altarflame | Entries tagged with hialeah

I made Ananda and I a separate, vegetarian dinner tonight (usually she just doesn't eat the meat in whatever is for dinner). Mushroom bisque, curried chickpeas and tomato slices I dolled up. Hers had salt, pepper, basil, olive oil and parmesean. She was in heaven.

I'm contemplating whether I should reconsider our Friday afternoons...we're not going to TLC (a purely social homeschooling meetup at a library half an hour north of us, the day after PATH which is the same thing with many of the same kids but at a park) because we're doing Greater Miami Youth Symphony in that time slot (local, free, and a continuation of their summer music camp). Clearly, in theory, there is no contest here. Jake and Isaac with violins, Aaron with a flute! But, in practice, I'm not so sure.

TLC was really satifying, decompressing socializing time for me, and all the kids had a great time at it, too, all summer...there are more older kids for Ananda and Aaron there (vs PATH), in a setting where they can branch off more than at the park (by going to the adjacent community center or out to the walking path while adults stay in the library) and it's pivotal to a lot of larger social interactions (sleepover pick ups and drop offs, mostly, but also things the teens toss around there like having a book club or doing an ongoing art project for someone who's moved out of state). Meanwhile, the weekly classes at GMYS seem a little less fabulous than the intensive camp was; very crowded, only 30-45 minutes of instruction in a large group setting. Still, because of different start times and general disorganization, we have to all be there for at least an hour and a half that involves me sitting around in a REALLY mosquito infested courtyard with the girls, trying not to be bored. Aaron is learning all sorts of things on the flute by ear, and is so good at that, that he never has to actually learn to read music to follow along with the class on paper. So it's sort of pointless to send him to try to do Mary Had a Little Lamb when, A, he will not learn it by notes and they can't really make him or even test him on sheet music skills, and B, he's here at home mastering piccolo songs from the Lord of the Rings soundtrack....

Jake and Isaac like having violins and want to learn to play them but we've been kind of lacking in enforcing daily practice, which is really necessary here if they're gonna excel.I guess what I really need to do is commit to practicing, and to planning activities for those of us waiting, or just drop out, since there's little point in fretting over keeping the instruments in good condition and making it to the classes on time if they don't end up able to play an instrument (Ananda is doing a cello class that's up in Kendall on Sunday afternoons, so irrelevant here except to say she is the one who sparked the family GMYS action by suddenly really wanting to take up cello).

Elise could join GMYS next year and have a little 1/4 sized violin and that tugs at me in a hard to deny way ;) I also know they'd love to go back to camp next summer. And I really want them playing instruments.

I'm really only thinking about this because last week Elise's physical took most of the afternoon (largely in waiting room time) and so we missed GMYS and went to TLC since we were up there anyway; everyone loved it, in such a lower stress way. Cybele, Karen and I laughed SO MUCH.

Isaac, Elise, Georgia and Jake at TLC last Friday.

We spend a couple of hours on Thursday evenings killing time up north between "PATH is over" and "time to pick up Daddy at the train station". Previously this has mostly been spent helping to clean out the local Borders -

(I got this pile for $16 last Friday!)
-but now Borders is closed. So this past Friday, we went to Party City's Halloween section in Hialeah.

Wait, let me tell you, Hialeah - it's meant some interesting discussions with my kids about the difference between the ghetto, and the barrio :p And it's yielded a lot of O_O reactions from them about, say, the way store mannequins in normal clothing boutiques in nice strip malls look.