August 28-September 11

A few posts ago I wrote about the Indianapolis Symphony and their viola openings.  Since then I've found their repertoire list and discovered that I don't know about a third of it, including the concerto.  So I shall not be auditioning for Indianapolis this time around.  :-P  Around the same time, I decided not to audition for Springfield either.  One of my 30 Before 30 goals was to play with two professional symphonies, but at this point playing with Springfield would be more trouble than it's worth.  I play with Lima, and I get paid to supplement college groups, and that's good enough for me.  Auditioning for a very similar symphony an hour and a half away is not a priority right now.  I have started investigating the possibility of taking the occasional lesson, though, in an effort to learn more repertoire (including that concerto).  We'll see if that goes anywhere.

Olivia  doesn't use the words "people" or "person."  Instead, she uses "humans."  It's a weird quirk that makes her sound like she's constantly on the lookout for aliens.  In actuality, we think she uses humans because all the movies and books she likes have to differentiate between monsters and humans or mermaids and fairies and humans.  They don't use the word "people," so neither does Olivia.

Gretchen is going to be a better mother than I can ever hope to be.  Her nurturing instincts are strong, a fact I've noticed even more now that we have an extra one-year-old running around the house several days a week.

Kaitlyn can carry a tune pretty well.  One day she sang a perfect arpeggio in the car ("I don't care" from "Let it Go").  Her words for that part are pretty clear, too.  Other words she's learned: outside, dessert, brrm, chugga, honk (these last three from her favorite car book).

Kaitlyn loves to go!  She'll stand on one side of the room, yell "go!" and run as fast as she can to the other side of the room.  She also does this on the enclosed trampoline, which is hilarious to watch because the unsteady surface makes her rather ungainly.  She is easily persuaded to do things if enough excitement is added to a "ready, set, go!" command.  By far the best incarnation of this delight, however, is found in the car, where she yells "go!" and then kicks her feet as fast as she can while breathing heavily.  I'd take a video, but it always happens when I'm driving.

Olivia started dance class this week.  It's a ballet/tap combo class and I wasn't sure how she would do with being dropped off.  We've been talking it up for a few weeks now and last week she and I went shopping for her shoes and leotard, which I think helped a lot.  I introduced her to her dance teacher, pushed her into the room, and left.  She seems to have done fine and Gretchen, Kaitlyn, and I got to see her dance a little at the end when we picked her up.  Gretchen was very excited and stood in front of Olivia mimicking her moves as she danced.

We started school on September 1.  I'm doing preschool at home with the girls and it's going well so far.  Gretchen is participating more than I'd planned because the older of the two little girls I babysit is participating at the request of her parents and Gretchen is the same age.  All three of the schoolers seem to be enjoying the activities.

The electrician finally came.  We now have baseboard heat and independent lights in the two rooms Bryan built in the basement.  There are a few ceiling tiles to put in yet, and then trim, carpeting, and furnishings.  Bryan is excited to have an office (with heat!) for this winter.

Because of Olivia's dance class, we knew we would probably need a second vehicle soon.  It seems ridiculous since Bryan works from home and I stay at home, but if he ever needs to be in the office on a day when Olivia has class then we're in trouble.  Bryan's been wanting a truck for a while now anyway, so he took his opportunity and ran with it.  He is now the proud owner of a Dodge pickup truck that is approximately twice as big as the one he set out to buy.

We went to the zoo at the end of last month, meeting Kara there on one of her days off.  Let me tell you what, August 31st is the day to go to the zoo.  School has started so the zoo is wonderfully empty.  We wandered around at our own pace and stayed at each exhibit as long as we wanted to.  We even got to go on the giraffe observation deck to see the giraffes up close and personal -- and one was very close, pushing his 250 lb head right through the opening to see if any of us had lettuce leaves for him.  We also compared tongues, and Olivia and Gretchen decided that the giraffe's tongue was the longest of anyone's.  We're headed back to the zoo at the end of this month to visit one more time before they close for the season.  :)

The Fourth Annual Barhorst Fun Run happened on Labor Day.  People came and had a good time.  Only one of our 5k runners ran an actual 5k, despite vastly superior signage compared to last year's sticks with yarn on them.  Everyone else missed a loop and only ran 2.5 miles.  To be fair, Alison and Hector went out after finishing and ran an extra 0.6 miles.  Bryan ran his annual mile, running the whole thing this year and finishing in a respectable 8:34.  I was not able to run since someone had to do times and watch kids (we missed you, mom and dad!), but after a couple of the milers finished I relinquished my clipboard in order to prove to Bryan that I could run a mile faster than he could.  He claims that had we been running together he could have beaten my 8:07.  I guess we'll have to find out next year.

Pictures:
This is our cat.  She likes to climb the screen:

We started keeping a stick of butter out on the counter in a butter dish, and someone discovers it periodically.  If anyone is averse to Kaitlyn germs, steer clear of the butter:

Some school pictures:

Fun Run Participants:

Olivia and Gretchen:

"B" things:

Hot air balloon cookies.  Yes, I used a snowman cookie cutter: