Unsere Familie Verbindung

We heard this a few years ago, and one of my students just reminded me of this great acapella group. Here are two songs they did a few years ago that are worth viewing over and over.

The Twelve Days of Christmas and Carol of the Bells by the acapella group Straight No Chaser.

Merry Christmas all!

Brooke with her swim teammates and coach (in purple t-shirt)



Here are recent photos of Brooke's swim meet last Saturday. It was an all-day event hosted by Blair's YMCA, and many swim team parents volunteered by recording lane times or working in concessions. It was Brooke's first time swimming the IM (individual medley) where they swim all 4 strokes in one race (butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, freestyle). She was also in two relays and three other events - great exercise and long day!!

One of my 8th grade ELL students said while reading his science chapter on stars,

S: Hey, Mrs. Brewer! There's a word in Spanish "casi" like this word "Quasar" (referring to stars).
Me: Really? What does it mean?
S: It means it's like something. Like this garlan is like the real evergreen trees.
Me: I'll look it up in the bilingual dictionary.
(I'm looking "qua...", but only see "que..." words.)
Me: Maybe it has another spelling? Like with a "k" or a "c"? So we found the word he was referring to "casi." (I'm looking at the definition): "almost, nearly"
Me: You can say: Casi nunca (hardly ever) or !Casi nada! (peanuts).
S: Peanuts?
Me: Yeah, like it doesn't cost much. It's just peanuts, or she's not making a lot of money. She's making peanuts.
S: (He started laughing a lot.) Really? That's what "making peanuts" means?

Then he told me that when he was in Texas this guy told him he was "making peanuts" at his job. He thought that this guy was not getting paid money, but getting paid (real) peanuts. He thought to himself that this job must not be very good because all this guy was getting was peanuts! We laughed a lot about that.

Last Friday we had our Christmas piano recital at a local bank. (Click on the photos to see the enlarged versions.)


My four piano students


Our friends - wonderful parents of two of my piano students. They gave all of the girls the roses after the recital, so sweet. Also, they babysit our daughter after school. We love them!


Brooke played Hallelujah Chorus (adapted version), The Little Drummer Boy, Ukrainian Bell Carol, and O Come All Ye Faithful (duet with me). She was nervous but played beautifully!

Isaac and Derrick at the park


Stewart and Brooke


Thanksgiving!


Amy with Baby William - precious!!

Gma with Isaac and Will


Brooke

Shannon and Brooke, Gma and Gpa Kratt
at Crown Center in downtown Kansas City

Happy Thanksgiving 2008! We are thankful for family. So glad to spend time with Derrick and Amy, cousins, and Gma and Gpa who made the big drive to K.C. We have great memories of swinging and throwing the football at the park, going for walks, making snowballs, wrestling on the floor, playing hide-and-go-seek in the dark, reading stories, and playing games. And we love our newest little cousin, William Paul. The first thing Isaac asked his mom the morning we were leaving to go back home, "Can't Brooke go home tomorrow and not today?!"


"I'm an elf!" Back home in Nebraska

We began celebrating Brooke's birthday on Friday night with a trip to see Madagascar II. Then Saturday morning she was excited to open her presents. She will celebrate with friends on Saturday with a party at the local swimming pool.


Brooke wanted to open her presents first thing in the morning...


She was very excited!

And then she broke into karaoke to a new High School Musical CD.

Here is Brooke's tipi after all the hard work and fun memories. She wanted to make sure I posted the final picture so you all could see it.

It's nice to still have Brooke be old enough for trick-or-treating with us... She is already enjoying going with friends for Halloween, and I know in not too long of a time she won't even trick or treat any more. Brooke's already planning next year's costume....

This Halloween I was thinking back to when Derrick was in high school and hid in the pasture on Halloween evening in Wisconsin trying to "catch" the kids who threw eggs, put nails on our driveway, soaped our windows, or took away our mailbox as pranks. And then Chesa or one of the dogs came over to check out what Derrick was doing and sit with him. I can really understand why Derrick was being so vigilant. It seemed like there were years of Halloween pranks on the Kratt property.

I remember a different Halloween when I was in high school. We rode the bus the day after Halloween. A few miles from our house suddenly the bus driver stopped the bus on the side of the road. We looked out the bus windows and saw this big thing lying across the road. I was embarrassed and so surprised to realize it was our mailbox that had been stolen the night before. It looked spray painted and all banged up. It had this big cement stump on the bottom of its pole that Dad had put on it to keep it in place, and so that it wouldn't be stolen. It was so heavy; it must have been so hard to get it out of our ground and way down the road -- but somehow they did! So I think for several years after that Mom and Dad used a spray painted and beat up mailbox until the pranks seemed to subside.

Happy Halloween. It's the morning after and we are all a little sugar-hungover (except Brooke who wanted to eat candy for breakfast). We went trick-or-treating for a while last night, and then Brooke went again with a friend, and then they went to a Halloween party at their school. Shan and I stayed home and watched a couple of movies; nothing scary, we watched Baby Mama and Leatherheads. We did not have one single knock on the door (we live on a highway, so no surprise there) and no eggs or TP or anything like that thank goodness.

After a rocky five-year relationship with his lawnmower, Stewart has decided to end the relationship and move on. It was pretty one-sided, Stewart provided a lot of nice gifts for the mower (filters, plugs, oil, gas, and a $2 gasket air cleaner that that cost $14 to mail). But the mower never really reciprocated and left Stewart feeling depressed much of the time because he felt that he brought more to the relationship than the mower did. Stewart is going to take a break for a few months and then look for a new long-term relationship in the spring with a confident, reliable lawnmower that is willing to work on the relationship and not spend so much time sleeping in the garage and wasting Stewart's cash.

Brooke is making a Plains Indian tipi as a school project. So far she has trees and bushes, and a paper tipi as a model until her cloth one is finished. She hid a deer in the forest for the Indians to hunt. Brooke says, "The landscape looks almost lifelike!" She can't wait to add the people. When she is finished, she will give a presentation to her class about how she made the project and why tipis are so cool.

We do have a terrific family! Fun to see all of the blogs and pictures.

Gma and Gpa Kratt came to Nebraska for a quick weekend. Great to spend time with them. Brooke was thrilled that they came to cheer for her at her swim meet on Saturday - 5 events (50 freestyle, 100 freestyle, 50 backstroke, 200 medley relay, 200 freestyle relay). Good and tired by the end of the day.

Made and decorated Halloween cookies. Ate too many of them.

We also were excited to hear of the safe arrival of our newest cousin/nephew -- little William Paul Kratt (family of Derrick, Amy, and Isaac). What a cutie! Named after two wonderful grandpas-- Grandpa Bill and Grandpa Paul (and amazingly born on Grandpa Paul's birthday!) Thanks for all the updates, D!! Hope you're all able to get some sleep....

Nothing new here, just getting through the week. Stay tuned...