Big Accomplishments

April has been a pretty busy month. Sooner or later I will catch up on all the blogging that I need to do. For now, this post is all about Maggie and Lydia and their great accomplishments at school. I'm going to do a little bragging here--just humor me a little. Every mom has the right to brag about her kids, right? :)

To begin with, Lydia and Maggie are great spellers. They've always done really well on their weekly spelling tests. At the beginning of April, they had the spelling bee at their school. Lydia came in first in her class and Maggie was the top speller in the older grades. So, Maggie had the opportunity to go on to the district spelling bee to represent her school along with one other person. She didn't win this year either, (she also went last year) but it's pretty cool that she got the opportunity to go. Fortuneatly, it's written and not oral. I think that makes a huge difference. You don't have to deal with the nerves up being up in front of a lot of people.

We got a letter in the mail about a month ago from something called the National Schools Project, that was addressed to Lydia. It turns out that her teacher had submitted a few of her poems and one of Lydia's poems won! It gets to be published in the Young American Poetry Digest. We don't know which poem was selected, but I thought I'd share one of Lydia's poems that she wrote at school, that I thought was pretty cute.

I did not eat your ice cream,
I did not swipe your socks.
I did not stuff your lunch box
with rubber bands and rocks.

We went ahead and ordered a copy of the book, but it won't arrive until October. Anyways, we were pretty excited about her getting "published" so early. :)

Maggie joined choir again this year--she really loves music and loves to sing. They practice every week for a couple of months. This year's theme of their choir concert was all about recycling and helping the earth. We all laughed about that--what kind of songs do you sing about recycling? Anyways the concert was really well done. Maggie has talked for a long time--since last year or so--about wanting to try out for a solo. Well, this year she tried out and got a part. She actually got a duet with one of her friends, but she was okay that it wasn't a solo. Her song was called, "Driving Miss Lazy" and it was trying to encourage people to drive less and to try walking or riding a bike places or catching rides with other people to cut down on pollution. I kept asking her if she was nervous about performing, but she said she really wasn't. She did a fabulous job. She was confident and sang loud and clear. She really enjoyed it. In fact, she enjoyed it so much that she's gotten together with a friend and is now practicing to try out for the talent show, singing a Taylor Swift song. I would post a video of her singing, but I still can't get videos to work. Sorry.

The stage for their concert...

Maggie waiting for it to begin...

Part of the choir concert featured the second graders singing a few of the songs, which meant that Lydia also got to sing for the concert. She is so cute when she's up there singing, she really gets animated and enjoys singing as part of a group. They both did a great job and I am so proud of them!

Lydia is on the second row from the bottom, about in the middle of the row.

After the performance