Practicing for the Recital

Josh took this photo of Madison playing keyboard, practicing for the upcoming piano recital.  As you can see, she's using both hands on the keys now, something that Mommy and Daddy have to practice on as well in order to keep up with her.  It seriously won't be too long until Madison will be ahead of us with her skills.  Daddy wants to learn a little too, so he's been practicing on the side - maybe we'll learn together at this rate.  Madison is getting better and better though:  practice truly does make perfect.  And although she isn't perfect yet, she is getting better and better each time she plays.  In just a short time, she'll be performing at a recital, playing for everyone the song "Mr. Snail."  It's a simple song, but it requires the use of two hands, which is something we were wanting Madison to focus more and more on.  You know we'll be taking all sorts of pictures and maybe some video of the big event, so look for it here pretty soon.  Madison enjoys playing the piano, and loves her classes.  A good teacher makes all the difference, and in this case, Mrs. Pam is an excellent teacher, filled with patience and the ability to keep things moving along.  We've been very pleased!

Here's another photo taken by Josh.  Everyone came over to the house to do some filming for the upcoming Summer Xtreme camp.  Madison is shown here, playing with Fifi, a little kitten owned by the nefarious villain in our movie series.  As mentioned earlier, everything is going to be in 3D, so we've actually done some 3D filming at our house:  the opening scene shows our main characters watching television - our television - when they are suddenly sucked into the screen and suddenly a part of the different shows on the screen (like "Jurassic Park" and "Phineas and Ferb").  Madison was helpful during the filming - she's not in any of the shoots yet, but maybe she'll show up eventually.

Our old friend Alan showed up today to check on Daddy, which was rather nice of him.  Alan couldn't drop by at the hospital, as he was away in Los Angeles on a small vacation, so he made the extra effort of showing up today at the house and spending some time with us.  It was good to simply sit and talk with him.  Daddy didn't have much energy, but it was nice just sitting on the couch and talking about the old and new.

Eventually everyone left, and that's pretty much when Daddy collapsed!  So tired, he sat down to take a brief nap, and didn't wake up again until the next morning!