Mom's Day 2012, Sax and Squawk!

Another Mother's Day has come and gone. Here we are in our perfect glory just before church, where they dawned the Moms with Carnations and chocolate covered strawberries. Okay, okay, maybe not "perfect", but as I've said many times, we look "accurate".

Well, AleXander does NOT like sitting still for anything, so he kind of loses it for pictures. Here's a few other attempts:

This one almost worked, except I have my "dork" expression in it:

Here are a few outtakes:

And it made sense that he had a little cat-nap after this:

I'm not going to complain about my kids, but if Chris was writing this, he'd tell you how frustrated he was with them this particular Mothers Day as far as their "attitudes" and lack of "cooperation". 

A lot of it can be explained in their ages: 11 and 8...need I say more? But I got a LONG nap after church, so I wasn't as frustrated as Chris was! Haha

$axophone

Mikelle played the tenor sax in band this year. She had her final band concert earlier this week. She really enjoys it, and that makes the monthly rent on the thing all that more bearable (especially since it's a larger and a more expensive instrument). 

She tried to fight me in taking pictures of her with her sax, because she had on her pink silky pajamas and she declares that she "hates" pink. Therefore, she didn't want any pictures of her wearing such a deplorable color. I promised her that I would make the picture black and white before I posted it.  Off the record, I believe that Mikelle doesn't really hate pink. I think she "wants" to hate pink.  

Anyway, Mikelle is asking us to buy her a sax for next year instead of renting one. HA! She's such a funny girl.

Why she has her hand over the end of the sax (where the sound is supposed to come out), I do not know.

SQUAWK!

The Squawk means a completed a circle motif paying homage to the African Grey Parrot. It's about the breed in general, but I highlight three African Greys in particular:

Our Zoey

• Zoey - (right) Our 15 year old African Grey. We've had her since she was 4 months - which means we've had her exactly 15 years this month!

• Einstein - The famous African Grey who can speak on cue and wows audiences everywhere! One of the best videos that shows how awesome Einstein is, can be found here. Zoey can make noises like Einstein, but she won't perform them on cue the way Einstein does. It takes hours of daily training and sweat and work to train a parrot to perform like Einstein.

• Alex - (below) It is very bittersweet to include Alex the Parrot.  He died suddenly in 2007 at the age of  31. He died young for an African Grey. They can live more than 50-60 years. He was an amazing parrot trained by animal psychologist Irene Pepperberg. Not only did she study Alex for three decades, but she cared for him as well.

Alex and Dr. Pepperberg

Here are some articles about just fascinating Alex was:

A Thinking Bird or Just Another Birdbrain?

Also accompanied with a video of him in action.

Alex the Counting Parrot Was Smarter Than We Thought

Alex's Wikipedia Entry

ALEX FOOTNOTE

Moving from Alex the Parrot to our Alexander (who is like a parrot in the way he mimics things, and he can certainly be loud like a parrot), I mentioned above that he does not like sitting still for pictures. That was very evident in the succession of pictures in an arcade photo booth about two weeks ago (left). By the third picture, he was done. Chris and I quickly switched, and wow, that is the cutest "top" of the baby head I've ever seen!