Team Gray!

. . . because I am corny like that.

Xay decided he wanted to learn how to play guitar. So he braved the savage beast known as scary big sister and went in her room. And got the guitar out of her closet. Daddy had brought home a miniature guitar from one of his travels many years ago. Yanni has kept it safe in her closet ever since, waiting for me to finally get around to taking it to the music store and replacing its missing strings.

Xay didn’t care whether it had all its strings, or what the pitches were supposed to be for each string. He just wanted to play guitar. So, he started doing what he does on every musical instrument (piano, recorder, Merlin Electronic Puzzle Game, the strings on the window); he starts picking out every tune he knows. I find this terribly flattering, because most of the tunes are ones I wrote.

Curtis saw Xay playing with the guitar and he urged me to (finally) go and buy the proper strings, as well as a beginner book. I wish he’d reminded me to get a pick too. I totally forgot that Xay was using a paper clip instead.

The book came with a couple CDs, and Xay has been watching them to learn how to tune the guitar and how to play a few chords. He thinks he forgot how to play what he was playing before he learned how to tune the guitar. I don’t think his fingers have forgotten, but Xay and Yanni are afflicted with perfect pitch, so if it’s not in the exact key as before, they’re at sea. I don’t have that problem; my relative pitch makes it easy to transpose music, but difficult to pick the right pitch out of the air.

Esteban found this inflated guitar today, and decided he wanted to be just like his big brother. I took video of it too, because Esteban was singing along with Xay’s chords, but Xay looks like a pool of blackness in the video; it’s really not ready for viewing. I still must learn the new camera, and I sorely miss the old one.

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When I can figure out how to do it, I’m going to post a piano lessons series, a lot like cooking blogs, showing the step to step of a piano lesson. If for nothing else, for archival purposes. I have yet to see whether my methods of piano training would be applicable anywhere else.

I left Xay with the babies while I took Yanni to her play rehearsal. We got there on time!

When I returned, I found two cheerleaders, a pint-sized basketball player, and their military ring leader in a gold cape. Xay was barking out drills to his young siblings, who were quick to listen, take cover, or do whatever maneuver he ordered.

Xay was holding his nerf bow and arrow, as the little children gleefully scattered. Then he abandoned the older foam weapon for one of his recent rewards for reading the Bible. Why no, I find nothing unusual about rewarding a boy for reading the Bible with a giant foam gun. I am surprised that it wasn’t strictly a nerf gun, and that Xay was cool with that.

Imani picked up the bow and arrow, while Esteban had a remote from a rumble robot in each hand, a gold piece of fabric (his cape) draped over his shoulders. Joy depended on her super sonic speed to avoid annihilation.

Then Esteban started crying. He wasn’t hurt; just angry he didn’t have a weapon. I remembered all the foam guns I’d banned to the garage. Xay was one step ahead of me. He went out and retrieved one of his Nerf maverick pistols and gave it to Joy. I looked up and saw that Esteban still didn’t have any weapons. I insisted Xay look for his Nerf reactor, or what we lovingly refer to as the ball gun. I had put that in the garage when I could see that we’d lose all four balls in the house, and possibly break something in the process. Xay couldn’t find it, but Joy said she knew where it was. She went to the garage and came back clutching the gun with one ball in it.

Esteban had meanwhile claimed the bow as his weapon of choice, and couldn’t be persuaded to use the ‘broken’ ball gun. Xay was spitting fire as he pumped and pumped the gun but couldn’t discharge the ball. Finally, after pumping a while, he shot the ball with great force across the kitchen. Imani ran to fetch another ball.

Now we were in business. Imani with the ball gun, Joy with the pistol, Esteban on bow and arrow, and Xay and his salvo machine gun thing.

I can hardly believe we have enough nerf weapons for a bona fide war. I must not have been paying attention when Xay’s friends come over in nice weather. He actually has 4 pistols, but very few bullets, due to all the wreckage all over the lawn when he and his friends get done. Of course, Xay blames the babies for showing those things off to their friends. I’m not sure; that’s why I try to keep them out of sight out of mind.

The house sounds like it does when Xay’s having a birthday party. Doors slamming, yelling, feet pounding. Only much more screaming. That’s what happens when you fight with little girls. Or any girls, for that matter.

Remind me to write about all the retro toys in the house next time.

We’ve been to a lot of basketball games this season. Over the last couple of weeks, Yanni’s team has played freshmen teams from local high schools. There was a disappointing defeat at the Catholic High school. They had no bench! But they had a girl who could shoot 3 point shots all day. And they beat us by 4 points.

Then we played the Christian High School. Slaughtered us. I think we kept them from a double digit win, but, a loss nevertheless.

But the coaches insisted that the girls got better by playing these competitive teams. The two games they had won during the season were against homeschool teams. We’ve played three homeschool teams, so that would be a 2 out of 3 record against homeschool teams. Not bad, considering our tournament will be exclusively against homeschool teams.

Yesterday we had a rematch with one of those teams we’d beaten before. Before, we watched as they whittled our 10 point lead to 2 points, and we just barely won.

Yesterday, we traveled 45 minutes to play them, braving single digit temperatures, beating a huge snow storm.

When we got there, the gym was dark. The bleachers were still pushed up against the wall. Yanni was the first person to arrive. She was thrilled. I turned on a light in the gym, and then waited in the hall with the other children.

Yanni was a starter, probably because she’d gotten there so early. It took a long time for either team to score the first basket. The other team got the first basket. Then our team got a basket, and some kind of foul that allowed us to shoot again from the court. We had 4 points, but the scoreboard didn’t reflect that for a long time. I began to think that maybe our first shot hadn’t counted. Then, finally, the scoreboard gave us our due.

In the second half, our team really took off. This time we took advantage of the fact that their team had no bench. We had four on the bench, and rotated them wisely. We pulled to a 9 point lead.

And we kept our lead! And we built on it. We even had an exciting basket attempt at the final buzzer. That final basket didn’t go in, but we won the game, decidedly! The girls are now more confident to go against another freshman team, this time of an A school.

We hear they’re having a rough season.