First Day of Spring.

I am never great about getting family pictures on major holidays - Christmas, Thanksgiving, birthdays... I'm lucky if I think to nag everyone to get together, and then hiss through my teeth at the kids to smile. But one thing I am good at is getting a picture of the kids on March 20th, the first day of spring. I've made them sit in the green chair every year, with various spring-like headbands. It is just about the cutest thing, even though I can't believe how big they are.

Things that are going on around here: Ellie is doing an after school science class called Bionerds that she absolutely loves. They've dissected a snail, they've learned about centipedes and done tests to look for bacteria. It's so fun to see how much she loves it, and how much she's learning.

Both kids are also really deep into Minecraft right now. It's a weekend only activity with their dad, and Tim was able to set it up so they're all on a private server on his computer. Adam uses an old laptop and Ellie uses mine (which I am not hot on, but I also use Minecraft time as a way to go hide in my room with a coffee and some cats so I guess I'll let her touch my stuff) and they'll all play together until they go nuts. They're OBSESSED. Ellie has been making lists about the things they're going to build and collect, and given their druthers on YouTube they watch other kids play Minecraft. Tim likes it because he's hoping this will be a lead in to them learning how to play video games that he actually wants to play. It's also nice because since it's on his server, he's in full control of it. Five minute warnings, 30 second countdowns and then he just shuts off his computer and it's done. Adam has tried on weekdays to get me to boot up Tim's computer so they can play - even asked me "do you even KNOW how to turn on Daddy's computer?" Look kid, I'm not an idiot. I not only know how to turn it on, but I'm not dumb enough to show you that I can and let you go buck wild.

AND on weekends in order to get access they need to eat breakfast, get dressed, brush their teeth and practice the piano before they're allowed to boot up.

Piano continues to go right along - they're both learning a lot, though I remain on the struggle bus and confused, despite ten years of playing the flute. I told Tim, after twenty years, I can't even read music anymore and he was aghast, but it is what it is. I'm more focused on book reading! It's amazing to see what the kid are learning - Adam is still in the beginning theory sort of classes, which is teaching him musical concepts without it being a full on piano lesson like Ellie has moved on to. The other day we were in the car and a song came on and they started calling out what chord the music was (red chord, blue chord, minor chord) and I was just amazed. Miss Bri said even if they weren't 100% right on the actual chord, the fact that they could hear that they were different chords, and then pick out the minor one is really an important step. Here we come family band. I'll be in the back with a drum stick up my nose like the littlest kid in the Partridge Family.