That's a ukulele?

JS Bach on Guitar and Ukulele by Daniel Estrem

Listen to at least the first track to the melody played on the ukulele. It's where Bach meets Elvis and Blue Hawaii!

This is one of my favorite music download sites. It's called Magnatune. I like it because one can get higher quality music files. On most conventional MP3s much of the richness of the performance has been squeezed out of the digital file.

Les Sylphides

Here's the cast of our performance last week at the Kennedy Center. We weren't allowed to take photos, but one of the girls took this with her mobile phone. Shhhh!

Everyone Loves Elise!

Here's Sarah and Janine with Elise after last Sunday's performance at the Kennedy Center. Elise is my cousin Laura's youngest daughter. We had dinner together the night before. Elise was shy at first, but after a few minutes she was everyone's best friend.

White board message

Here is Janine's Christmas white board message to me. She likes to leave these every so often on the edges of the white board in my office.

What a great day brightener!

For young eyes only

This is one of the cutest decks of cards I have ever seen. What they lack in size, they make up in convenience. Note the pen to compare relative size.

Janine set up this game of solitaire on the living room floor next to her homework last week. Now if she only had a black nine...

She's acting

Last week Sarah was in a production called 13 at her evening musical theater academy. Given the fact that the entire class were Senior Highs, it was 17 year olds playing 13 year olds.

Singing! Dancing! Life Lessons! Fun!

Here's Sarah in her role as one of the cheerleaders. Her ballet training served her well for the kicks and jumps. I teased her saying I now know she is a good actress because a cheerleader is an unlikely role for her. But she played it very well.

However I am most proud of two things. First, she went on despite having a sore throat and cold. Then after the show, she worked the hardest of the entire cast striking the set and putting away the chairs.

Bravo!

Felicity's Christmas

Felicity is dressed in her Christmas outfit today for the feast.

This is a new outfit Janine bought with her birthday gift certificates. These outfits are quite impressive, very well made and nicely styled.

Our Christmas has been blessed in so many ways. We are working through the transition from the crack of dawn Christmases of young children and teenagers who will sleep as late as you let them.

That means our traditions are in transition. In the past we got up early to open gifts. But opening them later this morning changed the meal schedule. So we adjust accordingly.

The biggest difference this year however is that Nana is not with us. But we made up for that by dropping in on her during lunch. The facility is nicely decorated and we are so thankful for such a nice staff. But the most impressive thing were the cards from the kids in the CCD classes at the Catholic church she attended for so long. What a blessing to open a manila envelope with six nicely drawn construction paper Christmas cards. We lined them up all across the top of her dresser. Now there is the spirit of Christmas.

Performance Tree

Sarah created this Christmas tree Monday evening. As you can see, she took some of her theatre and dance mementos and combined them with some Christmas lights and garland. Voila! the performing arts tree.

Some items to note include pointe shoes on top of the tree, a Greek theatre mask, and poor Yorick in between. The rest is filled in with Playbills and other programs.

Bravo Sarah!

Galieo was alive...

...the last time there was a lunar eclipse on the winter solstice with a full moon.

So we all got up at 2:30 this morning to watch it. Thankfully it was fairly clear so we could see this unique event. This picture is a pretty good approximation. For us however the lighter part was on more to the right.

I don't know if it is a matter of perception, but the moon seemed not just darker but much smaller. Perhaps it was all the neighbors' Christmas lights left on all night.

We all went right back to bed saving the educational part for later today.

Santa came to the circle

Last night was Santa's annual visit to the circle courtesy of the local volunteer fire company. Here are the older kids singing Jingle Bells. Naturally our three are up in front performaning. Kudos to Sarah for directing.

This tradition dates back to the late 1970s when our sub-division was first built. One of the families came up with the idea of hiring one of the firefighters to come in on a truck suppied with gifts. They also acted as a clearinghouse for the gifts to Santa. That way Santa had a bag of gifts for each of the children.

Today some of the children who started this tradition have their own. At least two families are on their second time around for Santa in the circle.

Time will tell how long this tradition will last, but we are all thankful to the folks that started it and continue it to this day.

Ornament Earrings

This past Saturday we bought a Christmas tree and decorated it on Sunday. John and I had to go over to Home Depot to buy a new stand however. The screws on the old stand would not hold the tree tightly enough. So I figured that it was worth $12 for a new stand just so we could prevent the trouble of finding a horizontal tree some morning.

Here's Janine trying on some ornament earrings. I don't know where these came from but they sure are big. The photo does not do justice to them however. They do NOT look exactly like car air fresheners!

As you can see in the background we did not have much snow that day. An inch or two followed a few days later.

John has really taken charge with the Christmas lights. He took out all the strings, tested them and tried to replace some of the dead bulbs. But we learned that the Christmas light companies include extra bulbs only as a cruel trick because none of them ever seem to fix the rest of the dead bulbs on the string. Oh well, I guess we should throw some of these away after 20 years of use.

Cha-Cha

From Night at the Wax Museum, here's John dancing the cha-cha with his stage mother. They are the "bad guys" in the show. They own the building the wax museum and want to tear it down to build a mall. Ooo, bad capitalists!

Seriously, they all had a lot of fun. It was a pretty good group of kids, most of whom knew their lines, at least by the final performance. It was a wide age range, 6 to 16, so Miss Kait, the director really had her hands full. Bobbie too, as she supervised the girls' dressing room.

But even more importantly, after the final performance on Sunday afternoon, John was back on the stage helping to strike the set and clean up. I overheard one of the moms saying, "John, you really work hard!" That made me feel proud.

My pride expanded even further earlier when one of the studio owners thanked Sarah in front of the rest of the cast and parents for running the lights. As he said, "I gave her the script, pointed to the board and she did the rest." Pretty cool all around.

Surprise Visitor

This past weekend John was in Night at the Wax Museum, a local music school production. Playing against type, he was one of the bad guys.

But, Friday night after the show he had a big surprise. Aunt Barb came in from Denver for the weekend. We spent the day together on Saturday and saw the show Saturday night. Then we all went out for dinner afterwards.

It was a great family time together.

Oh, and the show was pretty good too. More later...

When was the last time...

...you saw one of these?

It's a classic aluminum framed, web chaise lounge. Imported from Florida!

This one was Nana's favorite for "taking a sun bath," as she would say.

It is in need of a bit of repair, but we have extra webbing purchased at Sears late in the last century.

While it's sad that she no longer uses it, I look at many of these things as historic finds. Perhaps not archeology in the Indiana Jones sense, but clearly something that is now rare and curious to our contemporary eyes.

More importantly, these sorts of things provide us with a glimpse into the person, someone active and fun whom we love very much.

Lest we think too much of ourselves, the life cycle most of our closest items is now so short. When a two year old cellphone now seems ancient, this piece is nearly 60 years old.

Thanksgiving Dinner

Here's our Thanksgiving guests, Felicity and Blackie the Panda. We all pitched in to cook dinner. Mommie and Janine baked the pumpkin pies first. John peeled the potatoes. Then Sarah made the cornbread dressing. Last night I baked the cornbread, (see yesterday's post) and brined the turkey overnight.

In fact I woke up at 5:00 AM concerned that the turkey had gotten too warm. We bought a fresh turkey at local farm market and I would have hated to lose it. I found the ice had hardly melted but I threw some more on top for good measure. So far, so good.

We all sat down to eat at 5:30 and had a grand feast, but one helping only please, we have to save room for pumpking pie. During dinner I asked the kids to describe sometime in the past year when someone helped them. Then I asked how did they know that person intended to help them, what it cost them, etc. Sarah had a good point when she said one of the best ways to show your appreciation is to actually do what that person recommends you to do.

After dinner we took a break to wash the dishes. Then some pumpkin pie and Oceans 12 on DVD. A fine Thanksgiving overall, much to be thankful for.