Snippets of Life

While Eliana is practicing the piano
Leif: What is our child wearing?
Elizabeth: (Dismissively) Clothing
Elizabeth: (Looks up) ...and bat wings

Eliana is doing research on Julius Caesar. She came across the chapter title "The Gallic Revolt" and read it as "The Galactic Revolt." Sci-fi nerd accomplished.

Eliana: Facebook is mainly for girls and Twitter is basically for boys.

Eliana was singing to herself upstairs. I heard snippets of "boil the ocean" and "burn the land." I realized she was singing the title from Firefly. Don't worry: we haven't let our daughter watch it. This was just the byproduct of Elizabeth explaining the t-shirt Leif bought her for Mothers Day.

Eliana played Für Elise at a recital at Petra. I'm told the bass-line chords are her own composition.


At the same recital, Eliana heard another girl perform "Everything at Once". This morning she was playing the the piano part fairly fluently based on hearing it once. I was impressed. Her version matched up with the sheet music we found online.

Achievement unlocked

I enrolled Eliana in ski lessons this year. It had seemed like my efforts to teach her had reached their limits. Eliana simply wasn't improving as quickly as I wanted her to.

Saturday marked the seventh of the eight lessons. At the end of the session, Eliana's instructor told me that she is rapidly improving.

For a change, I alpine skied Saturday instead of skate skiing, so at the end of Eliana's lesson, she and I were able to ski together for the first time in many weeks. It was a wonderful day with a foot of new snow in the last 24 hours. Eliana and I rode the Bridger chair to the top and skied the North Bowl, a black diamond run, together. Next we headed over to the Alpine lift and skied Powder Hog, another black diamond run, until we reached some gladed trees, which we dipped into. I was a very happy and proud father. I've been waiting a whole bunch of years to be able to ski runs in the vicinity of my skill level with a family member. Capping a great day of powder skiing with friends by skiing black runs with my daughter for the first time was perfect.