Adventures

Yes, it has been a long time between posts, but Emily has had a month of firsts that I think are worth sharing. First of all, she attended her first Trophy Festival this year. This is the event where student play for a teacher other than their own as a way to get their feet wet with performing and to receive feedback from someone who may have a different style of teaching. At the end, everyone who performs goes home with a small trophy.

Emily chose to play Twinkle Theme, although she has many other pieces in her repertoire these days. Most recently she has completed May Song and begun learning Long, Long Ago (for those of you familiar with the Suzuki system). All in all, it was a good experience for her and the teacher that she played for was very complementary, which I think helped build her confidence.

As for another first, Emily has finally gotten her first exposure to some real, substantive snow in at least two years. We are spending spring break in Keystone, and as we were driving up from Colorado Springs, we started to see minor, intermittent patches of snow on the hills along the road. She said, "Is that SNOW??? That's CRAZY!!!" We just laughed, knowing how much more snow was in store for her. As you can see, when we stopped off in Breckenridge for lunch, she was just thrilled! 

Being here ever witty self, when I asked her, "What is that stuff?" she replied, "Powdered sugar, of course!" As usual, she is good with the one-liners. Last month when were were talking about delaying the celebration of my birthday until the weekend, I said "I can stand being 39 for a couple more days." To which Emily immediately responded, "Yeah, I don't need an old Mom." :)

As you can probably imagine, Emily's next notable first is her first time skiing. She took ski lessons on our first day in Keystone, and by the second day she was a natural.

Looking adorable in her gear

She and I skied the bunny slope in the morning, and I was able to get some video of her in action.

Of course, as soon as she watched the video, her only comment was, "My turns are too small." She got a chance to remedy this in the afternoon when all four of us went down Schoolmarm. This is a 3.5 mile, family friendly trail. We didn't know exactly how Emily would do, but she was incredible and I think that she really enjoyed it. Perhaps needless to say, I was by far the weakest link, but she was kind enough to wait for me. :)

As for the rest of the week, we'll have to see if any additional firsts arise. I think that today we are all going to take it easy, although the girls may con Chad into some ice skating this afternoon . . .