Our Most Successful Festival Yet!

On Tuesday, Alyssa and Austin performed at the Lethbridge Piano Teachers' Festival. Video of their performances is below. Amazingly enough, every performance won first place! Austin competed in a class of 7 kids. In Alyssa's solo class there were only two people and in the duet class there were 6 duets and trios. We just got a call tonight inviting them to play all their pieces as the final concert tomorrow night. That is an honor we have never before received. Unfortunately, we just booked a hotel for tomorrow night to be in Medicine Hat for Alyssa's basketball tournament. Alyssa is also supposed to be in Red Deer with her school band for the provincial music festival. Why does everything have to happen all at once?

Sock folding in the new laundry room

Preston is trying to earn money to buy a video game and so he has been asking for extra jobs. His favorite is folding socks. I had folded all the other laundry and left the socks special for him. He folded 30 pair for $3.00. I love that he climbs up on the counter in the laundry room to do his work. I love how functional the room is and I love that Preston likes jobs that put things in order!

Little People Conference

This past weekend we went to the Little People of Alberta conference. This was the first event of its kind. There were over 200 registrants and little people came from all over Alberta as well as Saskatchewan and British Columbia. There were even a few people there from Ontario. The conference was held at the Calgary Sheraton Cavalier hotel. The hotel has a pool with waterslides as well as conference rooms and banquet services. The conference went Friday night and Saturday. On Friday there was a family pool party. On Saturday three doctors who are on the LPA medical advisory board were there and gave presentations. They were also available for individual appointments. Saturday afternoon there were sessions for parents, and for teens. There was also a session on adaptive equipment and a session where they organized the Dwarf Athletic Association of Canada. Later they took a group photo of all the little people. On Saturday evening there was a banquet and a dance. In addition to all that, there was a clothing exchange and a raffle.  

Our family went down Friday afternoon and stayed two nights at the hotel. We went to the pool party and visited there with a few people we knew and met some new people. There Austin made friends with two boys, Max and Ethan who both have achondroplasia like Austin. They are both from the lower mainland in BC. Max is 14 and Ethan is 11. The three were pretty much inseparable at the pool on Friday night. On Saturday when Rob and I were at sessions, we gave Austin a room key and he was free to roam around with his new friends. They went swimming some more on Saturday, too. Alyssa and Preston had a half-way good time too. Alyssa was Preston's babysitter on Saturday. They watched tv in the hotel room most of the morning and then went to the pool in the afternoon.

I went to one session (not quite necessary yet) on family planning and pregnancies for little people. It was really interesting. I also went to a session on skeletal dysplasias in life's phases. I enjoyed the session for parents and the session on adaptive equipment was taught by the tiniest little lady, about 2 1/2 ' tall. She has her house all adapted to her size. She loves it when her 6'2" brother comes to her house and has to use her bathroom or kitchen. She thinks it is poetic justice! 

The banquet and the dance were pretty fun. The little kids were so cute dancing!

Max, Austin and Ethan. Notice who's tallest!

With Alyssa. Alyssa thinks Ethan is a super good-looking little person!

Some kids dancing.

These two kids were soooooo cute! They are seriously about 15" tall. I'd guess about 3 or 4 years old. The girl and the boy have the same type of dwarfism, I think. They were dancing together quite a bit.  I watched this little boy's parents. They are young, good-looking, fit, and presumably well-educated. I imagined that they never thought they would have a child like this. It seemed he was their only child. But, they were so loving and mindful of him. It was the sweetest thing I have ever seen.

This is Austin, partying down!

Easter Egg Hunt

We took a little break from renovating on Easter Monday morning, or at least I did (Rob kept working) for an Easter Egg hunt for the kids. We hid 95 eggs with candy inside as well as chocolate bunnies. Each kids got to find 30 eggs then then the especially hard ones were anyone's find. We staggered the kids' start times. Preston started first then Austin and last Alyssa. This allowed them each to find eggs most appropriate in difficulty to their age. 

We invited Shari, Mark's former caregiver to come to the Easter Egg hunt. She helped keep Mark entertained.

After we were done all the candy went in a big bowl and I'm afraid I ate more than my share!

Preston's birthday party

On the Saturday after Preston's birthday, in March, we had several of his friends over for a Spy themed birthday party. It was super fun. Thank you to Alyssa and her friend, Teesha for helping a lot with the party.

The first things the kids had to do was "spy training." This involved seeing how fast they could get through an obstacle course we set up in the garage. The course involved balance beam walking along boards, jumping through tires, shooting a hockey puck in the net, rolling a tire, riding a scooter and putting a golf ball.

Once they had passed their training, the kids all made spy identity cards. Alyssa and her friend took pictures of the kids and they put their pictures in the cards and filled in their information, etc. These cards were pretty special because they look the a credit card, but if you open it up there is a spy identity card  hiding inside.

One of the activities was to pass through a zone of "Laser trip wire" The kids had to contort their bodies and try to get through without touching any of the "lasers." They loved this and wanted to do it again and again.

Preston's cake was a 60s style black bomb. 

I guess I got too busy to take pictures of their secret mission. They listened to a voice recording of Austin with his voice modulated so that it was really low. He called himself "Agent X" and told them they had a special mission. They had to look for one clue to the next, each in a manilla envelope labelled "top secret" Each clue led to the next, but each had something to solve--a cypher, or decoding the invisible ink, or figuring out a picture that was taken super close up, etc. Finally at the end of the clue trail they found their gift bags which included invisible ink pens, magnifying glasses, a notebook, disguise glasses with nose and mustache, etc.

I think the kids had a great time.I am discovering that parties are so much easier and better since the invention of the internet. We found so many cool spy party ideas online and Alyssa helped implement them. The kids were very well-behaved because they loved the activities.