Bread

Spencer and I need to make bread one Sunday, we were both kind of frustrated so we hoped kneeding that bread would help.  It did.

The bread turned out fabulous and was perfect for sandwiches.

Birthday

For my Birthday this year we went and rode a steam engine in Chehalis.  It was a nice 1.5 hour train ride with lots of soot, water spray and family.  It was a great day of train rides.

Sandip

Today I had a guest artist come in and give a concert for 30 of my middle and high school kids. It was way cool. The artists name is Sandip Burman, he is from India and plays the Sitar and tabla drums. I didn't get any video but I have a few pictures from the visit.

I also got to play his Sitar. The strings are a lot sharper than guitar strings and there were 20 of them in two layers. My finger still hurts after 10 hours of resting. I'll have to get the pictures of me playing the sitar from our librarian who was there taking some pictures later.

Overall, fantastic experience and my kids loved it too.

Pictures from day 1 in hospital

More hospital pictures! Kelly is up and moving now. Benjamin has night and day mixed up. And I have the kids. They are so excited to have a new baby in the house. We have some really cute pictures of them holding the kids except the pictures are on the camera still.

Meet Benjamin Ravel Cornwall

So at 4:30 this morning Kelly and I went to the hospital for her 7:30 C-section. At 8:14 am Benjamin was born. He is 9lbs. 4.8oz and is 21" long. Hey maybe our next one will be under 9lbs. :)

So here are some pictures

Adam Cornwall and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very BAD Day

Did you ever have one of the days when you go to work and work really hard, but you feel like you accomplished nothing. I did. Maybe I'll move to Australia.

Today, my sixth graders couldn't play eighth notes to save their life. What happened to the last 2 months of working on eighth notes? Do you think people in Australia can play eighth notes?

My seventh and eighth grade band drummers wouldn't listen, my flutes were flat, and I have a broken saxophone. My bass clarinetist always has to tell me who is misbehaving and I had a trumpet player throw up. I need to move to Australia.

My music appreciation kids are bored and three of them say it's the sixth grades fault (I have 6th-8th grade in this class) what's not exciting about podcasting. Maybe if it was in Australia.

When I came, I wanted to finish arranging a piece for my high school band. The file wasn't on my flash drive. I think I saved it in Australia.

I wanted to cry, but my children wanted to play. I guess I will have to cry another day.

Kelly says some days are just no good... even in Australia.

Band Camp

Last week I had a short little band camp for my small band. I was pretty proud of the work the kids put in when they showed up to rehearsal. We learned 10 songs and then had a performance on Saturday. Our performance was for Rainier's little festival they have every year called Rainier Round-up Days. Not the most exciting festival, but it was a great opportunity for the kids to play at a community event and be seen as not just a band that plays for sporting events. We played for a car show section of the festival and only played for about 15 minutes, but we had a crowd of about 75 people just standing around listening to us play. I think we sounded pretty good and I think we will do it again next year.

House

If you didn't know Kelly and I have now bought a house. We painted the majority of the inside Thursday, Friday, and Saturday while Grandpa Acheson worked on the plumbing in the bathroom. We are kind of scrambling right now because school starts up very soon and we were actually supposed to close on the house July 17. Unfortunately for us the USDA was about a month behind in processing their rural development loans. That only cost us $2000 in per diam. On the other hand, we have a great house that we bought for $20,000 less than it is worth. Yeah instant equity!!!

I don't think the reality of the whole thing has hit us yet. I think it will when we are actually in the house and not painting it.

The really great thing about this house is Mackenzie already went next door and made friends with a girl named Taylor. Taylor is the same age as Mackenzie and they get along really well.

I can't wait for Mom and Dad to get home so Dad and I can work on projects together.

Tomorrow's project: Go under the house and assess the damage while I hook up our dryer vent that fell off.

Outside games

Mackenzie has started to invent her own games. The other day we were outside and she really wanted me to play her new game with her. The new game is called Ka-Koh. I don't know how she came up with the name, but there you go. I asked her how to play Ka-Koh and from what I gather everyone spins around in a circle and the last one to fall over because they are so dizzy is the winner. My head only lasted two rounds of the game. Now she wants to play it more often. I don't know. I think we need to change the game a little.

The other game she likes to play is duck duck goose. Let me tell you it is pure excitement with just three people. Spencer has no clue what's going on he just likes to bop people on the head, Mackenzie likes to run around the circle, and I like watching my kids have fun and feed off each other.

What other summer outdoorsy type games can I play with my 3 year old and 18 month old?

iPhone editorial

One of my favorite teachers at WSU, who only taught one year as a visiting professor, writes editorials every once in a while. I enjoyed this editorial about the iPhone and more generally all the little gadgets that spring up that we think we can't survive without.

check it out here.

Summer Fun!

Summer is here which means Kelly goes to work. She is involved in a Summer Theater program that takes up here day from 9-5. I have the wonderful time to be with the kids for the summer. Yesterday we went to Tolmie State Park at the Advise of my mom. The tide was really low almost a -5. Mackenzie didn't want to walk to the water, but Spencer and I did. I ended up carrying both of them for while.

As we were getting ready to walk up the trail to go home, a nice man showed us his find from the low tide. He found a baby octopus. That made my day and the kids liked it too.

We also saw jelly fish.


And Spencer liked the Sand Dollars.

Tuba

My high school band is rather small. This year I had 6 people in the band. It is really hard to find music for six people when they are on such different playing levels. This year I played the TUBA with the high school band as well as the Trumpet and Trombone. Here is a little clip from our end of the year concert with me on the TUBA. You might need to turn up you speakers a little bit it is not the best recording. I am playing my arrangement of a piece called "Military Escort" written for Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Tenor Sax, Trombone, Tuba, and Drum.

Mackenzie

Mackenzie has been growing up so much in the last few weeks. Things seem to be clicking for her. For example, at night we tell her Princess Mackenzie stories (they're stories about her and the things she did during the day. It doesn't take a lot of creativity to tell them). The other night she looked at me and stated "Those stories are about me aren't they daddy."

She is also starting to reason with us. I told Mackenzie it was time for bed and she replied "Maybe I can sleep in your bed with you and Mommy?" of course I said no and told her that would be silly. She then countered with "That's not silly dad, it makes sense (referring to sleeping in our bed)."

Her most recent venture is doing number 2. She has had a hard time figuring it out. Today was great because I don't think she was feeling well and she had to go like four times. I think she figured out what to do. Well she knows she is rewarded for going #2 and I was cleaning up the gamecube from another day and she asked if she could play the bongo game. I told her no and her cute response was "I went poop, dad! I should play the bongos then." Instead I let her have a picnic for dinner in the living room and she could watch Charlotte's Web.

I love my kids. They is never a dull moment with them and I hope there never is.

Really that's otter pop on Spencer's face and sweater.

I love toy trains!

Tonight I wanted to work a little on my trains and both kids wanted to come out and run the trains. I am totally excited that they want to play with the trains. I think that is the perfect hobby, when your kids can play and enjoy the hobby with you. We got out the engineers hat and started running the trains.

Funny Muppet Clip

I love it when I find a good muppets clip on YouTube. This one is a parody on Oceans 11.

A Whole lot of Nothing

This morning at 5:00 Spencer woke up. He went back to sleep for 20 minutes and woke up screaming. Several times he did this until at 6:00 I decided it wasn't worth getting up and trying to sleep again. We went downstairs and watched a little tv and started having breakfast. At 6:20 he started to scream. Why? I haven't the foggiest. At 7:30 Kelly and I called a member of the ward to come over and check him out. When the doctor arrived at 8:00 (he needed to get dressed and had never been to our house) Spencer fell silent and went to sleep. We checked him out and there really wasn't anything that the doctor could see. It is now 8:30 and he is finally out for a while. Cross your fingers. So, it all really turned out to be a whole lot of nothing.

Trauersinfonie

If you are interested in hearing the trauersinfonie click on the link.

Days that Drain

Today was perhaps the hardest day I have ever had teaching. At 10:30 this morning the high school faculty was informed that one of the juniors had taken his life between 8:30 and 9:00 that morning. While it was not one of the students in my class I knew him because of his upbeat personality, his devotion, and his humor. He always greeted me in the hallways with a smile and was always looking to help someone who was down. At 11:00 when classes started up after our nutrition break, each faculty member read a prepared statement to their classes and then let them go to where ever they needed to go. I didn't think that I would be sought out by students to simply sit in my room and get a hug. It was the hardest thing I have had to do. It is the one thing I hate doing because I don't feel that I am any good at comforting. I think I deal with these kinds of things in ways that others don't. I like to listen to Wagner's Trauersimphonie. It is calming yet moving and covers the emotions that I feel need to be covered.

The hardest part was seeing how many people love that student and are going to have a big gap in their life without him there. I'm sad. I have had to be strong enough for the students and now that I am home I am simply sad. I think I personally am starting to feel the effects and start to cry every now and again.

Mackenzie asked me tonight why I my face was wet and patted me on the knee saying it was okay. She did just what I did all this afternoon for my students. I feel so much closer to the students in Rainier then I ever have and I hate that it is because we lost one.

Not a lot of information has been released. I hope they don't release anymore than they already I have. I'd rather not know.

I'm sorry if this is random. I just needed to write my thoughts before I explode.

My beard

I don't know if all of the family has seen my newish beard yet, so I've decided to post a picture of the wonder that so many cornwall's have tried and failed.

Failed Verizon Math is tested

Okay so I thought this was pretty funny. If you remember a little while back Ian posted on Verizon Math Fails



Here is a follow-up to that video. It's just a picture but it is totally worth a thousand words.