A Holiday Quartet

One of the highlights for Hannah this past holiday season was being selected by her orchestra director to perform in a quartet. The quartet got to play at a local elementary school as background music at one of their events. Here are some pictures from their little performance.


One of the violinists in the group was unable to attend, so their teacher/director stepped in and played with them.

They played an assortment of Christmas and holiday music. It was a cold evening and they were located just next to the front door. So every time the door opened, a cold breeze came in. Their music blew down a couple of times too!

Hannah LOVED being in the quartet!

Reading Bowl 2015

This past weekend was Hannah's last Reading Bowl competition. As of now, she says she doesn't want to continue it in high school. She likes being able to read whatever she wants, even though most of the books she's read for the reading bowl have been extremely good ones! I can totally understand, but it does make me a little sad. It's been a wonderful program.

The parade of schools with our beautiful Tapp banner!

The whole team. 8 of our team members are 8th graders this year, so next year's team will be practically brand new.

Here are the 4 students who have been on the team for all 3 years of middle school. We were trying to recreate a picture from 6th grade.

This is the photo of them from 6th grade. They were all so little!

 





YA Book Signing

Yesterday, there was a Young Adult (YA) book signing at the Bookworm in Powder Springs. Hannah loves to read, so I looked up the books/authors that were going to be there. I was quite impressed. One of the authors is being compared to John Greene who wrote The Fault in Our Stars. Another one just had her latest book listed as one of the most exciting YA books by Teen Vogue. Hannah asked some of her friends to come with her to the book signing to support these authors and one of her favorite book stores!

Here are the girls outside the Bookworm.

Author #1 was Jennifer E. Smith. She has written several teen romances.

Her most recent book is called The Geography of You & Me. This title is one Teen Vogue's List of the 15 Most Exciting Books Coming Out This Year.

Here is author #2, Adi Alsaid.

 

Let's Get Lost is his first book. He is being compared to author John Greene.

And author #3 was Vernell Chapman.

She has written a series of books called the The Fountain Books. Her latest book is The Journey of Maggie Mission.

The girls enjoyed talking with the authors about books, school, and their Reading Bowl team.


The girls had to spend time with the Bookworm kitties! These babies are up for adoption through Fancy Feline Rescue of the South.

Here are the girls in the children's section of the book store.

Hannah with her stack of books. She bought one book from each author which she got signed, then she found another 7 paperback books that she just had to get.

Six Flags Fun

I love living so close to a Six Flags theme park! We often get season passes for the park. Here are some pictures from our visits to Six Flags Over Georgia this summer.

 

We hope to make it back a few more times before the season's over.

Another School Year Starts

School starts earlier & earlier each year! James started his junior year of high school this morning. 

 

 

 

 

And Hannah started her 8th grade year. 

For fun, here are a couple of pictures from 2003. James' first day of kindergarten.

And Hannah's first day of Mother's Morning Out.

Summer Trip to Indy

Hannah & I went up to Indianapolis for a short trip to visit all of her grandparents.

We drove up on Sunday. We left nice & early so we could arrive early at Dad's. However, our efforts were thwarted by construction on I-65 in Southern Indiana and we arrived about 2 hours later than we had expected.

On Monday, we went to the Hamilton County Fair. When I was a kid, I was very active in 4-H, so the county fair was an important part of our summers. Hannah was excited to see all the animals.

It made me sad that 4-H isn't that big in North Georgia. I know Hannah would have LOVED to be a part of it. Of course, I probably wouldn't let her have a llama.

 Or a chicken.....

or any sheep.....

The food at the fair was super cheap! Here Hannah is enjoying a Lemon Shake Up. We also enjoyed cotton candy, soda, & the Farm Bureau chocolate milk shakes. Back in the day, I remember those milk shakes were sold for 25 cents. They were $2 each now, which is still a bargain.

On Tuesday, we met Chris' mother for a nice breakfast at The Original Pancake House.

Then we went & visited Chris' stepmother. Hannah wanted to visit the cemetery to see Chris' Dad, so we took Jeannine with us. That's something Hannah wants to do every time we're in town.

On Wednesday, we drove out to North Salem, Indiana to visit my mother. This was our first visit to the cemetery since she had been buried.

Hannah & I had a very nice lunch with my longtime friend, Joan in downtown Carmel. Joan & I met in high school & worked at the Carmel Clay Public Library together. We both went to Indiana University, so just about every Friday night, Joan came over to my dorm so we could eat dinner together. We continued that tradition even after I started dating Chris.

Then on Thursday morning, we said our goodbyes and headed back to Georgia. Here is Hannah is Grandpa Karl. It was a short, but sweet trip. It's difficult living so far away from our family at times.

Baby Bird

This spring we became aware that the gutter/ledge right above our master bedroom was a popular bird hangout. After a while, we decided that there was probably a nest somewhere up there. Every morning at sunrise, we were awakened to the sounds of chirping birds. Then over Memorial weekend, Chris heard bird chirping in the attic. He pulled down the attic ladder & he found a tiny baby bird sitting on one of the rungs.

Chris grabbed a mostly empty trash can from Hannah's room to put the trespasser inside and brought him to Hannah & me.

Chris went up into the attic to see if he could find the nest or any other birds, but couldn't find any evidence of other birds. This little bird had hiked across nearly the full width of our house over 18 inches of pink insulation to get to the ladder. It was so hot up there, we were sure he was dehydrated, so we carefully gave him some drops of water which he seemed to appreciate.

Then we wanted to see if we could get him back to his family. Since we had been hearing all the noise at the front of the house near our bedroom, we took him out there first.

We set him in a shady spot & left him there for a short while. We didn't think we would have much luck if we stayed there with him. When we came back to check on him, he was still there and very loud. We don't know how long he had been by himself in the attic. Hannah & I did some research & learned that you can feed baby birds a mixture of kitty food (soaked in water), applesauce, & some other ingredients. He LOVED his special food. We also read that baby birds taken to wildlife rescue places are often dehydrated, so we continued to give him water.


From our research, we decided that he was most likely a Starling (house sparrow). Hannah decided to call him Jack (Sparrow). We have no idea if he was a boy a girl, but we referred to him as a male.

Our photographer friend, Eric Washburn was over the day we found him, so he got some nice pictures of Jack.

 

We kept Jack in a box for his first night, but after that we decided that he would have a better chance of finding his family if he was free. We put him in a bush outside by our patio. We would feed him breakfast & try to encourage him to fly by putting him on the picnic table or hot tub cover.  Over the next few days his wing flapping got stronger & we tried to visit him less frequently. Then after about 1 week from when we first found him, he was gone. We don't know for certain what happened, but we would like to think that he finally got a hang of the flying thing & found some bird friends.

Here's a picture of Jack around day 4 or 5 at our house. It was amazing to see how much he grew in such a short time. Although we miss him, we are glad that he has moved on. We don't need any more animals at this house!

 About a month later, when we were sure that all the baby birds in our nest were gone, Chris put that ladder up outside the front of the house & removed the nest which was inside the attic. He bought some chicken wire to put in place to prevent future nests in our attic. We love birds & nests, but not in our house!!!

Hannah Turns 13

Hannah's 13th birthday was yesterday. She LOVES birthdays! She had been talking about party ideas for months and months. Then not too long ago, she made the decision not to have a party. Some of her friends are a bit dramatic & they don't all get along. This was stressing her, so once she made the decision not to have a party this year, she was relieved.

We did tell her that we would spend the money that we would have spent on her party toward redecorating her bedroom. She loved that idea!

Even without a party, I wanted to make her day super special. I told her that I would wake her up at 8am. I woke up before then & noticed that she had "liked" a picture of mine on Instagram at 6:21 am. She couldn't sleep because she was so excited!

So I went to her room & helped her set up her own Face Book account. She has been begging for one for years, but I have been telling her that she had to wait until she was 13. After that, I told her to get dressed and that we had to be somewhere at 9am. She had no idea what we were going to do. We drove over to our old neighborhood & picked up her friend Kate. Then we took the girls to IHOP for breakfast.

Then we dropped Kate back at her house & continued with our day. We went shopping next. Hannah had been complaining that she didn't own any cute summer dresses. So that was our mission. In between stores we stopped at Starbucks so she could get her free birthday drink.

After some successful shopping, I told her that we had lunch plans. She said she hoped we were going to Moe's. I knew that's where she would want to go, so that's where we were meeting her next friend. We met Livi for lunch. Notice that Hannah has changed shirts - she found this cute t-shirt that said "#BestDayEver" and had to wear it.

Hannah wanted to go to Five & Below so I took the girls there before we had to take Livi back home.

After dropping Livi off, we went to the Town Center. I took her to Ulta where she got a Laura Geller makeover. 

Since James hadn't gotten her a present yet, I let her purchase this Lauren Geller make up set.

After the makeover, we went & got pedicures. I forgot to take any pictures of our pretty toes! Oh well....

Next we went & picked up one more friend, her "Biffle" - Best friend for life (because life is longer than forever?!)

Here is Hannah with her Biffle, Rachel. Hannah is wearing one of her new dresses. We got this one at Wal-Mart.

And here are the girls at dinner. We went to the Clay Oven which serves yummy Greek food.

Then we went home for birthday cake. Hannah selected an Italian Crème cake.

We were totally exhausted by this time. Hannah went to bed shortly after. We had a great time! I am still in disbelief that I have 2 teenagers now!!!