A year of oboe

Living on different continents means that the grandparents have missed out on all sorts of stuff over the last 8 years that we've been away from South Africa, so we were especially glad that Mom and Dad arrived during the last two weeks of term while there were still activities going on that they could attend.  It's a very busy time of year but my parents were well-warned that they would be hitting the ground running!  They came along to Aaron's final Year 5/6 basketball game; sadly another bad loss for the team but it was great to see Aaron so involved in the game.

Directly after the game we rushed across town to Waimataitai school for Aaron's oboe concert, arriving with just a few minutes to spare.  Poor Aaron has had a tough time with his oboe reed - they seem to be temperamental things and we've had some struggles over the year in finding the right one (professionals play with harder reeds which sound good but are difficult to blow), which then broke about two weeks ago.  Found some on TradeMe which hadn't been there before, which arrived in the mail just a few days ago, in time to test out.  It still wasn't a very good one so Aaron had a few false starts with his piece while his teacher adjusted and tweaked it slightly. 

All things considered he has done very well with music this year, and his certificate was for "phenomenal perseverance and all-round improvement"