Home (Sort of)

My room in the knew apartment is almost done. All that needs to go in is the furniture, and the statues on them. I have a table in my room for the T.V. (Dad said I could have the broken T.V.). A few boxes with action figures, and my shelving for toys. I put all my stuffed animals on the shelving though. They take up a lot of space. I didn't realize how much I had. I like soft stuff and they're soft, when I see them I want to have something soft, and they piled up over the years.

The girl who was at the apartment before us put up fans on the lights. Mine works really well. Gets the air circulating (my mom and dad's is broken, pays off for the T.V.). She also left flower pot hangers in my room, the living room, and the porch. I hung three bats from the one in my room. The one in the living room I hung small plush snowmen. I bought them at a school sale. I have I think eight in the collection. Only six were in the box that me and my mom took with us to the apartment.

Mom and I have taking a car load of stuff to the apartment every day for two or three days. We were going to tomorrow but Mom has to work at 11:00 and it takes us about an hour to get everything in and set up in the right room. Then we hang out for a while because I think the apartment is really cool. The assistant manager says that our apartment is the biggest in the building. Along with two others. Were on the inside corner which means the apartment wraps around the building giving us more space.

Mom and me are very excited about this. We always love going over there. Mom just needs a little break tomorrow before work, that's why she probably won't go. If she sleeps well she said we can do a small trip.

As I have said we are very excited, except for Dad. He has to be negative about this.

Apartments

We signed the lease for the apartment! Mom and Dad didn't want to because it was taking them so long to get back to us. we wanted to sign it almost two weeks ago! We went through a lot of papers and got the keys. I took along a tape measure to measure my room to see if my stuff would fit. My mom said that if she does not get called into work on the sixth we can start taking stuff over. My mom reserved movers for us on the eleventh I think it was and that is when we should be moving in.

We had a pretty bad storm last night. We didn't have to go to the basement but the rain was blowing up against our house causing a lot of noise. Mom got home a little late because the storm started when her store closed. There was nothing on the news so I just watched movies while Dad slept in the other room.

Sixth Sax Lesson

I had my sixth sax lesson. We are now almost all the way through the book! One more lesson and we should be all the way through it. When we got to the lesson all the rooms were taken so we spent five minutes looking for a room. Then we finally went out side to do the lesson.

We went through the songs pretty easily. I squeaked on a few G's, but we fixed that up pretty well. He was amazed at the amount of practice again (about as much as last week).

Me and Dad went out today to buy the second book. When we got there we bought a Drag'n Swab. The person there said it was their best sax cleaning product. You put it through the sax and pull it back and forth through it. We also bought a stand.

Not writing much because nothing is happening. We have been approved by the apartments, but we still can't move in.

Fort

In the confusion of packing I decided to build a fort using all the boxes around the house. It started out as just two rows of boxes moved apart to make a hallway like space. My mom came home and thought nothing of some boxes with a blanket covering it.

There is three boxes in one row and on the left side I took the last one up against the wall away. Then I moved it next to a huge pile of boxes to create one room, and two hallways. When Mom came home and saw that she started to think something was up. I said "The room's a mess anyway. It doesn't look any different except for the blankets."

After that I moved my fort to the second pile on the other side of the room. Now I had the part before and a bigger room. By now the fort covered a whole side of the living room wall.

Then I used the second pile to make another room. Now my fort covers about 60% of the living room. I have a kitchen where I put snacks. A T.V. and a space where I can sleep in peace with my cat who also has a bed in the so called 'bedroom'.

This is the fort. I had to make it small so that the computer wouldn't take long to load.

Here is the tour of my fort.

This is what it looks like to enter through the first hallway. The one that I made first. It might be hard to see because were having a storm and it's getting dark out and this is right next to a window. The first one looks like it's bright out, but inside it's dark.

This is the first room that I made where I hid from my mom when she came home. Strait ahead is the room with the T.V. and to the left is the second entrance.

This is the second entrance. The first does not have a blanket covering it because I used that one for another room. This is from inside, the other entrance was from outside.

I mad this one brighter because we're getting farther away from the window and using blankets to cover the fort. That blocks out the light. This is the T.V. room. The this in the middle is supporting the roof. The black thing to the left of that is the T.V. In the top left corner you can see the kitchen. You might not be able to make it out, but there are a few snacks there. To the left is the 'bedroom'.

I like to call this room the 'Dark Room'. I call it that because it is very dark. I brightened the picture a lot so I could see it. If you have a computer screen that is brighter, this might be really bright. Our computer is dieing and everything is dark. To the left is where I made a little bed for the cat.

This is probably very hard to see. I took this one inside the dark room. You might not be able to tell what this is so I will tell you. It is two boxes stacked on top of each other with one in front of it. It's basically a chair made out of three boxes. I made it for the cat. He hasn't gone on it let. In fact he doesn't even know that there is other room to the fort. I added the dark room today and the cat hasn't gone in it since then.

This concludes our tour.

Fifth Sax Lesson

I haven't been writing much lately. In fact I don't think I wrote anything last week. Now I have something to write about. My fifth sax lesson.


When we got there my teacher was waiting inside the doorway. We went inside to start the lesson and when he saw how much I practiced, this is what he said "....................."
I practiced forty minutes one day, one hundred and forty the next, then one hundred, then twenty five. Can you believe that last day?

The practice went really well. The first few songs that I played had little or no error. Then a song with mostly G's. My bad note. He gave me the next level of reed and that cleared up the errors. He said he told a lot of other teachers about me and they were jealous.

My teacher finally got a tenor sax. He said his was in the shop and that he couldn't get it until they fixed it. So yesterday he finally got it. He said he hadn't played it for about ten years, but all saxes are the same, just in a different key.

More Music

I said yesterday I would try to get some songs onto my blog. They're a little late, but here they are.

This song is the one I said on an older post that I played for my teacher. It is the one on the last page. This is Grant Us Peace.



This song when I played it for my teacher said I played it way to fast. Now that I listen to the songs I think I might of played them all to fast. This is Ming Court.



This song I played almost perfect, but my dad was recording me. At the end of this one there is a rest. The song goes longer, but my dad stopped it after the rest. I wasn't able to get the second part and the first part, so here is the first. This is the song that I suggested I play to my teacher. I hope you like Sawmill Creek Part 1.



Packing has been stressful, but we finally got my room done. We have about 80% done I'd say. Today when we were finishing off my room my mom got angry, but I didn't get angry back. This has been a stressful time for us.

Fourth Sax Lesson

I had my fourth sax lesson. It went really well We started out by trying to find out where the back round squeaks were coming from. We adjusted my mouthpiece and the squeaks were gone. I played out of the assigned pages from the book and we worked on dynamics. That is how loud or soft you play.

We finished the first half of the book and at the middle is three songs. I asked if he wanted me to play them (I will try to post one of them tomorrow) and I played along with the computer. What the computer does is take in your notes then with a red or green color says if you made the notes right. I got most and I played a second one and got most again.

My teacher was going through the book and I said that I didn't know how to play the higher notes at first so I practiced out of the back where lower notes were. He said he wanted to hear it and I played him Grant Us Peace which my band teacher said was the hardest song in the book. I will try to bring that one up tomorrow on a post. When I was done he said "This is what happens when you practice forty minutes a day four days a week!"

I don't mean to brag, but he was very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very impressed with my playing. He said "If only some of me other student could hear you play!" Then I said "Well, you could record it." Then we started to laugh (I don't know why).


This practice went very well. I can tell (and so can my parents) that my teacher is very impressed. He said after I played the song from the back "I don't know what to say!"

My teacher went to one of the stores that sells music and he bought the Pink Panther which is from a movie we really like. We paid him $5 for it and today I am going to try and play it. We watched one of the movies last night so I could get a feel for the song.

Apartment

We found an apartment to live in. Yesterday (July 8) we went to the apartment and town house place. We were able to see a two bedroom apartment on the first floor. That one was O.K. Then we asked if we could see the two bathroom two bedroom apartment on the third floor. We wern't supposed to see that until today, but the person living said we could if we didn't mind the mess. Our house is a mess already so it didn't matter. That one was cool. It had a nice kitchen space and the living room space was incredible. The deck was more sturdy that the first we looked at a few weeks ago. The lights in the bedrooms had little fans on them. The assistant manager said that those would probably stay with the apartment when the person living there moved.

It only had one phone outlet from what we could see so that puts our computer in the living room (which is where it would have been without the outlet in that spot). The bedrooms were a nice size. Enough to put all my dragon statues in. The two bathrooms were right across from the rooms. So we could do what we do now. I have my bathroom (which is the biggest) and Mom and Dad have theirs. My bathroom didn't look like it had a toilet but it was hiding behind the door.

My mom and dad's room had a walk-in closet. All the rooms have a small walk-in closet, but that one had enough room for four people!

We went down to the office and I got to watch game shows on T.V. Mom and Dad talked a bit with the assistant manager and we locked down that apartment. That means it is ours. We also got two garages for our cars and storage.

There are few other things that come into play, but we'll deal with those when the time comes.