Well, isn't that nice? I've had it with DramaKing. Oh, and not only is he DramaKing, but he's MeanBoy too. As I've been reflecting on this latest issue, I remembered that he got another kid "blacklisted" last year because the other kid took on the role of section leader of the Tenor Sax section in the marching band and DramaKing couldn't be in charge. DramaKing gathered his posse and and talked smack about the other kid and now the other kid is disliked by many, many bandies. Thus far, other than working through this incident with Jonathan, I am not getting involved, but if this keeps up, Mr. DramaKing had best watch out or else he may encounter MamaBear (and DramaKing had better stop trying to suck up to me and coming to me for life advise because I have no more positive vibes to give him).

District Honor Band

The Alpine School District started something new... an honor band! The band directors nominated students from their bands to be in the group. They met for 2 days after school and on Saturday morning before putting on a concert Saturday afternoon. Jonathan was selected to play in the honor band. He had a great time! According to his facebook status, "That was such an amazing concert. Thanks to Kirt Saville, John Miller, Christopher Cheney, the rest of the clarinet section and all 89 musicians involved for making it the best three days of my life!". Jonathan loved playing in a large band where all the musicians were "good." The honor band rehearsed for about 12 hours, then 7 of the songs they practiced were chosen for the concert. Here's one of the pieces they played--- "Americans We" by Henry Fillmore

And here's "Gallop" by Alfred Reed

Costco List

Miles deserved a special treat today so I took him to Costco. No, I didn't buy him anything for a "treat", going to Costco was the treat. We admired the milk in the walk-in refrigerators, then watched the rotisserie chickens spin 'round and 'round, then we walked through the refrigerated produce, and wrapped up the "Tour de Costco by Miles" with a gaze at the apples. Miles was thrilled and I was thrilled that for once, I stuck to the Costco shopping list and got out the store only $19.11 poorer!

A Visit to the After Hours Clinic

Last night, one minute Miles was watching something on the computer with Dan, then the next minute, he was crying/screaming and yelling "stuck". He was jamming his finger up his nose as well. I looked over and Dan looked perplexed as he was looking at Miles. Miles kept crying and shoving his finger up his nose. I asked Dan if there was something up Miles' nose. He said "maybe". I got a flashlight and peered up his nose, and way up high in the left nostril, I could barely see something gold reflecting the light from the flashlight. Miles had been playing with a small, gold bead (he says it was a "bouncy ball"). Evidently, part of his playing involved shoving the bead up his nose. I called Aly and asked her if she knew of any tricks to extract the bead from the nostril. She said to plug the "vacant" nostril then blow puffs of air into Miles' mouth and hopefully the air would force the bead out. I tried it. It did dislodge the bead a little- enough so that it was easier to see with the flashlight, but the bead was still stuck. I called the on-call doctor's office. When I told the receptionist what the problem was, she laughed and told me to bring Miles right in. Dan took Miles; Nolan went along to keep Miles' from jamming his finger in his nose and pushing the bead up higher in the nasal canal. At the doctor's office, Miles had to be restrained, then the doctor dug and fished around with a pair of tweezers and extracted the bead and sent the bead home with Dan (gee, thanks). That was last night's adventure. Today Miles has repeatedly told me, "all done bouncy ball nose". I hope he takes his own advice!