It was my last duty day of the year with Matthew. He spent relatively little time playing with me this time; he was too busy playing with his friends, especially one little girl. Although he did decline the invitation to play tea party with her, his friend Adam and one other little girl on the grounds that it was "not es-citing".

Daddy had to go to a meeting towards the end of preschool, so he dropped off Amelia and she got to "help". Matthew was happy to give her an introduction to preschool since it will be her school next year.

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I wasn't nervous about the in house tournament because after all, they give out participation medals. Then I realized that only Tykes get medals and there was chance that Matthew would get one and Elizabeth wouldn't. Not that this is necessarily a problem, just we hadn't actually discussed this as a possibility. Oops.

The morning of, Elizabeth really didn't want to do the sparring part of the tournament. She figured that she'd definitely lose so why bother. Kata, on the other hand, she was supremely (over) confident.

Matthew was just looking forward to doing his very first tournament! He was up first and duly completed his little obstacle run.

Then it was Elizabeth's turn. There were some very tough competitors but Elizabeth did manage to pull out a bronze in kata. She was still unhappy about sparring until we realized that girls and boys compete separately and there were only two girls at her belt level. At worse she could only get a silver, and she came pretty close to carrying off the gold. She sheepishly agreed that it's always better to compete and do one's best than to worry about the end result.

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We celebrated Amelia's baptism birthday with Lorianne with brunch and cake and candles today.

Elizabeth was asked to participate in a karate demo, so after the baptism celebration Brendan and the kids headed over to the OAC to watch Elizabeth show off her stuff. There was free BBQ and all kinds of exciting things to watch; I gather they had a good time.

It was hot when they came home so they dragged out the paddling pool and played in the water until supper. Hayley came over as our special visitor, to everyone's delight.

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It was the end of the year, which means it was time for an end of the year concert!

Elizabeth was placed up on the stage this time, so we had a great view. I asked her why the kids were picked to be on the stage and it turned out that they put all the tallest kids in her grade up high. She's apparently the tallest girl in her class and the fourth tallest kid. Who knew?

The kids do a pretty good job on the singing now (although Elizabeth needs more confidence to get over her tendency to mumble-whisper). The recorder and xylophone playing is still an ...experience. But at least it is starting to resemble music! I do think that the music teacher could perhaps do more - there's a significant number of kids in Elizabeth's class that I'm aware of that do music as an extracurricular activity and quite a number in MYC. I'm also quite sure that the teacher has no idea that Elizabeth has any musical background whatsoever. Elizabeth was a little surprised when I told her that the fingering on the recorder that her teacher is showing her in school are actually the same notes she's learning in piano. She hadn't quite put together the (limited) solfège she's learning as part of MYC with the notes the teacher makes them sing at school.

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Lorianne offered to babysit our kids (!) while we went out for dinner for our SIXTEENTH wedding anniversary. I kind of think I remember thinking 16 years was a really long time when my parents had their 16th. From this perspective it's not as long as all that!

In any case, as is our tradition, we went to Aroma Meze for some lovely safe gluten free food.

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