Another Summer Music Camp Season Comes to A Close

Today, we went to the final performance of Summer Music at Stanislaus 2008. Hannah had a great time attending her fourth concert! Due to the length of the concert and it's occurrence during nap time, we only stayed for the pianists. (Nicholas was very disappointed that we didn't stay to hear the "big, big drums.") The pianists performed on the first third of the program; it lasted "only" an hour and a half. This year we had a record number of high school students so I ended up teaching more than we had originally planned, but Hannah did great with Dan while I taught. By the end of these past two weeks, she seemed quite at home on campus though we still held her everywhere we went. 

I had a wonderful time teaching this week. The high schoolers are more focused than last week's junior highers to a point where I had to encourage a few of them not to take things so seriously! I taught three classes a day. One master class I taught had four Chinese students.  I asked them if they had lots of Chinese families where they lived to which all four responded with a resounding yes. One girl told me that there are more Asians in her school than Caucasians. I shared with them my experience of being one of two Asians in the whole entire school--the other Asian was my brother which doesn't really count. The mass response was, "That's really bad!" Growing up, it was bad. I'm over it now though.

Those of you reading from afar we are having a large number of wildfires here. Please pray for the wildfires to become under control and the quality of the air to improve. It's pretty awful here in the Central Valley. Many organizations have cancelled their outside activities. Think Beijing without the smokey smell. It is smokey, just not the Beijing smoke that follows you inside. Oh, I should share that we aren't anywhere near the wildfires right now; the wind carries it to where we live. However, a few weeks ago we did have a wildfire about one mile where we live. Fortunately, it was brought under control rather quickly. Praise God because it stopped within 100 yards of two very nicely sized propane tanks located at a local business. 

Just another funny: Nicholas has been waking up very early because Dan has been leaving early and he doesn't want to miss out on seeing him in the morning. I was telling him that he hasn't been getting enough sleep so he has bags under his eyes. Before going to bed, he was looking in the mirror at himself and he said, "Mommy, do I have bags under my eyes?" I replied, "Yes, you do have bags under your eyes because you have been waking up too early in the morning." Nicholas replies, with a voice of wonder, "Well, Mommy, where ARE the bags? I don't see them!" 

One more funny: The other day I was cutting hair. Nathaniel sits down and announces, "Mommy, I think that I am getting too big for this!" He is all of six years old! Nathaniel's new term for tacky glue is "taxi" glue! 

I will try to get new pictures up some time this week!