Violin Recital II

E had her 2nd violin recital yesterday (click here to see pictures from her first recital last year). She did really well. First she played Long Long Ago, and then she played Allegro as a duet with her teacher. You can see both songs for yourself here: (Sorry about the video getting cut off at the end. YouTube always has the sound off from the video for some reason, so the picture runs out before the sound.)

As a little finalé, four of the younger students played the Twinkle Twinkle themes together, and you can see that here:

The whole group together.

Long Long Ago

Colonial Williamsburg

The other day, we woke up and decided to pack up a cooler with food, and take a day trip over to Colonial Williamsburg. We didn’t buy any tickets to go into any of the houses, we just walked around the streets and went into a few shops, it was fun.

This was my first time there, but M’s mom’s house is a Colonial Williamsburg replica — built by his father, so Williamsburg has always been a special place for his family.

We are leaving in a few days for our “tour of the South” to visit M’s mom, then my parents, and then we will be going to a wedding on the coast,so there may not be a whole lot of blogging going on during the next three weeks.

I hope you all have a great time with friends and family celebrating the birth of Christ!

Red Hill

Last week, after church, we drove out to Red Hill. M has been reading Give Me Liberty by David Vaughn to the family for several weeks now, so the girls already know quite a bit about Patrick Henry. He is also a distant relative of M’s which makes us all appreciate him even more. Red Hill was one of Patrick Henry’s residences, and this is also where he finally died in 1799.

They were closing up when we got there, so we just walked out through the woods and saw a few old log structures and an old slave cemetary. The property is so beautiful… I can understand why he wanted to retire there. We had been there once before when we first moved to this area about 3 years ago (that’s when this picture was taken), but I want to go back again sometime soon so we can see Patrick Henry’s house and the rest of the property again.

(You can see more pictures from Red Hill on my Flickr pages)

What Have We Done?

E has been learning to play chess for a few months now. It started off with us having to remind her at every move what each piece could do. It was kind of a pain, but at the same time, you could just move your pieces across the board without having to worry much about getting captured.

It gradually began to be a little more of a challenge when playing against her, and then one day…. BAM! Out of no where she starts beating us! M and I have been more on our guard lately because we know what’s she’s capable of, so this does not happen regularly (yet). Just by watching her giggling and bouncing around in her chair, with an innocent look of naivete, you would never guess how quickly the tables can turn. She’s very good at getting behind your lines and fully achieving a complete massacre.

Watch out Grandma! She’s been practicing!