Hey!

Happy anniversary, you crazy kids! The last seven years have been good to you. Hope you had a great day!

AI - SLC Edition

I normally have a strict "no audition episode" blogging policy when it comes to American Idol. I wait until we're through Hollywood weeks and the voting starts. But, the judges are in my home state. I gotta make an exception.

Before we begin, I have to say that I'm enjoying the new judge so far. I have some contestants I'm rooting for. And my favorite moment to this point was when Ryan tried to high five the blind kid. It was mainly the look on Ryan's face when he realized what he had done and the very kind, totally understanding look on the face of the blind kid.

On with the show!

• Holy crowd shot outside the Delta Center. Good grief! That's a lot of blonde hair, white teeth and Shade shirts in one camera shot.
  
• The pregnant moms waiting for Simon is the most hilarious thing I've ever seen.
• We're leading with David Osmond! Big guns first! (P.S. One of my favorite photographers in Utah posted a photo session she did with David this week. Check it out here.) Sad that David has MS too. I had no idea. He sounded good. They really gave him a hard time for that Golden Ticket.
• Yeouch. Goth girl is making me sad. Curly haired lip licking guy was scary too. Why is American Idol such a freak magnet? And the kid with the pink bunny suit? Come on!
• Go Utah! I love this politeness, happy people theme that is going through the episode.
• Totally rooting for dreadlock girl. I'm crying right now watching her backstory. And her voice reminds me of Natalie Merchant, who I love. She does need to amp up the vocals, but she's adorable.

And this is why I don't blog audition shows. Not much to talk about.

In other news, we had another snow day today. I'll post some pictures of G-Man having a wonderful time "helping" Diggity shovel later. And I'm spending most of my time trying to make sure my songs are memorized for my cabaret show this Friday. I'm very, very close. If I'm feeling particularly brave and saucy, I may post a video clip for you. But I don't feel brave and saucy very often, so best not to count on it. :)

Things I Learned Watching the Miss America Pageant

1. If the Opening Number is awful, nothing good is coming afterward. Turn the TV off. (In this case, awful = Mario Lopez awkwardly dancing among the contestants to "Four Seconds" by Madonna and Justin Timberlake. I watched far longer than I should have because I liked the song.)
2. If the contestant introductions seem particularly awful, nothing good is coming afterward. Turn the TV off.
3. If you've only heard of two of the judges (the fabulous Laura Bell Bundy and Ken Paves - hairdresser to Jessica Simpson. I had also heard of the former Miss America, Nicole Johnson. But since I've seen the pageant almost every year since I was 6, that doesn't count. Most normal people haven't heard of Nicole Johnson.), perhaps that is also a bad sign. Turn the TV off.

I'm not going to tell you who won, in case you care to watch it and haven't seen it yet. I will say that it was my least favorite talent and I can't believe she won.

I may not watch next year.

I probably will though.

New Logo & New Pics

If you have some time, click on over to the photography blog. I'd love to hear what you think about the updated logo. I have some fun pictures of my music students here and here. And a flood of pictures from all the sessions in Utah is on the way.

A Giveaway!

Not from me, from my friends at Store and Style!

Click over here on their Giveaway page - you can enter to win a beautiful Kaleidoscope Planner with a Sausalito Cover from FranklinCovey. Even after I switched to an electronic planner from my beloved Franklin planner, I still used their purses and the wallet that holds a Palm Pilot. They make great, great things and you can get some of it for free! Go check it out and enter! And keep checking back. They have giveaways on a regular basis.

While you're over at Store and Style, click around and check out some of the cool articles they have. Christine and Rebecca are organized, stylish and fun women. Christine's house is beautiful, her children are well-spoken and kind and Christine is an amazing cook and baker. Having the chance to grab some great ideas from her is well worth the time to click over there.

Hail to the Chief

A great speech. A great ceremony. Other than the speech, my favorite part was the John Williams piece, "Air and Simple Gifts." Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, Anthony McGill and Gabriela Montero are amazing musicians and the piece was beautiful. And from a technical standpoint, I can't believe they were able to play so beautifully and keep their instruments in tune in such cold and wind.



But I thought the composition itself was poignant. Perlman and Yo Yo Ma were tossing the secondary theme back and forth at the start of the piece. And then Anthony McGill (pictured above) took over the melody and first introduced the "Simple Gifts" theme. There was a lot of symbolism in that for me.

The speech was great, as I knew it would be. Here were some favorite parts:

"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals."

"We are ready to lead once more."

"We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions -- that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America."



Go America!


P.S. Pres. Obama is left-handed. They were just saying on NBC that he is the 5th left-handed president in a row.

P.P.S. The other interesting part of the coverage was when they showed the movers transferring the Bush's possessions out of the White House and moving the Obama's posessions in. Also, this website changed over at 12:01 p.m. today. Very interesting how things move forward.

21 Months Old

G-Man,

I've kind of been a slacker on the letter front the last few months. I started taking pictures and writing letters to document how much you were changing and how much you were learning each month, but in the last few months it doesn't seem as though that change is occurring so rapidly.

Then I see a picture like this one that we took on January 18 last year, and I can see that the change is dramatic:

For a while, you've been saying the same words and phrases, but you have suddenly come up with an explosion of words and behaviors since returning from Utah.

One of my favorite new things is that you will actually look at me when I'm taking a picture and will say "cheese!" It's so much easier than chasing you around and ending up with a bunch of shots of your eyelashes as you look at the ground. (I mean, your eyelashes are beautiful and everything, but I'd rather have you look at me.) Also, you want to see your picture on the LCD screen of my camera right after I take the picture.

You suddenly love juice. Apple juice. Up to this point, you would only drink water and milk. Now you will drink 3 or 4 sippy cups full a day if I would let you. But I won't. I've noticed a considerable uptick in the number of soaked diapers in the morning. You're quite helpful when it comes time to put your diaper in the diaper genie though.

The smile is so cute!! Look at all those teeth! You've been drooling like crazy this week, but we can't imagine that you have any more teeth that need to break through.

You notice the snow and calls it "nooow." We had fun watching it through the window today. You want to go outside and play in it constantly. Hopefully, it will warm up around here this week and we can go out and play in the snow.

You're mimicing the things we say all the time. Which means we have to be more careful of what we say. I'm pretty sure I heard you say "shoot" the other day when you got frustrated by something you were trying to do. Your dad and I laugh and laugh and you laugh with us when we get you to say something funny just because we said it. The highlight of the week was when we got you to say "awesome!" Now we are working on your vocal inflection and volume when you mimic us. It's endless entertainment.

You've had a lot of colds so far this winter. Only a couple that have been really troubling. But you've been sporting the snotty nose look on a regular basis for the past week. And I see you from this angle a lot. We were playing on the floor and you decided to sit on me. You are so sweet about sitting next to me on the couch to watch TV and you love to give hugs. Your favorite book to read is "Hug" by Jez Alborough. You pick it up off the shelf and say "Bobo" and then read through the whole thing with me or by yourself. It's so fun to watch you babble the story to yourself. You always interrupt yourself to give hugs while you're reading, and you continue to give them throughout the day. And sometimes you lay your head on my shoulder and snuggle - even when you are feeling great and you are happy. And that's about the best thing in the world.

You've also decided that wherever you go, I must go too. You're pulling on the drawstrings of my pajama pants to try and get me to go somewhere new with you. It's a struggle for me to always go with you - especially when I think I have more important things to do. But then I remember that the day will come when you don't want me to go with you wherever you go. So I go.

I love you, buddy.
Mom

ANOTHER snow day

Our neighborhood looks like this again. This picture is from before Christmas, but not much has changed. Our outside decorations are still up. We came back from Utah and still had lots of snow, (actually, the original snow melted and then two days before we came home it snowed again) so we couldn't take them down. And then the COLD came. It's been downright frigid this week. Skin-freezing-in-less-than-10-minutes-cold. Overnight, it warmed up enough to snow, and we got hammered again. What was supposed to be a light snow has already turned into 6 inches and it's still coming down. They can't keep the roads plowed because it's Sunday and our church sits at the bottom of a hill that is also difficult to keep plowed, so no church for us again. This is the third snow day from church we've had this winter. It's kind of crazy.

We're settling in for a long winter's nap. Have a great Sunday!

The Disposal King

He does take out the trash every week, and for that, he also deserves this title. But, no. He deserves this title for his awesome-Tim-the-Tool-Man-fix-it job earlier this week.

He replaced our disposal! Isn't he awesome? I was going to do it and he took care of the whole job while I was editing engagement pictures. He's such a stud.

Still Here...

We're enjoying the Utah game in the cozy condo in Park City as the snow flutters down. It's been a great visit filled with family and fun. And lots of photos. Like this one of Diggity's cute kids and their cute fiancees.



Yup. That's right. Both kids are engaged now. It's a very fun, very exciting time. Amanda got engaged at the beginning of December. So, we have Chris and Heather getting married in May and Darren and Amanda getting married sometime later in the summer.

And we have Macy starting an extreme exercise regimen when we arrive back in Massachusetts. :) Wish us all luck.

I'm also doing this. Join in. It's going to be fun.