No photos but lots of fun!

This has been a very busy week for us.  Despite the fact that orchestra, writing class, vision therapy, and baseball are over, we are still finding ourselves constantly on the go. For one thing, Avery started composition classes this week. She has been wanting this kind of instruction for a while, so she's really glad to finally get going. Also, she had extra rehearsals with her chamber music group for her upcoming violin recital.

Another music-related deviation from our schedule took up our whole day on Thursday.  A friend of mine from baseball emailed offering up free tickets to a taping of the X-Factor.  Never one to turn down a new adventure, I jumped on the chance!  (Well, that's after quickly googling to find out what the heck the X-Factor is!)  So Avery, her friend Justice, and I spent Thursday listening to really loud aspiring pop stars and staring at the back of Britney Spears' and Simon Cowell's heads.  We got really close seats and the whole experience was really surreal.  My ears are still slightly ringing.

We'd been given a list of rules of what we can't do and wear (no high heels, dress nicely, no white clothing, and NO cell phones), which of course we followed.  Apparently we were the only fools that bothered to listen.  People were not only dressed in whatever they wanted, but EVERYBODY brought in their cell phones!  And they were actually encouraged to take photos to tweet and post to Facebook and drum up more buzz for the show!  So, all this to say that my only picture from the day is this quick one I took in the parking garage on the way to the show:

But I poached a couple more from the internet:

The set.

The judges: Simon Cowell, Britney Spears, Demi Levato, and L.A. Reid.

After the craziness of Thurday, our Friday seemed really out of place.  We spent the day at another place with the no photos rule: the Hindu temple Radha Madhav Dham.  Griffin's history co-op studied Indian religions this week, so the group jumped at the opportunity to visit the temple. It was quiet, peaceful, beautiful...everything that Thursday wasn't!  We took a tour of the grounds, ate a picnic lunch, and took a yoga class.  Unfortunately I don't have pictures of all the cute 6 and 7 year olds doing yoga inside the temple, but here is an internet picture to give you an idea of the site: