piano festival, round 2

two weeks of monday day dates with the hub in a row!  this time around, we stayed local and hit up a little cafe that i usually forget is there unless i'm running past it on a saturday morning and am tortured by the smell of bacon as i shuffle by.  they serve breakfast all day long, and since i'm apparently on a french toast kick, i decided to try theirs.

i also discovered a new favorite drink - cold brew coffee mixed with chocolate milk and served in a carton, OG-style.  grown-up chocolate milk with a kick...yes, please!  and when i sat down at the table, i noticed a very obvious sign sent from the running gods that said clearly, i need to sign up for another ragnar relay sometime this year.  we'll see.

the next morning, we got up bright and early to get the bean ready for her piano festival.  i'm not sure why it's called that, since it's not really a "festival" per se, but more of a showcase/competition where the kids memorize a piece to play in front of an adjudicator and answer a few questions about their song selection.  the bean has been working really hard on getting "ode to joy" down cold, which she managed to do almost a full month before the festival.  and one of her buddies got to carpool with us, since the festival was located down in yorba linda.

we checked in and were directed to the center building for both girls' performances.

they both did a fantastic job, and the old lady and i were pleased to note that because a few kids didn't show up, we finished way ahead of schedule.  after they were finished, we took them back to the check-in table to collect their certificates and ribbons.

the bean was over the moon to see that she'd managed to score higher than last year, earning her the blue "superior" ribbon.  last year she was just a couple of points shy of this level, so she was extra proud of herself - as was i.

we decided to celebrate with some chicken minis at chick fil-a.  i know, i know.

much later, after school and homework and all that fun stuff, we capped off the celebration with dinner at her most favorite place in the world - all-you-can-eat sushi.

she wasn't the youngest kid in her school to participate in the festival this year, but she was super proud of her friends who came for the first time and earned ribbons of their own.  i can't wait to see what she gets to play next year!

tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme

the bean's week has been super busy as she gets through the last week of summer school and prepares for a nice, long two-week trip to visit her beloved grandparents in texas.  it's been a crazy packed schedule that has me like this in the mornings:

we kicked it off with a visit to one of her favorite places...the dentist.

it's so funny to me - she's the only person i know who's this excited to sit in this chair and get her toofs checked out.  i'm not sure if it's the flavors she gets to pick from for her fluoride treatment (bubble gum, cotton candy, mint, etc.), the prize box at the end of the visit, or maybe it's just the fact that she gets to watch fun movies while laying back in the chair as she gets worked on.  this time, it was monsters, inc.

yesterday, i picked up MIL from the airport and then surprised her at school when we both came to pick her up.  she was so excited, and then even more so when we surprised her again with a fun playdate at the trampoline park with some of her favorite friends from school.  they hadn't seen each other since the last day of first grade.

and then she got her daily swim lesson in before coming home to take a quick shower, have some dinner and then head back out for this:

she's been practicing her piece for the recital nonstop.  i've literally had the theme song from "beauty and the beast" in my head for a solid six weeks, people.  good gracious.  and she was nervous and excited to be the very first one to perform:

she killed it.  here's a little snippet:

she was so proud of herself when she told me last week that she had been chosen to play the song solo AND as a duet with her teacher.  while she did a great job with it by herself, i had to admit that it did sound extra pretty with the added notes and flourishes during the duet.  and then she was brought back up to play it again at the end of the recital - which meant that she'd played her song multiple times over that hour.  a little overkill, perhaps?  i was super proud of her, but felt a little bad for the audience, who'd had to hear the same song FOUR times.  yikes.

we spent the ride home giving her ideas for what she could learn to play next.  my vote?  the theme song from "pirates of the caribbean."  although i'm not sure if i really want to have "yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me" stuck in my head for weeks at a time.  huh.

yay for st. patrick's day!

it seems like holidays are kind of falling by the wayside around here lately.  valentine's day was super low key, and st. patrick's day wasn't much more exciting.  although it did start off with what seems to be a tradition for the bean - green milk for breakfast.

while her school did give them the okay to break from dress code and wear green to celebrate the day, we had something different from the usual morning routine.  it was the day of her very first ACSI piano festival, something she's been practicing really hard for over the last few weeks.  she had to memorize the piece she chose to play for the adjudicator and be prepared to answer a few questions about reading music.  we'd helped her study and listened to her play her piece, and she was ready.

her scheduled time wasn't till 10:30, but because we knew we'd face some traffic on the way down to yorba linda, we left extra early.  with her check-in ten minutes prior, we actually managed to get in there even earlier.

when we opened the door to the choir room, where we'd been directed to go, there was no one in there but the adjudicator.  turns out that they'd gotten through all of the earlier participants really quickly and were way ahead of schedule.  this was good, because it didn't give the bean any time to sit around and get more nervous than she already was.  she sat right down and got started.

it went really quickly, she performed well and answered the questions correctly, and then it was over. this right here is the epitome of "relief."

considering that this was her very first time at this, i think she did a pretty damn fine job.  just one point away from "superior," but that's okay.  it'll give her something to strive for next year.  not too bad for being the youngest representative from her school to attend the festival, eh?

with some unexpected bonus time together before she had to be back at school, we headed home to get her changed and then went back out to grab some lunch.

also?  i finally cracked and let myself get a tall iced latte from starbucks.  oh, was it good.

we ended the day with the best dinner ever:

i guess we did have a pretty fantastic st. patrick's day after all, wouldn't you?

celebrating baby monkey

our weekends tend to be busy anyway, but this past one was quite a whirlwind of activity.  we kicked saturday off bright and early at the bean's school for this:

yup, it was recital time again.  although this is her third or fourth (i've lost track) one, so she's pretty used to it by now.  she was happy to sit next to her BFF, who was performing for the first time.

she played her two songs well, and happily accepted her medal and certificate at the end of the show.

after a quick breakfast with the hub, we headed out to pasadena to join the celebration for weezermonkey's mini-me.  it's still amazing that she's already a year old.  the venue was colorfully and whimsically decorated, which is exactly what one would expect out of mama monkey.

look!  a balloon artist!  she was awesome, too - perfect balloon sculptures and super friendly to everyone.

the bean and mini cee were quite enthralled with her.

i was rather happy with my thai iced coffee myself.

while i didn't eat any of it (duh), i did think that the bird sculpted from an apple was pretty cool.

have i ever mentioned how much the bean adores babies?  she was so excited to meet mini weemo.

well, i was pretty excited too.  i hadn't actually seen her since she was teeny-tiny.

cake time!  and yeah, i'd done cookies too - shaped like bees.  for the baby's bee-day.  get it?  the cake that weemo's cousin made for the party was adorable, and together they were just perfect.

the guest of honor liked the cake too.  well, we think so.

back at the table, we were laughing at the drawing the bean had done of her tablemates - lilcee and winnie's husbands.

oh, and of course we hit up the balloon artist for something for ourselves.

on the way home, someone was wiped out from the flurry of activity that day.

play it again, bean

piano lessons for the bean didn't end with the school year.  luckily, her instructor offered lessons through the summer, which was super convenient - on mondays she just went right from class to lunch to her half-hour piano lesson.

the last session of summer school was last week, which also marked the end of piano until school starts back up next month (!!).  so to celebrate, the kids gathered in the music room on friday evening and showed off their skills.

cheese.  super duper cheese.

her teacher had thrown together some handwritten sheet music for her to to play and practice over the last six weeks - a song that, months after its release, remains uber popular with the disney princess crowd.  of course, i'm talking about "let it go," from disney's "frozen."

to be perfectly honest, as the bean practiced the song over and over again, i had trouble picking out the melody from the notes she was playing.  granted, her timing probably had something to do with it, but...i sat down to play the song with my super rusty, only-took-3-lessons-as-a-kid skills and still couldn't hear it.  i could pick out the notes to the tune by just playing around on the keyboard, and they truly didn't match what was on the sheets.  oh, well.  she worked diligently until she felt comfortable enough to play it without looking at the music every second, and by the morning of the recital she was ready.

with a smaller number of performers for this midsummer show, it went fairly quickly and the bean was placed somewhere in the middle of the pack.  she was clearly nervous, but she delivered her introduction and then played her piece, only stumbling a couple of times.  when it was over, she sat down, looked over at me, and mouthed "phew!" with a relieved smile.

group shot.

this is one of her oldest friends - they went to preschool together and were in the same class for transitional kindergarten.  he's a sweet kid, and they always have fun together.

rewards for a job well done.

now we have three weeks of freedom until the new school year starts.  she's made up a great list of stuff she wants to do:

oh, and one more random - this came up on my instagram feed.

hahahaha, so awesome.