Emma and I traveled to Cambridge, Ontario on Saturday for what turned out to be her final competition in the Novice category. She had a wonderful day and has advanced to the next category which is 12 months long and then the final category of Premier. To have accomplished so much at the age of 10!! We are so proud of her and as I uploaded the photo to include in today's post I have been humming Stevie Wonder's "Isn't She Lovely" over and over in my head for the last hour. I know he wrote that for his infant daughter but the sentiment is timeless. Might have to go download that one now. :)

We are "choir intensive" this coming two weeks with Palm Sunday and Holy Week services and all three kids singing in multiple services. Not to mention TWO birthdays - JB (4th) and Shannon (9th) - as well as the culmination of the Spartan season (championship????) Then we're off to FL for some intensive poolside R&R before finishing off the school year at a break neck pace in eight weeks! Don't blink - before you know it we'll have a middle-schooler. I wonder what Stevie Wonder wrote for that.

I'm sure everyone has had their fill of photos of Emma doing the Sword dance and Highland Fling, but we had a special treat this weekend and I thought I'd at least put a few pics up to show the venue. The Detroit Concert Choir performed a "Celtic Collection" concert at St. Mary's in Greektown and Emma's teacher invited some of her dancers to participate in the program. The church (cathedral?) was beautiful - lived in Detroit almost my whole life and have never been inside - and it provided a really neat setting for the music. The music was a blend of Irish, Scottish and Welsh songs and the dancing was sprinkled in to add to the experience. It was a lot of fun - I would highly recommend anyone with Celtic connections to consider it next year. The photos are a little crooked - I was shooting from the hip at the end of my pew. :)

It was an "Emma Weekend" because we also enjoyed Emma's girls choir singing in church on Sunday in worship. She performed with the adult choir and one of the pieces was Kyrie Elaison - one of my absolute favorites! Such a powerful in-your-face song that is impossible not to feel moved by - it was awesome!! We were doubly blessed this weekend.

That was it - we had a hiatus from soccer this week which made room for the NCAA madness to kick in! Between MSU and St. Patrick's Day we're swimming in green at our house. Not to mention we have our own wee Shannon. Should be a fun week - Go Green!!!

Writer’s atrophy. That’s what I’m calling it. My name is Jennifer [hi, Jennifer] and my last entry was nine weeks ago [applause]. Or something like that.

Well let’s just jump right from Christmas to Lent shall we? Unfortunately I can’t say there wasn’t much going on . . . you wouldn’t believe me anyway. But I’ll try to put things in a nutshell child by child.

Emma had a STELLAR beginning to 2009 when she clinched a runner-up trophy for her highland dancing in Windsor in early February. This was her best finish to date and created plenty of tears. There is an extra measure of sweetness to it since it was accomplished in Canada which produces champion highland dancers at the same rate as hockey players. Truly a huge accomplishment and we are so proud of her. She also continues to do very well in school – 5th grade has been a banner year for Emma.

JB continues with his soccer and has added electric guitar lessons to his repertoire/schedule along with choir and all the other things he’s busy with. He is also excelling at school and pulled ahead of his class in his math studies and has enjoyed all the attention of being “in the lead” which only further encourages him to excel. He has also had a great 3rd grade year this year and has really “clicked” with his teacher. No doubt when she had the class applaud his math achievements recently she earned a few brownie points!! Nothing like stroking an ego!!

Shannon continues to be the life of the party. (Speaking of egos, don’t tell her I said that!) She’s short a few front teeth at the moment, which just adds to her charm. Hillbilly charm I guess. She’s Ranger’s best friend and continues to amaze us with her expressions and wit. I wish you all could have been there to see our jaws hit the concrete when she told Aladdin at DisneyWorld that his joke wasn’t as funny as her’s. I suddenly wanted to shrink to the size of the Bug’s Life characters!

Yep – we “did” DisneyWorld a few weeks ago. We had a wonderful time – decent weather and crammed as much as we possibly could into our vacation. All four theme parks in four straight days – we weren’t afforded the luxury of spacing out the parks because of a dicey weather forecast (which turned out to be nothing.) But the days off at the end of the trip allowed us to enjoy two additional “attractions” to the speedway in Daytona and more importantly to see friends in Jacksonville. The photos include a shot of the kids on the beach in Daytona. Joel indulged me with a trip to a very cool bar on the beach where the original race in Daytona used to be. I would tell you where it is, but then I’d have to kill you. But seriously, it was the coldest day of the vacation, but there’s just something about the ocean that draws you in and the next thing you know you’re running on the sand down to the water. You can see the utter misery on the kids faces in the photo, can’t you?

As far as the photos go, I’ve at least sifted through the still photos from our trip to Disney. Don’t hold your breath on the video. I think I might need a small vacation alone to get that done.

Hope you’re all having a blessed Lenten season. I truly love the metamorphoses that take place during these 40 days – not only in ourselves, but even in the trees and birds and deer (which we have plenty of!) around us. Some writers even begin to write again . . . amazing. Bright thought for the day: we’re about two weeks away from seeing crocuses. Hope is a beautiful thing.