Animation Creation

So Mae and I are in this animation club after school once a week and we are making a movie right now. So I have been learning about some things and there is a stop motion app that someone brought to my attention. 

Last Friday I slept at Nadia's and we decided to start experimenting, and here's what came to be. Hope you like my first (stop) motion picture. Please submit Best Director nominations to the Academy.

Fin-Tastic Piano Recital

Okay, so another recital is in the books. I'm not gonna lie. I crushed it, and rightfully so as I practiced probably 15-20 hours per week, in total.

Here's me in my office, just working it.

My first song was a little bit of an awkward song from a timing standpoint, but that didn't really bother me.

If that video didn't play for you, you can go to the video by CLICKING HERE.

The second song was a duet with Miss Victoria. This one is called Tennessee Traveler and although I rushed one note and was a beat ahead of her near the end, she caught up seamlessly and I don't think anyone really noticed. I had so much fun up there playing, it was fantastic.

Back-up video for Tennessee Traveler duet can also be seen by CLICKING HERE.

Oh, and then we did this, which was really fun. We took a picture with Nadia after she and I got done with the recital... and then I had my photo editor go back and pull a few photos from previous years of us so you can see how much we've grown. Kinda fun.

Then...

Now...

Whew! Okay, well, that was a lot of fun. Four more days of school and I'll no longer be a second grader!

Dads. Daughters. Dance.

So we had the second annual Dad-Daughter Dance at St. Helen last Saturday night and let me just say, we got down with it.

A few pre-party pics at the house.

Then we got to the dance and had ourselves a hoot and a holler.

Getting footloose with friends.

Adrianna is in the house!!

Hanging with Dad.

Yes, those are my Jordans on my feet, and Mae has her gymmies on too. When the dogs start aching you gotta substitute the stuffy dress shoes out, so we did.

And here's me hanging with my homegirls. This is one of my bestie - Olive.

And this should be a familiar face to all of you who have been following this blog of mine for the past four years. This is my bestie Nadia. They call us Ebony and Ivory. I'm not sure what that means, and who's Ebony and who's Ivory, but whatever, all the grownups seem to like it.

Christmas Pageantry, 2015

First up was the Christmas program. Mae was dreading this all week, she's not one to want to be up front of a crowd. She made it through "Deck the Halls"...

And then things kind of fell apart. While her class was still up on stage singing Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, Mae's day ended as such:

Shortly thereafter, my class took center stage and things went, well, pretty good. One of the reasons was I was smack dab in between my two homegirls - Shea and Nadia.

And then, of course, we rocked it.

And then, two days later was our piano recital. We'd been prepping for a couple months and the big day was here. And Mae's big day went, well, sideways a bit.

It started out with her receiving a pretty prestigious award. They give out two awards per class - one for Respect and one for Trustworthy. You may remember last year I received the Respect award for my first grade class. Well, Mae received the Trustworthy award, which is pretty cool because there are really only about 10-11 of them given out in the whole school.

There are no pictures because, well, Mom and Dad decided to hide so that Mae didn't know they were there, hoping that would keep her up on stage. She was up there for a few minutes and then, well, everything fell apart again and she started crying so Dad ran up and got her.

So on to the piano recitals... Mae bailed on the whole thing, decided she was not very amped to get up on stage in front of everyone, so that was kind of that.

Then my group later took the stage and here's how it went.

CLICK HERE to hear my song. It was too big to upload to the blog so this link will take you to the performance.

Then the big bow...

And then the after party!

 Laffy Taffys really make me giggle, and Shea does, too.

Lastly, here is a picture of my teacher, Miss Victoria, and me. She actually got her PHD in piano... I didn't even know that was possible..

Dads and Daughters Dance

So our school had its first ever Dads and Daughters dance and I gotta tell you, it was a HUGE hit.

Mae and I got all dressed up and dad got, well, about as dressed up as dad likes to get, and we went out for pizza with Mom and Pax and Colin and Steph and Sid and Ana. Our best friend Ana goes to St. Helen too so she and Dad's friend Colin went with us to the dance.

Before we left, here was Pax with my shoes on, a little confused about what the heck was going on.

Pre-dance pic.

At the dance with some of our besties...

Here's Mae and I with Nadia and Shea.

And up on the stage cutting a rug.

Oh, and here is my friend Josephine. We took a picture of her and Mae because they had the exact same shoes on.

Just a huge success.

Oh, and we got a photo done at the dance and for the next few days Pax kept it at the breakfast bar and had it keep him company while he ate.

Ebony & Ivory

Live together in perfect harmony. You know that song from the 80's, right? Well, I've got my own version.

This is my bestie, Nadia. We are inseparable, and last weekend we had an awesome sleepover. Here's what went down:

First, she came over after school and we had to change out of our school uniforms so we went up and came down IN THE SAME OUTFIT!

Hiiiiiiiii-YA!

We played all night til almost 9:00 when we went to bed and the next morning when we woke up we headed to the best park in the city - Montgomery Park.

Hold it right there a second, Finley. That's a preeeeeeeetty big statement when you say something like "best park in the city." 

Oh, no, seriously, Mr. Narration Interrupter, it is. On top of the view straight up the Chicago River into the city you've got this puppy in your sights at all times. Go ahead, see for yourself.

Okay, back to my story. Whenever we hang, Mae is always in the mix too; she and Nadia are good friends as well. She doesn't have a name to go with it like we do - someone called her something about a third wheel but we didn't really get what that meant - but we keep her around, she's good fun.

On the swings, in sync as usual (not the boy band).

We had a rolling downhill race that was quite fun... as you can see Mae took a left turn towards Toon Town.

Then a ride home on the bus to complete the sleepover, dropping Nadia along the way at home.

And I know it's not Thursday but here's a throwback from our Pre-K days. We go way back to when my cheeks were nice and plump.

I don't know if we'll be best friends forever, but being best friends for now suits us just fine.

Back to School 2014

So it was back to school the other day, which turned out to be fantastic. After a long and fun summer, I was ready to get back to my old stomping grounds.

After a good breakfast we got the two school birds posing for some pictures.

It was Mae's first day after dropping out of preschool last year. And she not only had a good first day but she had a great first week. I think the little bird is ready.

And then, after basically pouring a bowl of oatmeal down the front of his diaper while trying to eat it and then taking a bath in the kitchen sink, well, we got photobombed by a streaker.

After we got a diaper on the little lad he wanted to say cheese for the camera.

Got to school and low and behold I saw about 15 kids from Ms. Matus's class last year who were in my class again...

Including my bestie, Nadia. Yep, this is gonna be a good school year.