Rayna has been taking piano lessons since early last summer. Early in the school year, she switched from taking them at the local music store (with their forever rotating list of teachers--she had had three different teachers in her short time with them) to taking them (for half the price) with a wonderful lady named Marilyn Davis outside of town (about a 15 minute drive).

Rayna dearly WANTED piano lessons for several years before we actually got her started. Once she was able to take piano lessons, she just took to it like a duck to water. She loved it! The first three months, she practiced every day without ever any nudging or reminding at all. (While she took lessons from the music store, the teachers had their own little incentive program...if she had her "passport" filled out with number of minutes practiced daily--didn't matter if it was five minutes or twenty-five!--she would get a little piece of candy. She generally practiced about twenty minutes every day, without any reminders at all. After she moved her lessons to Mrs. Davis, that particular incentive program was not there anymore and I noticed that I had to start reminding her to practice, but, still she was happy enough to do it. Her actual playing ability really took off dramatically once she began studying under Mrs. Davis. Mrs. Davis provided much more consistent, clearly focused, in depth instruction for her. Mrs. Davis is excellent at including foundational music theory in with each lesson. Having sat in on some of her lessons, I am surprised at how much progress Rayna has accomplished under Mrs. Davis, because her teaching style is just so sweet, gentle, encouraging, and understated...never a hint of criticism, even corrective criticism. It surprises me that Rayna has ZOOMED ahead with so much encouragement and so little admonition/challenge, but she sure has!

There is something called "The Gold Cup" that piano students can work towards. Once a year they are given the chance to go to SBU and play in front of a judge (no audience allowed). They are scored. The maximum number of points they can earn each year is 5. When they have accumulated 15 points, they are awarded a Gold Cup. (The points are accumulated over three or more years.) Today, Rayna played for the Gold Cup. She was suppose to play two songs from memory (Grasshopper and Quiet River) and then play two hymns using her music (Amazing Grace and Holy Bible). We were not allowed to be in the room with her. Her judge made an error and made her play all four songs from memory! Rayna handled it matter of factly, though! I asked Rayna why she didn't TELL the judge she was suppose to be able to use her music book for the hymns and she shrugged her shoulders and chirply replied, "I always do what older people tell me to do!" (To which her older sister immediately objected, "I'm OLDER than you and you don't do what I tell you to do!!!") We had been instructed to have the non-hymn music book INSIDE the hymn music book to mark the page of the hymn book being played first (after the two non-hymns were played). I suspect that Rayna handed both the two judge's books (one inside the other) AND her own copy of the hymn book to the judge and the judge probably never realized she had TWO copies of the hymn book and just assumed that Rayna had PLANNED on playing the hymns from memory even though it is not required that the hymns be played from memory. Whatever the case, Rayna just went with the flow!

We don't know yet what her score is. We won't find out until later. Rayna was pleased with her performance, though, and says the judge told her she did very well! She will be having an actual recital in May (not sure of the date!).

(The photo of Rayna was taken just before she hopped into the van with her daddy to go to SBU to play for the judge for the Gold Cup. She is wearing the little dress she bought with some of her birthday money and she planned days in advance for me to curl her hair specifically for this occasion!)

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On the Darcy front...soccer practice began this Monday. We had to race around Monday evening and take her to the local walk-in clinic for a sports physical. She and most of the other Freshman hadn't remembered/realized they needed one and were not allowed to participate in any practices until they had one in hand! She sat on the side-lines Monday evening and then needed a physical that same evening in order not to be cut from the team (cuts were anticipated to be final by the end of Wednesday's practice). The final cuts wound up not being made until the end of today's practice. Darcy made the team for Bolivar High School! (The Primary, Intermediate, and Middle schools do not have soccer programs, so, in the past she has had to play with a Springfield league. This is the first opportunity she has had to play on a school team.) Monday evening, when it looked like we might not be able to get her an appointment for a physical any earlier than Friday, she had accepted that she was not going to be able to play soccer this year and had instead decided she would settle for track, instead. (Both seasons run concurrently and interfere with each other.)
She was handling the very real disappointment with maturity and grace. Looking on the bright side, she told me that part of training in track involves an event called the Cheeseburger Relays...where instead of passing a baton, each runner in turn is passed a cheeseburger which she must gobble down before proceeding onward with the relay race! It seems that historically, this event involves lots of involuntary vomiting. Of course OUR daughter thought this one event alone might be worth joining the track team for! Instead, Monday night found her sipping coffee in the waiting room of our town's recently opened walk-in-clinic where we were able to get her a spur of the moment sport's physical for just $15! I was really impressed by how thoroughly the doctor examined her joints and picked up on the weakness in her left ankle (I hadn't realized she had turned her ankle) and took a good amount of time showing her exercises she should do to strengthen the ankle to reduce the chance of re-injury. He even provided her with two different strengths of exercise bands to use to exercise the ankle.

(The picture of Darcy is her most recent facebook profile picture. I took her and her friend Cora to the mall in Springfield last Saturday where they shopped for her ROTC Ball gown while Rayna and I went off on our own to find some clothes for Rayna to buy with her birthday money. Of course Rayna bought a Build-a-Bear bear, too, with her birthday money! (No clothes, just the bear.) Darcy snapped this photo of herself and Cora on the trip home. She had taken her camera with her so that they could take photos of the dresses they tried on. And, no, I cannot post a picture of the dress she bought because it is top secret! No one (but Cora and Darcy's immediate family) have seen it. She will be going to the ball with Kegan tomorrow night. I will post pictures then!)

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On the Doug front...last week he had a near perfect week at school! He has a behavior report sent home each evening and his teachers rank him on various categories with everything from a smiley face to a "so-so" face to a frowny face and then they write comments at the bottom and specify how much TV time he has earned for the day (anywhere from 0-45 minutes...60 minutes on the rare occasion that he has done so well with self-control all day long that he has earned bonus time). Nearly every day last week, he got an entire 60 minutes of TV time for his evening at home from school, so I got stuck with listening to a LOT of "Suite Life" etc on the Disney channel! Yesterday the school had a "Amazing Race Math Night"...a much hyped event involving free supper (pizza, salad, carrots with dip, cookie, and pop) and lots of activities for the kids involving math. I thought the events would be way too hard for Doug (they were centered around multiplication and he still hasn't gotten the hang of addition or subtraction or counting past about 199), so, I was dreading the TWO hours of this event. Of course Doug was DYING to go. Meanwhile, I KNEW what it would be like keeping up with Doug as he ran around the school, HYPED with all the stimulation and crowds of noisy, rambunctious children, so I really was looking for any "out" I could find. In the end, though, parental guilt got the better of me and I promised him yesterday morning, that if he had a PERFECT day at school (like he had been on a roll, recently having) that I would take him to ONE HOUR of the Math night. (I figured one hour would be about all I could handle and it would be enough for him to have felt he had the chance to participate and socialize). He didn't have a perfect day...one of his five or so categories was a "so-so" face...and there was a minor problem notated at the bottom of the page, but, still (surprisingly) they had awarded him 60 minutes of TV time (not sure how that worked out!). We still went to the "Amazing Race Math Night"...Doug, Rayna, and I. (Grant stayed behind to pick Darcy up from soccer practice and then run her to K-Life--the Thursday night church event she goes to after she and I watch "Survivor"...yes, we are hooked on it again this season after never tuning it in once last season, BECAUSE COACH (our hometown nemesis) is back this season!)

The "Great Amazing Race" was every bit as overstimulating as I knew it would be. We arrived 20 minutes early and went on in 10 minutes early. They were already serving food. Doug saw a friend as we were walking in and yelled, "Sit by me!", so, the girl and her great-grandfather (who is raising her) sat with us. That wound up being such a blessing, because that girl just took Doug under her wing and went to each and every event with him. Even though the events were WAY too hard for Doug, with her there giving him the answers he happily participated fully! We spent about an hour doing events down the "recreation" hall, like multiplication bingo and musical multiplication chairs...the kids all winning plenty of pieces of candy. I was ready to take Doug home and the girl's exhausted great-grandfather was dead set on going home. Meanwhile, the girl was heartbroken that she wasn't going to get to do the Amazing Race...she had been talking about it all through the meal that began the evening, telling me that she didn't know when it was suppose to start, but that they would announce it over the intercom. We had never heard an announcement. The Amazing Race, it turned out, WAS in progress on the other end of the school. The girl PLEADED with her grandfather to let her run it. Of course I let Doug and Rayna go with her. It was a team event and the girl would have had to have gone by herself if I hadn't let Doug and Rayna stay later than promised to go with her. She had been so sweet to stick with Doug all evening that I didn't have the heart to pull Doug and Rayna away from her now that SHE was doing something that was encouraged to be a team effort. The three of them happily signed up as a team and off they went...getting clues which they had to figure out together to know where the secret location of each new challenge was. The race was designed to take a minimum of 45 minutes to complete, so they were closing down registration for it just as our team of three entered. Off they ran....a team of one girl who knew some multiplication with two kids that have no clue what multiplication is yet! In one challenge, they had to count how many numbers on a particular wall had "4" in the hundred's place and an odd number in the ten's place...the wall was COVERED with four digit numbers. In another challenge they were given a time and told to figure out what time it had been "four hours and twenty minutes" before that time, or would be seven hours and ten minutes after that time, etc..making it more tricky is that they had to specify "AM" or "PM" and at least one of the problems began with a "AM" number but backed up to a "PM" time. In another challenge, they had to count through a huge tray of money and give the correct total. There were about five challenges in all. The great grandfather was having a difficult time with so much walking and kept falling far behind, so, I tried to stagger myself far enough back that great grandfather could see me, but I could still see which way the kids had disappeared as they RACED as fast as they could from one clue to the next, running circles all over that large building with it's long hallways. So, by the time I got great grandfather up where they were, they were already working hard on the challenge. A few times when the girl got stuck, I helped a bit, but, for the most part, she handled it single-handedly with Rayna and Doug enthusiastically (though not very helpfully, I'm afraid!) joining in. It was a timed event. The three of them just reached the finish line as the evening's events closed down (a full two hours and ten minutes after we had taken our first bite of pizza). Doug and the girl were registered for a prize drawing since they completed the race (a $50 savings bond) and we found out that Doug had also won a door prize drawing--a Connect Four game. Doug came home, quite happy, pockets full of candy. By the time we got home, Darcy was watching "Survivor" (already in progress) and it was time for the two little kids to head to bed...so, there was not time for Doug to watch his earned 60 minutes of TV for the day. I told him he could carry it over and add it to his TV time tonight. In retrospect, that was a huge mistake! Probably coupled with the overstimulation from the evening's school event, the sugar high, the WONDERFUL Spring weather we had today (for the first time this winter), and the knowledge that he had 60 minutes of TV time already saved up, Doug had one of his worst behavior days ever at school today. All frowney faces in every category, and enough frustrated comments (from THREE different teachers) at the bottom of the page to fill a chapter. I almost wonder if he had in the back of his mind "I already have a garaunteed SIXTY minutes of time for tonight, anyway, so it doesn't matter if I get all of today's minutes taken from me!" Whatever his thought process, he seemed to think today was a wild card day and he took FULL advantage of it! Needless to say, he didn't get ANY TV time tonight--for today or yesterday! He was pretty much grounded from anything and everything all evening except for going out for Grant's birthday supper.

We went to Smith's for supper then dropped Darcy off at the home she will be staying at this weekend for D-Now (a church event) and then went to DQ for dessert. Rayna and I were way too full to eat anything at DQ but, Grant had a chocolate earthquake Sunday and Doug had a chocolate dip cone. Doug is ALWAYS hungry...a bottomless pit for the ten months now that he has been off the ritalin. In fact, we have had to put away all his "slim" jeans because he can't fasten them anymore! He had a very muscular build when he first came home to us, but skinny-ed down on the ritalin. Every summer we would take him off the ritalin to let him catch back up growth-wise. At the end of this summer, we opted to keep him off the ritalin permanently. He has to work a little harder to focus when he isn't on the ritalin and his impulsivity (severe anyway) might be a little worse off the ritalin, but his appetite is so much better and he sleeps better. Coming off the ritalin is always so hard on him--really knocks his emotions for a loop. I just didn't have the heart to put him back on the ritalin this Fall, knowing that I would be taking him off it again at the end of the school year. And, his special ed teacher, Mrs. Walker, who has had him for three years now, has not noticed a difference between the previous two years when he was on the ritalin and this year when he has been off it. I'm glad the school has been supportive of allowing me to take him off it. His old school practically forced me to put him on it to begin with, in kindergarten, and kept pushing for the dosage to be raised and raised and raised until we were pretty much at the maximum the doctor would allow. I was braced for a battle with the school when I decided not to put him back on the ritalin at the beginning of the year this year...so, I didn't tell them for the first couple of months that he was off it...and then asked how he was doing compared to previous years, without them knowing he wasn't on the ritalin...the concensus was that he was about the same. Only then did I tell them he had not been on the ritalin. I was still expecting some flack--based on what I had experienced at his first school--but, surprisingly, the staff here seemed pleased that he is off the ritalin and have been very supportive of my decision! I know it IS harder for Doug to control his impulsivity and focus without the ritalin, but I just worry about the impact ritalin has on his health. It can have some pretty nasty side-effects and it DOES dramatically affect his appetite and growth. Of course, though, as I have watched his little spare tire develop, I have thought maybe a LITTLE appetite suppression might not be a bad thing!

Talk about hearty appetites...Darcy ordered the SAME thing as her father, tonight, the large steak with potato and ate all of hers, including the fat (even Grant left his fat) and then she ate all of Rayna's left over spaghetti (a good amount) and the little bit of open faced roast beef sandwich that I couldn't finish. Her metabolism has to be incredibly high. She can (and does) outeat her father and brother COMBINED but still never has an ounce of fat on her. She has always been very energetic which has to help! Doug, though he is hyperactive and impulsive, is still a couch potato...wears out quickly with heavy physical activity and would prefer to sit in front of the TV or with his Nintendo game all day, given the choice. He is extremely wiggly and unfocused, but does not have good physical endurance...wears out first when I am taking the kids for a walk, falls behind when the three kids are racing off somewhere. I suspect, this is due, in part, to his poor core strength...part of the legacy of his head injury.