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Leah's high school orchestra held their third concert of the year in December. In addition to her string orchestra playing, they joined together with members of the band to form a symphonic orchestra for the last two pieces. Leah's sitting in the front row throughout, so she's easy to see. Pieces with timestamps (click them to jump there): Symphony 104 'London' by Haydn - 0:00 Adagio for String...

The county-wide Howard County Youth Orchestra, including Molly, had their December concert and it was wonderful as always. Pieces within: Nabucco Overture by Verdi - 0:00 Bishop Rock Overture by Carwithen - 7:28 Pájaros de Tres Alas by Amaya - 15:57 Symphony No. 2 in D Major by Sibelius - 23:50

Leah's orchestra hosted a pyramid concert a month ago. This is a concert where the high school invites middle and elementary schools that feed it to join them. Each orchestra plays on its own, and then they combine together for a couple fun side-by-side pieces. Here's video of Leah's orchestra on their own along with the combined pieces.

Molly's high school held their annual Pops concert. It included lots of groups playing Halloween-themed music. Molly played with the combined orchestra as well as her orchestra.

Leah had her first high school orchestra concert a couple weeks ago. This is the more advanced orchestra at her school, and she's one of the few freshmen to make it in. They were great!

In Costa Rica, we went kayaking through the Isla Damas (Damas Island) mangrove estuary. It was extremely peaceful, with calm waters and beautiful mangrove trees all around us. We saw white mangrove, red mangrove, black mangrove, and pineapple mangrove trees. In this short video, you can see how peaceful it was, and also see a monkey jumping through the trees at the end.

Leah and I drove down from Manuel Antonio to Uvita to go whale watching. We met up with Pacific Expeditions, went to the entrance of Parque Nacional Marino Ballena (Marine Whale National Park), walked to the beach, out into the water, and into a boat. We saw 6 humpback whales on our tour, beginning with a mother/baby pair, then a male on his own, then another male, and finally another mother/ba...

We took a guided tour of Manuel Antonio National Park and saw lots of animals. Here's a short montage of some of the animals including sloths, howler monkeys, a humming bird, and a lot of leaf cutter ants (they were everywhere).

View from the observation deck in Monteverde Cloud Forest. You can see the two different weather systems on the two sides of the continental divide, and all the clouds in the cloud forest.

While visiting Monteverde, we went on a canopy tour ziplining through a cloud forest up in the mountains. We went to 100% Aventura, which everyone said was the most extreme, scariest zipline course around. They were right - it was intense. This included 9 normal-style ziplines, working up to a long one over a large gorge. Then, we moved on to 2 Superman-style ziplines across the gorge, with the...

In La Fortuna, Costa Rica, we went canyoning and waterfall rappelling with Pure Trek. It was awesome! Well, at least some of us thought it was awesome. We rappelled down 3 waterfalls, including the initial 175 foot tall one, as well as one rock wall. We also did something called the Monkey Drop, where you zip line out over some water, then they drop you, then catch you before you hit to slow yo...

Leah's middle school's music program took their annual trip to Hershey, Pennsylvania for Music in the Parks this past weekend. We got to school at 4:30am to load up the buses, spent the morning performing in front of adjudicators, spent the afternoon at Hershey Park, then went to the awards ceremony where our kids cleaned up in awards. Here are the performances of the Chamber Orchestra (the hig...

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