Christmas treats

 

We gave M this nice wool coat.  When I was 14ish my dad gave wool coats to the 3 daughters.  I still have mine and use it to look fancy.

M enjoyed making treats this season.

She made this sprinkle mix and decorated this cake with the whipped cream frosting.  The kids loved it.

Piano for Cousins

 M started teaching piano over messenger to her cousins.  It's been cool to see her work with them and to hear them play.  They are very good and haven't been in lessons during the pandemic (8 months and counting).  

M is very sweetly planning to get her siblings presents for Christmas.  

 At 13 she has big goals for things like an arials silk and climbing gear.  She loves her healthy body and is always out on the ninja line or trapeze working out tricks using her hammock as a silk.

Class President

 M is the president of her class at church and has been doing little things for the girls in the past few months.  She helped make CTR earrings and delivered them before school started.  She also bought some candy and made little bags that she has been delivering with a door visit to each girl. 

She participated in the yard sale and helped a lot.  She also had it strongly reinforced that we can save a lot of money if we look around for used things instead of buying on amazon.

adventure

 We had a lot of rain recently and the stream has overflowed into the oxbow and ravine in our back yard.  M had the idea of putting the kayak in which we did tonight after dinner.  She had the idea also of putting the kayak in at the place we usually dump leaves and branches.  There was a tree root there and nice solid tuft of turf that made it easy to get in and out.  It was exciting!  It was hard to navigate with the stream completely overflowing.  We crashed through low branches and had to carefully get through narrow flow through spots.  It was awesome. 

excellent

M is taking 7 classes!  She takes Jazz Band, Band and Science through the Jr. High via distance learning.  She is also taking Algebra, Language Arts and History through FLVS.  She resumed piano lessons and practices so well.  She was running some this summer and is also training with P for the bike ride to Gtowne. 

At 13 she is a fantastic and talented young women.   She's also a delightful and imaginative little girl.  She spends hours working with the ninja slack line she bought and doing crafty things at her desk.  I think she's an awesome person.

Run M! Bike M!

 M decided a few weeks ago to take up running.  She started with a 14 minute mile run around the block.  She had read a book describing the running progress of a teenager and so she had some ideas like rest days, and pacing.  She's worked her way down to a faster mile time and then she did 2 miles.

M is 13 this year and so she gets to ride to Gtowne with P.  They've started training rides and today they got to do a 10 mile ride.  M hasn't died yet.  She's never had to use the gears so much and hasn't learned to just use them to keep her pedaling the same speed.  But she's learning and building strength.

Lawn mower

M mowed the front lawn today.  She's like a machine!  Over the years P has gotten different mowers and the current one is better than the one G started on.  Still I was impressed that she mowed the whole front in one go.  Way to go M!

swiss cake roll

M made a swiss cake roll on Sunday.  She used half of a strawberry cake box mix with 3 eggs and half of the oil and no water.  The cake was baked in a 9x13 pan with parchment paper and wet towels wrapped around the pan, on a cookie sheet.  The cake cooked up beautifully, really flat because of the wet towels.

We rolled the cake up with a towel and let it cool for hours.  M made a batch of pudding frosting (2 c. cream whipped to soft peaks, 1/3 powdered sugar and 1 box of chocolate pudding mixed with a wisk).  This was too much frosting, we only put half into the cake roll. 

Overall it was a resounding success.  The children gobbled it up and there was minimal mess compared to a cake with icing on top.  M was patient with my over-involvement, telling her to hurry up and wait throughout the process.  It was my first time and I really wanted it to work out even though I wasn't going to eat it.  I think she could do the whole thing herself next time.

M is so good at wanting to try new things and persistent about asking her mom who doesn't really like doing new things as much.  Good Job M!

Super Mario

M needed a piece for the spring recital that was not from the Romantic era.  We agreed on Super Mario Brothers music and she learned this surprisingly hard piece of music.  The coordination of hands and rhythms were tricky.  The piece jumps around the keyboard a lot.  It has been really fun to hear her master this piece.

We couldn't find music that sounded like the actual video game.  Fortunately many fans have created websites with the Midi files and sheet music for individual levels.  We used Finale to piece together the various themes so it sounds like someone playing through the first 3 levels of the game.  She could still add themes for coin, mushroom, star and 1up themes, but what she's got is awesome.

blue hair and pizza

M has been doing a good job of keeping up on her class work and she is on kitchen duty this month.  She used to have to unload the dishes last year but I got so tired of her putting them away wet, that we changed things. 

Tonight after everyone had had several computer turns I told M that she had to make the pizza.  She had put on sauce and cheese before.  Tonight she rolled out the dough, cooked the sausage, cut up the pepperoni, sauced, cheesed and loaded them into the oven.  Yay!

We used koolaid to dye the ends of her hair blue.  It didn't really take well.  She had asked previously if she could dye her hair and I said that it was fine but that she had to cut it off before the next temple trip.  Temples are closed right now and just the last 3 inches took some dye.  I think she'll be OK by the time we get to go again.

recognition

I realized we did not do anything to recognize M's big accomplishment and so I made this candy gram for her.  Her face when she realized there was a fun size candy bar under each paper was pretty cute.  Also we're going to go to Taco Queen sometime.  That was part of our original plan of motivation.

M is in the middle of planning the girls camp fundraiser.  Her efforts have been amazing and she has shown a lot of great leadership skills through the process.  She wants to lead the effort again next year with less help from me.  Have at it M.  Lead on.

Personal Progress

M was in the batch of young ladies that advanced into Young Women when the church changed the policy at the end of 2018.  So she went to the temple when she was 11.5  She went to girls camp with many 11 year olds but was 12 by that time.  She also was very diligent and finished the personal progress program in 10 months.  I thought there was going to be recognition at church but that hasn't happened.  Home centered, church supported. 

So we'll figure something out.  Her projects included temple work, teaching piano, making bread, and many good things.  She's capable of more than she imagines and it's wonderful to be her mom.  We had Personal Progress dates and we would pow-wow over our lists and work on goals at the same time.  That is how it came to pass that I also finished the personal progress program in 2019, though it took me longer to finish the Book of Mormon.  We did it!

Student Day

M participated in Student Day today.  Her teacher is part of the professional teaching association.  M prepared 3 pieces in addition to scales, chord progressions and "Wedding Day at Troldhaugen" that she played in the January Recital.  We arrived by 8:30 so we could be not stressed when we were lost for 15 minutes.  We found the building, wandered around, found a bathroom, then we found the room for aural testing. 

During Aural Testing the proctor played chords, melodies, scales, intervals and musical techniques.  The students had a multiple choice paper they had to identify what was being played.  The test lasted 30 minutes.  M has never done any high stakes testing so this was sort of her first experience like that.

I was reviewing what to expect for the Audition/Playing Test and realized she was not prepared for the Harmonization and Transposition portion of the exam.  There was 3 excerpts with chord symbols.  She had to add the harmony for the key of A.  And then she transposed it to C.  It was a tense 20 minutes as she worked through that, but then she had it memorized by the time she had to play it. 

She arrived for the playing test 5 minutes early and then waited 10 minutes until she was called in.  A young boy was waiting when we arrived and almost jumped ahead of her when the judge came out.  They had been waiting a long time.  The playing test was scales, chord progressions, Sight Reading, Transposition, Harmonization and her 3 pieces, "Gavotte", "Ivan Sings" and "Puck".  She felt like the scales were the hardest parts since they would call out a scale and she had to play it cold.  M is used to playing the circle of fifths rather than individual scales.

There was a good chunk of time between the playing test and the recital so M went down and did the written theory exam.  It took her half an hour and she seemed unstressed by it.  I used up all the lives on two dots waiting for her.  Sorry M!

She ate her lunch then we used the restroom again and went into the recital room.  She played "Ivan Sings" and there were about 12 students in the recital.  It was fantastically 30 minutes.  Each part of the Student Day was 30 minutes and we had a lot of time in between to transition from event to event.  I'm really impressed by the people who plan and schedule the time slots.  The recital had students from level 1 to 8?  A wide range of students so it was entertaining.

12 and playing with bubbles

 M likes very tactile experiences.  She set up a slip and slide a few weeks ago for the kids.  Last week she had them collecting pollen strands and making buckets of brew.  Then there were bubbles involved, lots of bubbles.  I'm glad she still likes to play in nature and have fun being a kid.  I can't believe she's 12, and I can't believe she's only 12.  Good times.

Last weekend she played "Wedding Day at Troldhaugen" in her piano teacher's recital.  A-maz-ing.  I didn't actually attend the recital as I was at Scouting University with G.  But I have heard her play it for months and it just kept getting better and better.  We switched her to a new teacher because she was so much more advanced than any of the students in her previous studio and we wanted her to be challenged.  She's still in a different league but the new studio does have other teenage students working on pieces above the first few years of piano.

This Saturday M will attend Student Day in Jaxtown.  4 hours of theory, ear training, and a recital where she will play 3 pieces that don't even include Wedding Day.  She'll do fine.

Sometimes M gets stressed out and tries to claim that she's not able.  I have to stay calm and remind her that she is capable and she will survive.  She is able, kind, funny, coordinated and beautiful like a ninja.  That's tough.  I know.

 G mowed the back yard this year and it has been fun to be free to roam about the back yard.  M created this habitat for the 3 peas in a pod.

pierced ears

M got her ears pierced last week.  She had asked to get them pierced when she was 12, or that's the earliest we preferred.  When she turned 12 she wanted to wait until the winter so she wouldn't miss out on a single beach or pool event. 

We went to the piercing pagoda and got stars in our ears.  I got them pierced again a little higher than my old holes that didn't hold the earrings up very well.

M was brave and cool throughout the process.  She chose to get the spray for cleaning that makes it possible to switch earrings after 3 weeks.  She's been very good at remembering and reminding me to spray my ears and twist the earrings.