Aidan was in the top two finishers in his fifth grade section (~60 students), so he had the honor of participating in the all-school spelling bee. Jim and I were both able to attend the bee and it was a fun time. Samantha Boyce had the audience laughing and comfortable, though I'm pretty sure the same couldn't be said for the other participants in the bee. Aidan, for example, was extremely nervous, despite that we had tried not to put any performance pressure on him!
Here he is with the other top ten finishers - that's him in the blue shirt with the baseball on it, near the center of the picture. He's looking at the ground because he thinks if he holds his head up, he'll pass out!
Despite his trepidations, Aidan did very well indeed in the all-school spelling bee. He tied for third with Samantha Boyce; a sixth grader named Tyler placed second, and Cade, Aidan's friend and classmate took first place. The word that took Aidan out was "virulently" - a really tough one!
We are really proud of our son for doing so well. So proud, in fact, that we rewarded him with his own guitar. :) He had been renting a school guitar for his lessons until recently. He's really pleased with his new one. His guitar teacher keeps thinking of excuses to play it himself during lessons, because it has such a nice sound.
I had a great 38th birthday! The weekend before my birthday, we went to Marge's Saturday morning as usual, then took the kids to Papa's house to spend the weekend. My mom's Aunt Doris Tillotson had passed away earlier in the week, so Mom was at the funeral, not at her house, but the kids had a terrific time with Papa. With his help, Aidan built his Scarab Beetle Robot from a kit he received at Christmas from Michael and Laura Qin. Soldering and everything, and it works perfectly. Mom got back late Saturday night and had time to hang out with the kids on Sunday. We picked the kids up Sunday afternoon and headed home, back to reality!
While the kids stayed with my parents, Jim and I came back to Grand Rapids for a weekend "on the town". We had lunch at our favorite sandwich spot, Cosi in East Lansing. Then we braved the snowstorm on the freeway and made it back to Grand Rapids, no problem. We had hot drinks at Biggby and went to see "The King's Speech" at the movies - it was terrific. We went boot shopping but didn't find anything - it seems January is a bad time to find boots in my size, 'cause everyone seemed to be out of stock! Downtown we checked into the JW Marriott, where they had already unpacked the flowers for me from my husband and put them in a vase in our room. :)
We ventured out and had dinner at the BOB (Big Old Building); at the Monkey Bar in the basement. They call what they serve "small plates" but I call them "awesome plates". We had potstickers, prawn with some sort of super-hot sauce served with lime sorbet, and very thin slices of duck. Both the duck and the potstickers were served with pickles like my mom used to make them - thin slices of cucumber soaked in vinegar just overnight. They were awesome. For dessert we had a teeny little chocolate lava cake and the most incredible ice cream sandwiches ever prepared. The cookies were chocolate chip - with both dark and milk chocolate chips - and the ice cream was vanilla but with a tiny bit of orange flavor. Awesome.
We watched the A-Team movie in our room and stayed warm rather than go out again, and picked up the kids the next afternoon. It was a nice weekend away.
On my actual birthday the children and Jim all gave me nice cards, and a trip to the spa, in addition to a perfectly sized little birthday cake. Thanks to my family for a super birthday. :)