Volleyball Star

Katie's our volleyball star! :) She has a few weeks left in her season, and has really been improving this year. She's starting to get a nice overhand serve that goes over the net much of the time, and she's getting more opportunities to set-- which is what she really wants to do.

My biggest disappointment is that most of her games are during the afternoons when I teach piano lessons. At today's game, Chad took some pics and video for me, so I'll share with you. :)

The first video shows Katie bumping the ball. The second video shows her serving, and, at the very end, she dove for a ball.

Alphabet

Micah constantly surprises us with new words and new sentence structures-- totally love it! This morning, on the way to church, he wanted me to write the "wetters" on the magnadoodle. So I wrote A and he said, "A, the wetter A is for Apple." Then I wrote B and so on. Katie and Chad and I got such a kick out of his alphabet that I wrote it down for posterity. :) Fascinating to me is that some of his choices were so creative.

A-- apple
B-- ball
C-- Claire
D-- duck
E-- egg
F-- fish
G-- grapes
H-- hot
I-- first he said "bug", and I realized he meant "insect" because that's what's on the letter I for his ABC puzzle; then he also said "ice cream"
J-- jump
K-- Katie
L-- lollipop
M-- mice and Mommy
N-- he couldn't think of one
O-- "owl, hoo, ho0, hoo!"
P-- peanut butter
Q-- quail
R-- couldn't think of one
S-- couldn't think of one
T-- turtles
U-- under umbrella (!!)
V-- violin
W-- whale
X-- x-ray
Y-- yarn
Z-- zebra

** Actually, when I wrote Z, he said, very dramatically, "The last letter of the alphabet is...Z!!" I think that was from the ABC signs video Emily gave us. :)

Wignert Woes

So I typed our last name incorrectly on the title, but I decided to leave it. I kinda like Wignert. :) Actually, Chad's been reading to us from his family history, and our last name was Wenger until sometime in the 1800's when an English teacher changed it, claiming the orginal spelling was "incomplete" (doesn't that seem a bit arrogant?).

Also interesting that Hans Wenger came over to the New World in 1750's. So the Wingerts (Wengers) were here even before the Revolution.

Off that rabbit trail... Jenna's home sick again today. She really was acting well yesterday, but this morning was not so good again. She hid in the bedroom again all morning. When I got Micah to bed, I let her out to do computer. She spent an hour on a John Smith website they learned about in school-- loved it and learned all sorts of things about Native Americans and Pocohontas.

And can you believe this weather? I don't know what it's like at your house, but we're having another heat wave. Yesterday it broke records in Hagerstown-- it was the 55th day of the year over 90 degrees. I guess the record before this was 54. Well, today we're making it 56. And, actually, we've had more like over 60 days above 90 at our house. They mentioned that on the radio as well-- the station comes out of Williamsport, and they've had more than 60 there.

Supposed to get cooler the next few days. Hoping for some rain as well.

Michelle

The Maryland Zoo

Saturday we took a spur-of-the-moment trip to the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore; Chad's parents met us there. We saw a lot of neat animals! Again we were amazed at the variety in God's creation. Macaw

Jenna with Gma and Gpa

Large, lazy rhino. We read more about rhinos later... They are very nearsighted and therefore don't trust anything or anyone. They don't get out of the way of people cuz they often don't know people are there; they may ram a jeep or truck into a junk heap. If a female sees a male she likes, she backs up and charges him; knocks him down and steps on him. Even tho they are 2-4 tons, they can run 30 mph. Its only friend is the tickbird-- land on the rhino and eat insects off its skin, and also start screaming if danger is approaching-- so the rhino has some warning.

A pride of funny lions

We loved the giraffe exhibit-- the giraffes came close enough to touch-- Micah fed one.

We enjoyed the chimp exhibit (well, most of us did-- Claire couldn't handle the smell in the indoor enclosure)-- Katie and one chimp were imitating each other.

Such a goofy- looking animal-- the okapi.

Chad holds some dried elephant dung. Nice, huh?

Trying out a heron nest

Chad and the kids brushed some goats. Man, are those things patient! All those kids... Look below for a video of what Micah liked about the goats.

And this is how we felt by the end. :) It was about 3 or 4pm and we'd been there since 10am. We even took a nice break for a picnic lunch in the shade, but we were all very tired by the end. Micah was asleep before we got to the car.

Jenna's Hagerstown Project-- 2

Last week we went to the Washington County Free Library as another stop on Jenna's project list. This is a library we have gone to fairly often over the years-- not as much as I would like because it's in downtown Hagerstown, not very convenient. But this was the first time we took pictures there. :)

Actually, this particular building is going to be torn down-- shortly. They told me that the books will be moved to 2 other downtown locations already in Oct. Then this building will be dozed and a new one built in its place. I suppose that will take a while. Good thing we visited it now.

Peppy Piano Participation

Today starts an interesting long-term experiment. The music teacher at Grace asked me if I'd be willing to teach private piano lessons at the school because there is more demand for lessons than there are spots available. She teaches some lessons in her planning periods, and there is another woman who has been coming 2 days a week to teach.

All this was very up-in-the-air til Friday, and, suddenly today it's going to start. I have arranged for Tangene to let Micah eat lunch and nap at her house on Monday afternoons, so I'll be able to get in 6 lessons at school. Then I'll hop on home with our kids so I can teach 4 more lessons. Ought to be busy for Mondays, but the rest of the days are much freer. In fact, 2 of those 6 were ones I was teaching at home, but we have been having scheduling issues this fall, and they were considering having to find another teacher. Thus, I'll be able to keep them and it'll free up an hour of after-school time.

So, I'm up to a total of 21 students, sort of: Jenna and Katie don't pay me anything :), and one little girl comes for lessons twice a week right now-- she's the one that got the military kids grant to take piano lessons. And we're really thankful for the extra income!

Tired!

Guess Micah was tired... here's a first! He climbed into bed and fell asleep on his own. Surprised me! Esp since he hasn't even eaten lunch.

A little while ago, he went to his room to play. I realized it was pretty quiet, so I went to check. He's sideways on his bed, feet hanging off the side, sucking his thumb and sleeping VERY soundly. :)

He's always tired on Mondays; and he's been extra tired this past week. He's not totally adjusted to sleeping in his new bed-- takes a while to fall asleep, gets up early, sometimes awake in the night.

Jenna's Hagerstown Project--1

Jenna has a Washington County project to do this year. She chose to focus on Inside Hagerstown. Katie did this same project in 3rd grade, and she did Outside Hagerstown. It's nice to visit different places this time. When Claire gets there, we'll have to see if we can convince her to do the Antietam Battlefield choice. :)

Anyway, I thought we'd share our excursions on the blog. If you're not interested, you can hop right over these. Saturday, we started visiting places and hit 4 out of 16. These were probably the easiest 4, tho-- the others will probably be more involved visits.
Above is Zion Ref Church, on the corner of Potomac (main crossroad in town) and Church. This is a newer building, but Hagerstown's namesake, Jonathan Hager, was hit by a falling timber while helping to build this church. He is buried in the cemetery behind the church.

This is the Hager House. Neat to see the inside-- I actually toured it with Mike and Liz back in April. Jenna's been inside on a field trip. This time we just checked out the outside. This excursion (just me with Jenna, Claire, and Micah) was not the time to go on a tour. :)

I had the stroller along (aka Micah Confinement) so we did tour the Fine Arts Museum. Below is the doorknob (dinnerplate size).

Micah was good while we took a short tour, and Jenna and Claire were both fairly interested in looking at the art. They had a little art education (why doesn't that lady have all her clothes on?)-- oh, dear. Below is one Jenna esp liked.

The Norman Rockwell was one Claire esp liked. She asked me why the boy had such a funny look on his face, and so we looked around at the picture and figured that the boy probably was not real happy about having to go to the eye dr to get glasses-- he wanted to be out playing ball.

We also went to the City Park. This is one place we've visited oodles of times over the years-- it's one of the prettiest city parks I've ever seen-- but we had to go again for the sake of the project, and get some pics there. :)

Micah Snores

Bedtime!

Last night was Micah's first night in a "big boy bed". Of course, I wondered how this would go. As I put it together and took apart the crib, I (and the girls) talked about his "new bed". When it was finally together, he was excited to get in it. But, when REAL bedtime comes, will he be OK with it? Yup!

We ALL had to be in on this, so we ALL tucked him in last night. And he was so funny about it! Chad got some video that we'll see if Eric can post on here for us. Micah climbed right in and stuck his thumb in his mouth and put his head on his pillow, facing the wall. We said, "Micah, are you already asleep?" And he pretended to SNORE! It was a definite attempt at humor, and he loved it that we all laughed pretty hard.

And, would he actually stay in the bed all night? Yup. In fact, it took him a long time to fall asleep-- I went in there prob 45 min later and he was still awake, turned around, but still in the bed. And he was still in there this morning. We'll see how naptime goes this afternoon.

Katie's New Purple Bike

We'd been looking for a bike for Katie for a while-- Gma found a great one at a yard sale! It's purple, even! AND it came with a purple helmet and purple water bottle. :)

Gma also made Katie a beautiful Bike Cake with a purple bike!

Labor Weekend Fun

Actually, I think this was last week, but Chad slept out in the tent with the girls. They had been looking forward to it a long time, but the nights were always too hot. This particular one was perfect. Katie set up a cool partition inside the tent (with old sheets and clothespins) so she and Jenna could have their own separate "rooms". Claire loved it, for a while. This happened last time too... she ended up sleeping in the house with Micah and me. Not sure if she's scared or what. On Saturday, I stayed home to go to Bunny's memorial service, but Chad took all the kids up to PA for the day. They went to visit Ruth Kitner (kind of an honorary Wingert :)-- the Hat Lady. Jenna and Claire, esp, were fascinated with Ruth's hats and room decor.

Claire dressed up and had a fancy meal at Gma's. They also played some tennis-- Jenna said she had a lot of fun, even tho she had trouble hitting the ball-- and they flew kites. Perfect day for that! Had one fly above the clouds.

Here's Micah at home. FUN that he likes to put on his firefighter's hat to play with the firetruck... but FUNNY that he thinks he HAS to have his firefighter's hat on to vacuum.

Oh, the vacuum reminds me of something else: A few weeks ago, I had Katie and Jenna each vacuum their own rooms. We found it pretty funny when Jenna was complaining as she did it, something like, "This is a man's job." :) Guess you know who usually vacuums here!

My Friend, Bunny

Today I played piano for the memorial service of my friend, Bunny; and, since only a few of you ever got to meet her, I thought I'd tell you about her. In this pic, she is the woman wearing red. These are my piano students in our Mar, '09, recital. Bunny took lessons from me for a couple years-- and her lessons were always a bright spot in my week. She was a hilariously funny, spunky woman.

In 1992, she'd had a brain injury and then went into a coma for 19? days. They preformed a craniotomy on her, and no one thought she'd live thru it. She did, and she went thru a long recovery in which she totally relearned how to walk and talk, etc. She told me about this several times-- as in, "You think I'm hard to understand now? You should have heard me then!"

She went on to live 18 more years-- to live on her own, to drive a car, and to play piano.

When she moved up here from Florida 3 or 4 years ago, she called me and asked to take lessons. These lessons were pretty different from teaching any of my other students. She was in it purely to have fun; she enjoyed playing piano. In fact, she had to move to an assisted living facility for the last month or so of her life, and the one thing she insisted on taking was her digital piano. I'm really not sure she advanced much at all while I was teaching her-- my main job was to find her new music that she'd enjoy playing, and to help her play it.

Her half hour lessons pretty much always took about an hour-- if you count the time it took to help her in the door, for her to get settled in my house, for her to switch her glasses, for her to tell me stories in between songs, for her to interact with whichever of our kids were present, for her to use the bathroom, for me to turn her car around because I was so afraid of her backing out of our driveway, for me to help her out the door and off the front porch step. She could not walk up our sidewalk forwards, she always backed up it. Sometimes in the summer there are flowers hanging over the sidewalk-- when her backside would run into them, she'd say something like, "Oh, hello, there!" :)

Bunny loved red. LOVED red. She always had bright red lipstick on, not always just on her lips. She loved earrings. Once in a while was missing one or had a mismatched pair on. She loved hats-- always wore one to church. She also wore wigs sometimes, some pretty interesting looking ones. :)

She was a nurse, so she was very interested in all the medical details when I was pregnant with Micah, and his birth, and when he was young. She loved interacting with all the kids-- she was so silly-- gave them small presents and snacks a few times.

Micah and I went to visit her 2 days before she died. She was unresponsive after the last stroke-- eyes shut, no talking-- but she started moving around when we sang for her. Of course, she didn't look at all like herself that day-- really needed some red lipstick-- but I'm glad I went just for a few minutes. She was a special, gutsy lady that loved life, but totally was not afraid to die.

Her last lesson with me was last Nov, I believe. One lesson day, she called me on the phone and was making no sense-- I called her daughter-- they found she'd had another stroke. A few months after that, when I visited her, she told me she was going to start lessons again this fall, after she'd recovered sufficiently. Well, I suppose maybe she is taking piano lessons again now, at least once she's done with the initial arrival celebration in heaven. :)