Durro wrote:Claire-Bear the Wonder Girl's quest to rule the world continues on as scheduled. Her school cheerleading team just won the regional championships in their division and are off to the state titles next month.

Well, to nobody's surprise, Claire co-Captained her school cheer squad at the state titles and the girls won their division. Furthermore, they also won the prize for the highest score of any team in any division on the day. They're off to the National Cheerleading Titles in September.

Here's my Claire-Bear at the National Cheerleading Titles, where they came first in Level 1 (Primary School) and were the overall Level 1 champions, beating club teams as well.

Claire is the smallest member of the team, the little blonde girl who is one of the flyers - she's the one to the right of screen that ends up standing on team mates' shoulders, etc.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZGdD1Zur1k[/youtube]

Durro wrote:

Durro wrote:

Awesome Durro

And obviously Claire gets her looks from her mother's side


When / Where are the nations Durro?

Weaver wrote:More fun times with the creature ...

So my wife and I used some of the money we saved during my deployment to purchase new reclining chairs for ourselves - and got a pretty good deal, enough that we splurged on a child-sized recliner for the creature. She liked it well enough:

I think Basement Kitteh be messin wif ur fokus!

My kid attended a social at her stepdad's university, got up on stage and danced in a contest, beating out a bunch of teenagers and adults. The prize: tickets to see Lady Ga Ga. To my mind, not exactly fare for an 8 yr old, but apparently LGG toned down her act for the holiday show, with kid-friendly opening acts.

Her verdict: "concerts are loud."

Doing her "Darwin Dance" in front of the T-Rex at a dinosaur park run by creationists:



PS Metatron -
Finally got around to watching Dogma. At last I understand your moniker and your enthusiasm for the Buddy Christ.

My 10 year old son and I were talking about the dinosaur feathers found in Alberta amber. We both agreed it would be really cool to hold one. this concluded with the following:

Son - "I love learning this stuff. I can't decide which I like more. learning about the past or the future"

Me - "There isn't really a good way of learning about the future."

Son - "Well dinosaurs and stuff were already here. We haven't been very far into space yet. So learning about space is kinda like learning about the future."

Made me think

My 4 and a half year old daughter trolled her occupational therapist.

First, some background. My daughter, like myself, has Asperger's syndrome (a mild form of autism). In her case it manifests as a high sensitivity to sounds, touch and smells, slow social development, and a freakish intelligence. I mean, she started reading and doing math at 2, and now she's reading a third greader level series of books caller "the Magic Treehouse", doing addition and subtraction of numbers in the thousands, basic multiplication and division... and she's still in pre-school. Recently she's even been asking questions about death.

Anyway, being an only child, se has also created some imaginary friends. One of them's name is Fireworks (how cool is that?). So, last week she was at the therapist's office (for her high sensitivity issues) and the therapist was concerned with the imaginary friends. As my daughter was playing some game with Fireworks, the therapist asked my wife wether my daughter could distinguish reality from fantasy, and if she knew that her friend wasn't real, at which point my daughter turned to the therapist and said, "of course she's not real. She's in my head! Come on, Fireworks". And she turned back around and went back to her game.

Had an interesting conversation with my eight year old this evening. He was incensed because, for a quiz question asking how many tens were in the number 936, he'd been marked wrong for giving the answer 93.

He's just about to finish The Hobbit, and wants to read LOTR - what do people think about the age-appropriateness? He's read all the Potter books, FWIW.

Jie, that sounds like a smart little cookie you've got there! Adults are so stoopid sometimes.

Made of Stars wrote:Had an interesting conversation with my eight year old this evening. He was incensed because, for a quiz question asking how many tens were in the number 936, he'd been marked wrong for giving the answer 93.

He's just about to finish The Hobbit, and wants to read LOTR - what do people think about the age-appropriateness? He's read all the Potter books, FWIW.

I reckon LOTR is more age appropriate for an 8yo than the later Potter books which veer into teen romance themes. We're actually holding our 9yo back on the later Potters so she can relate to them better as a spotty teenager

Actually, LOTR could be a good way of diverting her from her Pottermania

(And I fully agree with your son - what disgraceful teaching. It took me a while to work out what he'd got "wrong" and my first thought was that they were after "93.6", but then again I was actually punished as a 7 year old for daring to correct a teacher who said that you could subtract 2 from 5 but you couldn't subtract 5 from 2 )

Made of Stars wrote:Had an interesting conversation with my eight year old this evening. He was incensed because, for a quiz question asking how many tens were in the number 936, he'd been marked wrong for giving the answer 93.

He's just about to finish The Hobbit, and wants to read LOTR - what do people think about the age-appropriateness? He's read all the Potter books, FWIW.

I agree with OlivierK, The LOTR trilogy is much tamer than the Potter series. It shouldn't be a problem.

Made of Stars wrote:Jie, that sounds like a smart little cookie you've got there! Adults are so stoopid sometimes.

Indeed. She turned five last month, and she's already arguing back at us whenever we tell her anything. The problem is that she's using solid arguments to do so, and I don't know whether to feel angry or proud. It drives my wife nuts, though.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner (with apologies to the vegans).

Claire (hanging upside down during the group's final pose) and her team won the National Cheerleading Titles again, this time in the Level 2 Primary School division (they won in Level 1 last year). Proud Durros are proud.

Durro haz a happy.

Claire-bear the Wondergirl has just been announced as the new Junior School President for 2013. The whole-of-Junior School parade, with some 1000 kids and dozens of teachers and parents, gave her a resoundingly loud cheer and round of applause when it was announced, so it was a very popular decision.

It's the culmination of several years of hard work during which she's won multiple academic, merit and sporting awards, been in 4 previous leadership roles, participated in a wide variety of extracurricular activities like the school performance night (remember her clown act?) and trivia fundraiser nights and generally been an outstanding role model.

We're absolutely thrilled and extremely proud of our little superstar.

The Durro's attended this week's leadership induction ceremony at the kids' school, where Claire was formally awarded the Junior President title, and our boy, Matthew, was awarded his Pod Representative position (one of three class captains in a group of 115 kids).

Claire co-hosted the giving out of awards and did a wonderful job of speaking in front of 2500 or so people.


Practising before the event.



The Super Six - the Presidents and Vice Presidents of the Junior, Middle and Senior Schools. The kids go to a school of 2200 students that is divided into Junior (Prep to grade 6), Middle (grade 7 to 9) and Senior (Grade 10 to 12).




The Durro piglets with their grandmother after receiving their certificates and badges.



The 4 Durros

Your border collie looks like mine. What's his name?