new friend

We learned that a family new to the homeschool group lives in our neighborhood.  They moved here almost a year ago and were just waiting to either start school or not, but we didn't know about them until they joined the homeschool co-op.  They have a daughter 8 months younger than M.  M's 10 and allowed to go around the block by herself.  So hypothetically she could go visit this friend all the time.  She's never had that kind of access to a friend.  I hope they can be friends but I also hope they can each stay true to their families ideals.  Having a neighborhood friend can be awesome but it can also be tempting to be best friends when you're actually just friends in proximity. 

I hope M will be a good friend.

Having fun

 This is M and mom at cousin T's house.  M had a great time and didn't freeze to death on the trip.

 In fact she returned to Florida to use dad's impact screw driver to help build the shed.  Good girl.

This picture is from a few weeks ago in G-town.  The park we are in love with installed massive canopies.  They are attached to these comically large pillars.  Actually the pillars are probably/hopefully designed to withstand hurricane force winds with those canopies catching wind like sails.  M found that she could shimmy up these pillars as easily as she climbs a normal 3 inch pole.  Just another day of M having fun.

M has taken a new tack in on practicing the piano.  She was told by a veteran teacher that she needed to practice longer.  We brought this up with her teacher who assigned her specific minutes for each part of her lesson.  This was further motivating to M when I told her that I'd grant her double that amount of time on the computer.  She has drastically increased her practice time.  And with that extra time she's diving deeper into her pieces than ever.  Dynamics and articulation are happening.  Mom yelling "Do it again slower and with a metronome" has gone extinct!  It's really great to see.

Tonight as the girls and I were listening to recordings of their piano pieces we came across some great examples for M's piece "Rage over a lost Penny".  We has been impressed by a young girl playing it.  Then we found a cool tutorial that showed the music and view of the keyboard very slowly so you could watch the fingering.  Then we found a video of a professional pianist playing.  Wow.  I'm so grateful to live in a time where the kids can watch musicians so easily.