Acting Camp Day 5

Well, Ellie was cast as Eunice in a scene from Streetcar Named Desire. From what she has told us about it, it appears to be quasi-appropriate for 8-year olds.

Also, camp for Ellie starts at 8. As Calvin's school is on the way I like to drop him off first. Which means breakfast in the car. Today was breakfast burritos!

I'm not so sure they were as happy as I was.





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Acting Camp Day 4

Calvin did much better at school today. He doesn't have to sit at a one-table tomorrow and he didn't get any time outs. He even napped today. Hopefully he can keep it up!

Meanwhile at acting Camp, Ellie has fallen in love with her stagecraft class. Today they did makeup and made faux bruises on their body. In addition...she may have been bitten by the magic bug. She has a couple slight of hand and card tricks down.



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Acting Camp Day 3

Apparently they worked on sound effects in Ellie's stagecraft class. She knows how to make the sound of thunder, birds wings flapping, and rain. She also wrote a script.

Calvin...

He's been a troublemaker at school. He's had several time outs and had to work at a one-table (no friends). Today he didn't even get to use the pool at water play and only got to play at the water table. Apparently he's been hitting, kicking tables, and yelling during nap time.












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Acting Camp Day 2

As soon as I dropped the kids off I headed down to La Jolla for the ribbon cutting and unveiling of the restoration work at the Salk. It was a long day, especially we drove back after dinner. But it was awesome. Not only does the building look fantastic but everyone was so complimentary of the work. After years of work on the teak windows and a year of work to get the concrete repair approach developed it was great to see the team all dressed up and excited about the final product. Also, dinner with Jonas Salk's son, the director of the Getty Foundation, director of Getty Conservation Institute, head of Salk facilities, and other VIPs who genuinely wanted to hear me geek out about concrete was pretty special,












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Acting Camp Day 1

This week, and for a total of three weeks, she will be at acting camp. She was excited to go back and even more excited to see some familiar faces from last year.

Of course, after a long day at camp we took her to two hours of dance. She has a recital coming up so there was quite a bit of dance polishing. And it was 100 degrees today! She was exhausted when we got home and went straight to bed.













Over the weekend she had her first piano lesson with her new teacher. It went really really well. They immediately connected and the teacher challenged E right away with new scales.

And there was a birthday party for one of her best friends from school.



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Piano Camp Day 5

Final day which meant final concerts and goodbyes. Not only goodbyes to good friends, but today was the last time Ellie will likely see her first piano teacher, in the piano teacher setting.

The day started with her giving an oral report on Stravinsky and taking notes as her musicianship classmates reported Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, and Chopin. It was exciting as the kids learned about syphilis, insane asylums, lead poisoning, eye surgeries gone wrong, sisters and wives not getting credit, riots (thanks to Stravinsky) and other adult themes. So much drama with the composers.












It ended with a concert by all the piano students which was great. Then there were copious amounts of hugs and pictures.


















Ellie's teacher and the kids from her studio at Institute.





Another year of piano camp in the books.






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Happy 36th Birthday

The birthday selfie with the kiddos.


At piano camp one of Ellie's teachers, during her musicianship class did some ear training with a twist. Well, everyday he will play a unique melody for each child and they have to play it by ear. It's a hard exercise for Ellie and she gets really focused. Today, he played the first line of happy birthday. Ellie got it pretty quickly, but was concentrating so hard she didn't realize it was it was happy birthday until she had it worked out. It was hilarious. Once we got home she worked out the rest of the song and played it for me.

She also had her last master class today.





The birthday photo:



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Piano Camp Day 3

Well no faking off of tightropes today. But she did have another recital. This was informal and she performed a duet she has been working on with a studio-mate. They were awesome!









I also may be accused later of being an overly intense parent. Ellie and I stuck a deal for this summer: she has to do math everyday. This may mean multiplication flash cards, the math facts app, pages in her math workbook, or something else. So the clever kid brought her math workbook and has been doing pages during the master class when it's not her turn.



Also, its selfie day. Here is E and her friends.




Last but not least, Calvin had water play today!!



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Piano Camp Day 2

What a day. It was full of serious highs and serious lows. But it ended really well. I'm super proud of Ellie for trying numerous new things, pushing herself, not giving up or in even when she had a good excuse, and coming out of her shell.

First thing this morning, she fell off a tightrope (piano camp is at a small liberal arts college...of course there is a tightrope on their common grassy area). She had been doing well yesterday on the tightrope. I joked with her that because she had a recital today she couldn't break her wrist if she fell. So of course when she fell, she didn't catch herself and fell on her shoulder and face. She ended up with a couple of gashes and major bruising round her eye. She was in quite a bit of pain but she soldiered on through her morning classes.



Then she had the honors recital just after lunch. It was in a big concert hall and full of parents, teachers, students at camp...mostly strangers. During rehearsal it was fantastic. But then she learned she was second to last and started to stress. Her performance was not the best I have heard her play it and she was super bummed about it (like there were tears in her eyes). But she remained composed, got through the piece. And when she was done all her fantastic music friends came to tell her how well she had done. She immediately turned it around and played it beautifully in her piano performance class. Later on she got compliments from some of the string players and their parents.













She did yoga as a supplemental class which actually seemed to reinvigorate her. Tonight was "fun night" with a magician and face painter and jazz combo and cake. However, none of her good friends or people she actually knew were planning on going. But she insisted. She said it would be fun without her besties. That she wanted to see the magician. She said she would make friends. Well, we went to dinner and then I took her for ice cream (I had no faith she would make it to cake after the jazz combo if her good friends weren't there.

I was so wrong. She made new friends. She watched the magician sitting in the front. Got her face paint (Panda). Enjoyed the jazz combo. Got cake with her new friends. And next time I turned around (I made some new friends too....well I made small talk with new people) she was dancing in the grass with her new friends and smiling and laughing. She had s blast. Exactly what "fun night" is about.









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Piano Camp Day 1

Well, technically piano camp (aka Los Angeles Suzuki Institute) started yesterday. Today was the first full day. Ellie was happy to see good friends from her piano studio and familiar teachers from last year.

She is doing a great job in master class which is always tough. She's a rockstar in her group musicianship class as it's the same teacher as last year. Dalcroze is fun. And her music performance class is a great group of kids who are quick with compliments. Today was also the first of two honors recitals. All the piano players were Ms. Samantha students and so she was excited to watch her friends perform. And picnicing in the grass with friends is always a treat.
















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Sports Camp Day 10

Cal didn't have school so he had a fun-filled day. First, he came with me to drop E off at camp. He also was fascinated by the locker room. Then we did special breakfast. And then he came to the office, where he wasn't satisfied with video games and coloring books...he wanted to play with ALL my stuff (what could possibly go wrong with a three year old and some rebar?).






Then Nick him to his first movie in a theater, Cars 3. He said it was loud and scary when Lightening McQueen crashed but that it was fun.











Today was Ellie's last day of sports camp (maybe). But we got a video of what camp was like this week. Once you get over the dabbing and fidget spinners it's cute. Good window, even if it's 10 min long, of what her week was like.

https://youtu.be/yaGHWTU05gs


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