Recorder Belt

You can see that Madison has earned yet another belt with her recorder.  She's only got one more to go, and then she'll be a real black belt!  Each class, there's a certain challenge that the recorder students must master, and if they are able to overcome this, they can then truly earn their new belt, which as you can see above, is proudly put on their instrument.

She's earned white, then blue, then red, and now brown.  For brown, she had to climb a mountain behind the school there and answer three questions from a wise sage, all so she can gain passage through a hidden cave where she would go deep within and get into a recorder battle with an Ancient Recorder Master who would decide if she was deemed worthy of the brown belt.  Indeed, as you can see from her triumphant face above, she was worthy!

The next belt will be the last one, the most difficult challenge of all, the one that separates the mere mortals from the legends.  Madison has been up late at night, tooting away, practicing and meditating with her sacred instrument in the backyard, getting in tune with her inner recorder spirit.

Today has been a busy day, and slightly stressful.  Okay, a lot stressful.  But what do you expect from the Ides of March?  We explained that to Madison, what the Ides of March were all about, at least from a Shakespearean point of view.  So it stands to reason that the next thing that happened was a sentence of doom in the Chestatee Elementary Parking Lot.  It's an exaggeration, but only slightly.  If you get stuck going one particular way in that parking lot, you're there an extra fifteen minutes.  No joke.  We did warn ourselves this morning:  "Beware the Ides of March!"

Mommy had been working on Uma's costume today, which should be ready by next weekend.  Daddy wrote the skit for this weekend, which has another few lines for Madison, and a new costume for her as well.  She's looking forward to it, of course.

We had a lot of dancing tonight, which is usual for Thursday.  Daddy was working late on this weekend, while Mommy was grocery shopping for St. Patrick's Day, which we'll be celebrating on Saturday at Ye-Ye and Nana's house.  It should be fun!

Tonight, we watched another episode of "A Series of Unfortunate Events" with Madison, and it's definitely something that she's into.  We might be reading a book or two of this series soon enough, but tonight no reading:  we got to bed pretty late after that episode.  It's a big long day, but we wanted to make sure she had time for sitting on the couch and doing not much.  One reason is that the "Ides of March" rule didn't effect her grammar test today:  she got a 100 on it.  She was proud of that.  Between that, and her mystical brown belt for the recorder, she deserved a night chilling with the villains.