Mark's piano recital

Mark had his first piano recital yesterday. He has only been playing for about 6 months, but he played 4 songs: Ein Kleine Nachtmusick by Mozart, the Snake Charmer, Sharks (the theme from Jaws), and Darth Vader Theme. His teacher is really good at finding out Mark's interests and then arranging a song for him. She also had him learn I Wanna Hold Your Hand when she found out he liked the Beatles, but he didn't play it at the recital.

Mark did really well on his songs though he is a bit nervous about introducing himself as you can see from the video:

Dax wants meat!

On our long drive to Idaho over the Easter weekend, I was eating beef jerky. We can't get Mark to try anything, he only eats pasta, mac and cheese, bread, and lunch meat. Dax will try anything, though.

Dax said he wanted to try some "meat" so we gave him a slab of beef jerky and told him to chew it really well. A few minutes later we noticed he'd gotten quiet. Here's the result:

Most people don't start falling asleep with half chewed food in their mouths until they're over 80!

Happy Easter

This year we spent Easter at my mom's house. My two little sisters graduated from BYU-I, so we went up to celebrate with them. No, the Ockey's didn't go to the graduation--we are against those long horrible ceremonies. Everyone on my side of the family was there so we had a celebration breakfast the next morning, a trip to the Museum of Idaho (read about that on our other blog), and an easter egg hunt. It was a fun Saturday. Here are some pics!

Dax never stopped running through the entire egg hunt.

We told Mark he had to start in the back of the yard to give the littler kids a chance. Don't worry, his bucket was still very full.

Grandma also bought the kids some fun dinosaur hats to wear while hunting. Mark loves his.

Dax found so much candy and he started eating it right away.

Mark and Dax on Easter morning all dressed up!

Two-wheeler

Mark had been wearing his training wheels thin and he mostly balanced on one side since his wheels were so old. I decided he was ready to to move on. He was finally tall enough to reach the ground and still sit on his bike, so I told Randy it was time to take off the training wheels. So about a week ago, we did. The funny thing was that I held the back of the bike and started to help him go, but Mark just took off and rode down to the end of the street before he fell over. I couldn't believe it. I know he is a little older (5 1/2), but I didn't expect it to be so easy. He wasn't very good at turning or stopping, but he could balance and ride back and forth down the street just fine. For the rest of the week he rode his bike every day and we worked on turning and stopping, and now he is a pro. This is the boy who took forever to be potty-trained, but apparently riding a bike is a piece of cake to him. This is a video from his 2nd day of no training wheels.