Category: Richard’s projects

Weekend

Thanks to Sarah and Bryan, we were able to attend the Christmas concert with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Alfie Boe, and Tom Brokaw. Squeeeee! (That was for you, Alfie!)

IMG_0092Joe and Stacy sat with us. My parents were there, too, but our seats were in different areas. We had a great dinner in downtown Salt Lake City with my parents, Joe, and Stacy. I love living here.

I liked seeing Gail Halvorsen, aka The Candy Bomber honored at the concert.

Paige, Gail Halvorsen, and Richard, 2010 at our church in Sahuarita. We were members of the same congregation for a few years.

We got a good 8 or 9 inches of snow. This means we spent the morning clearing snow and trying to make our way to piano lessons. Tricky.

We shot our Christmas music video with our adorable kids.

Mark said to me tonight, “When we were making that movie, I felt like I was in Hollywood.”

When I asked how that felt, he said, “Pretty good!”

The 2009 Christmas video is the one to beat. Wish us luck.

Ensemble 2012

Looking for a little entertainment? Here are the songs from the ensemble concert.

The first piece is Timothy’s Amen! and Kumbaya.

 

Next, we have Daniel’s Guantanamera. You’ll want to dance to this one.

 

And now here is Paige’s piece, Slavonic Dance. Yes, she really plays that fast.

Here’s to doing new things

This number was part of a ballet recital 7 months ago. We were a little surprised that this was one of the numbers that Paige worked on in her “ballet team” class. I guess her teacher figured that her ballerinas needed some jazz, hip hop, marching band, and cheer leading technique.

I’m loving this

The winter rye has arrived! It is beautiful. It will be green all winter. I love to look out the window and see the color.

Isn’t this beautiful?

I love autumn but I need to watch movies with New York City in the fall to experience it fully.

Do you have movies that you watch every year to inaugurate the seasons? I do.

Do you have a target date when you allow yourself to listen to Christmas songs? I usually begin in October, but I’ve been listening to folk tunes for the Thanksgiving feeling.

I try not to admit that there is a holiday called Halloween. Mark and Timothy have decorated their bedroom with spiders, bats, black rats, and pumpkins since I won’t decorate the house with such stuff.

Well, enough of this nonsense. Or is it? Holidays are so fun to anticipate and plan.

Pinewood Derby 2011

Here’s the shiny Pinewood Derby track from last night. I filled in for our Cubmaster at this Pack Meeting. We did the cheese grater cheer, the race car cheer, the rocket cheer, and the big canary cheer. These photos were taken by Phillip Flores, one of our den leaders.

Here is Timothy with his awesome car. He has a Lego man inside.

Richard’s computer program kept track of race times and generated the order of races. We projected the race stats from the computer to a big screen. It was very cool.

Trying to contain his delight…

This boy won 4th place!

He earned his Bobcat, too!

Robin Hood

For today’s post Daniel brings you a night at the movies.  This is a stop-motion animation video that he created.  He has produced about a dozen of these little clips so far, and they are delightful.

The sound on this video is quite low, so turn up your speakers/headphones.  Notice the details such as the staff and hat floating down the river, the bubbles, and Robin Hood almost falling backwards but catching himself.  Enjoy.

By the way, this post allows comments.  If you would like to comment, click on the post title (“Robin Hood”) above, then find the comment box at the bottom of the page.

On Set with Audrey Hepburn

As we learned this weekend, we’re not on-the-set, up close and personal fans. We like the silver screen flat and fake.

I will explain.

Our t.v. stopped working last month and we had to make a decision. We still wanted a television in our house, but WHAT KIND? Richard did endless research, took a trip to Costco, and finally bought it on WOOT. (If you are wise you will ignore the name WOOT.  Hey, I’m pretty sure you just Googled it. I can tell. Stop before you start!)

So we’ve entered the high definition world. We pulled out some of our most colorful movies. We watched My Fair Lady.

As I learned, high definition makes you feel you’re in the same room, but I was surprised by our negative reaction. High definition images rob us of the experience we are looking for in a movie. Truly, we felt like we were on set, but that kind of realism has less escape value than a flat, colorful image of non-reality that we have come to enjoy. It will be something to get used to.

Now, the thing that high definition is good for is a World Cup soccer match. Wow!