Busy Week!

We've all had those kinds of weeks, and this was definitely one of them. Despite being so busy, I think we all learned a lot. Between appointments, parties, lessons, music, gymnastics, play dates, errands...there was something going all the time.

The high light was seeing Joshua Bell play his Stradivarius. Bell is a Bloomington, Indiana native who attended Indiana University and is now a lecturer there. The music was FANTASTIC. He played part of the Red Violin score (written by Corigliano) among other pieces. I am not an expert on music, but I sure loved every minute of it.

Sami slept through part of it, but Megan sat in my lap with her eyes closed and patted me through it and peeked at me occasionally. They were not complaining that they were bored one bit...I think the music relaxed them so much that they had a hard time keeping their eyes open. They've been up that late before, but at parties. This was their first time being up late hearing classical music.

The girls have been learning about China for a couple of weeks now. At our HS Fun Club, they got to make Chinese stamps, play Chinese jump rope, and eat ramen noodles with chop sticks. They had a lot of fun with that!

Joshua Bell

Thanks to my sister-in-law alerting me, I was able to score four free tickets to see Joshua Bell perform in Bloomington next week. Tickets went on sale at 10 AM, I got four at ticketmaster.com right at 10AM, and I guess that they sold out immediately. These tickets are normally very expensive, but because he is now an Indiana University faculty member, he was performing for free this time.

I was rather embarrassed when she called, because I wasn't really sure who Joshua Bell was. After she told me about Bell, I also did a little research on the Internet. Then my 2 DD's and I listened to him perform on Youtube, and he was darned good!

He played the violin so beautifully, so we are really looking forward to hearing him perform next Wednesday. We love music of all kinds, but I guess I'm just not worldly when it comes to specific performers. Time to expand our horizons! The girls are taking piano and voice lessons already, so now maybe they'll pick up the violin...