The awesome week all the hard work pays off

This has been a crazy week. It's Bianca's last week before she goes off track for the rest of December. Everytime I ask Bianca about things that have been happening this week, she answers "It's awesome." Not a creative response, but telling nonetheless.

Monday was the Reflections awards ceremony. This year's theme was "Together we can. . ." Bianca worked really hard and entered in three categories. She wrote a cute story called "Piano Girl" in which a girl playing a certain song lures a little girl out from a piano. The two characters work together to find out how to send the girl back to where she needs to be. She entered this in the literature category. In musical composition (Bianca's favorite), she wrote a duet with viola and piano called "Skipping Stones." The song jumps around a lot to resemble stones skipping across the water. The third category was visual art, and Bianca drew a poster of birds singing together while flying through the sky. Bianca is moving onto district in both literature and music composition. She was really excited when the winnings included a $1 coin and a $5 gift card to B& N, which she's already used.

Tuesday was the mall project (see previous blog for more information on Bianca's Beach Band Shack) and the Story Weavers contest at school (which is a storytelling contest). She'd been working on the fairytale called "Toads and Diamonds." She and another boy were chosen to represent her class.

Wednesday was the orchestra concert. Bianca arranged a viola solo with piano called "A Minor" Christmas Puzzle (you're supposed to guess which Christmas songs she put in there) and performed it at the concert. I thought she did great. 

Bianca also arranged a song called "Silent Morning" (based on Silent Night) for her friend Kalli to play on the violin. Bianca was able to accompany her. And yes, that's Portia who danced into the camera. I swear Portia thought the entire concert was a dancing recital for her.

We went to see Ballet West's Nutcracker Thursday night. Eric got free tickets somehow from his work. We're watching our cute neighbor Hannah while her mom is out of town, so she was able to come with us. The seating was open, so we were in the front row, very center seats.

On Friday, Bianca had to go in front of the entire school and tell her "Toads and Diamonds" story again. She competed against the winners of all the other classes, all the way up to the sixth grade. She got fourth place in the whole school. Not bad!

I don't know how much else can be packed into one week. We have to clear out a couple rooms in our house so that our wood floors can be put in while we're away and pack the car for Jackson Hole. We leave on Saturday.