Morgan's First Recital

This was a big weekend for Morgan. Big birthday party and her first piano recital. She has only been taking lessons for about 2 1/2 months and she already had her first recital. Here she is playing a duet with her piano teacher. She did very well. She played The Happy Song, Hark, The Herald Angels Sing and Yankee Doodle.
Well Done Morgan!

Morgan turns 11

This last weekend Morgan celebrated her 11th birthday. Above is an assortment of pictures from the glorious event. We had a small celebration for her with just our family and then on Saturday she had her girlfriends over for MOVIE PREMIER NIGHT! The girls dressed up like movie stars and then attended a "movie premier" (in this case it was the movie Cars). The girls seemed to have a lot of fun, but more importantly, Morgan deemed it a sucess. Mom thought it was a great sucess because since we watched a movie I didn't have to do games or crafts this year. Whoo Hoo.

Speech

I have mentioned before that Livi is in speech therapy. She meets with Sue-Sue the therapist twice a month. Most of the work though takes place with us at home. Sue comes and "plays" with Livi for an hour and then gives me "homework" to work on for two weeks. We have picture books to look at, flash cards, tricks like putting peanut butter on her bottom lip so she will scrape it off with her top teeth, sucking jello with a straw etc. These are all things that help her develop her mouth and make her more aware of her lips and tongue. She is actually doing very well. Sue told me that she probably would not have qualified if she had not been adopted. Some words and sounds she is ahead of her age on using and then others she is behind on.
The other day Morgan was going through all the family names with Livi. She can say Michael, Rachel and Morgan really well (even though she chooses to call Morgan Mo-Mo). Evan comes out Evie and Katie is Taytee. The funny one is she calls herself Ni-Ni. Where she got Ni-Ni out of Livi I am not sure, but we were trying to get her to say Livi. Then Morgan tried Oooolivia. Livi said "Oooooni-ni." It was too cute.

The picture above is of Olivia and Sue-Sue blowing on horns. When Sue-Sue is coming to the house you would think Santa was coming. Livi gets so excited. She squeals, screams and runs through the house. Sue-Sue brings big bags with her the contain toys, puzzles, books and other goodies that are new and different each time she comes (I don't know what kind of storage building this woman has for all her stuff-but it has to be big!). For one hour she has Sue's undivided attention and new stuff to play with. Wow what a dream!

NO! NO! NO!

I could just cry! I had decided to try to grow Livi's bangs out. Now this is a pretty great feat for me because I hate hair in the face so that means EVERYDAY I have to pull her hair back in something pretty. I was doing a pretty good job. They were down to the bottom of her nose and I could pull them up into most of her ponytails or barrettes. Well somehow, somewhere, sometime this week, SOMEONE got ahold of a pair of scissors......

This is the corrected version AND I had to use hairspray to keep them from standing straight up in the air. (PS: The picture doesn't even show how bad they look)In a matter of seconds 5 months of hard work was WACKED and gone! Just like that. We still have not found the scissors or the pile of hair. GONE the hair is just gone. And I was just getting ready to take her in to get her Christmas picture taken. WHAAAAA! Olivia is my 4th child and not one of my other three cut their own hair! I thought I had just about made it - I was gloating too soon!