Modeling A Scarf

 Brady started wearing the new scarf he bid on and won from the Jazz Dinner show.

  Brady modeling outside our shed/garage.

 A closer look at my cute son.

I'm not quite sure why he took this startled look, but I think it's fun so I added it too.

Brady has been working really hard on the musical "Hello Dolly" showing March 1, 2, 3 and 8, 9, 10. Brady's playing the lead "Cornelius Hackl" on the show dates March 2nd, 8th and 10th (Cast B). On the 1, 3 and 9th he will play an extra (Cast A).

Although it's been exhausting and challenging through the past couple of months, I'm sure he will take away lasting memories with him as he leaves High School. 

This week he has been leaving for school at 7am and returning home at 7pm ... AND trying to keep up on his school work. It's been hard. Yesterday he woke up to a leg cramp and possibly going to throw up. It's taken a toll on his poor body. I gave him a Power Aid to drink and told him to drink more water. He is also feeling strains in his voice. I hope he will be able to endure a couple more weeks to finish the play.  

I plan on attending every day of the performances. I won't be able to take any pictures during the play. They completely wigged out last year because we were I was taking pictures. I don't know if it was just me, or if other people were taking pictures - but they started the performance with a lecture to the parents telling us it was illegal to take pictures and they would get fined. I totally do not understand why they would get fined if you took still pictures of kids on a stage. It's not like we are recording it ... !!!! But, I will be good and not take any pictures during the play this year. I'll get some out in the hall after the performances. It's disappointing.

Anyway ... Happy "Leap" Day .... Feburary 29, 2012

50 ?? How Did That Happen?

A half of a century! That's how long I've been on this earth. I guess I am middle age now... because I'm going to live until I'm 100!

I always thought 50 years old was OLD. Not anymore. I'm 50 years young.

My favorite thing about birthdays are the telephone calls and wishes I receive. It's fun to connect with friends and family who love and support me.

It was getting pretty late in the day and I had not heard from Jason and Sharon yet. I wondered if I should call them and remind them that it was my birthday. Finally I had Brady send them a text. The phone rang a minute later. Jason said he had remembered when he woke up but got distracted throughout the day and had forgotten to call me. He wanted to come right over and do something, but I told him that Brady was leaving to another birthday party, so we should do something the next day. Jason and Sharon brought me a cake and we ended up going to lunch the next day to celebrate.

For my birthday, Brady gave me a ticket for the Meridian High School's Jazz Choir dinner and music show the next week. It was very thoughtful!

It was held in the school's cafeteria.

The schools culinary class prepared and served the meal:

Salad

Lasagna

Rolls

Ice cream (not homemade)

The Jazz band played while the Jazz Choir sang through dinner.

Also while dinner was going on there was a silent bid going on. I bid on several Scentsy baskets and Brady wanted to bid on a Ice World skating basket. We kept bidding throughout the dinner, but the Scentsy baskets were getting too high for the value in the basket, so I quit bidding.

 We bid up to $38.00 on the Ice skating package and we won that.

 The basket included:

Man's scarf

Women's scarf

2 mugs

6 packages of gourmet hot chocolate

A pair of gloves

4 tickets to Ice Skate at Ice World

Brady is planning a double date with some friends.

It was fun to win and support the choir.

They also held a dollar raffle. I thought it was a great idea. When the item came up for raffle, you held up a dollar if you wanted to bid on it. When they picked up your dollar they would tell you a number. When everyone quit bidding they put the numbers in a bowl and drew a number for the winner.

I bid about $20 worth of dollars.

We won a scrapbooking packet for Birthdays.

and

2 hours worth of yard work from the National Honor Society.

It sure was fun! I enjoyed every minute of the evening. Especially being with my dear son, Brady. It was an awesome date!

I also received this yummy smelling bath set from my team teacher in Primary - Alyssa.

I was shocked when she showed up at the door with a gift for me. She is a sweetie and I'm enjoying teaching with her.

It was a nice 50th birthday! I still can't believe I'm 50 now ..... except the next day I was looking in the mirror and I swear I had at least 20 new gray hairs (still refusing to dye my hair).

Brady's First Kiss .... blogged by Brady

*Unrolls Declaration*

I hereby state that on Monday, February 13th, the day before Valentine’s Day, Brady has officially been introduced into his first kiss through the means of theatrical performances.

Okay, I have to admit that it’s not exactly how I thought my first kiss would come about, but now when people ask about it, I will have one great story to go with it.

I will tell them about my Character in the play, then recite to them this big huge sermon about love,  sing a song about how love, “only takes a moment to be loved a whole life long.”

It’s really romantic and heartfelt actually, and the story is way better then some sloppy first kiss that I bet all of you have.

…or don’t have:

Although I’ve officially kissed a girl now, it’s artificial.

Still haven’t kissed someone who I’ve actually been in love with.

First kiss was kind of weird too, mainly because of the fact that I don’t feel much for the person I’m casted with. I had to do that scene twice today. First was just a little bizarre, but it looked good apparently. The second one was a slight fail, only noticeable to me (and maybe Kaitlin, the girl who I was kissing.) I did the little romantic chin line stroke, which (I had to do this to myself after this happened to see what I did wrong) when someone is being romantic and delicately strokes your face, the natural thing to do is to lean into it, which tilts your head. (Head tilting I know is very necessarily so your nose has space) However, when she started to lean her head to her left, the side that I was stroking, I started to lean in the same way… towards my right… which is the side I like to do my leaning to. Quick switch at the end for her and just a weird hand position for me was there, but probably not noticeable to everyone since there were four couples up there kissing around the same time. Subtle fail, but I think third time will be much better. Going to stroke the correct side of her face this time.

Sweetheart Dance

(Blogged by Brady) Okay, so I’m just going to recap a little of what happened during my sweethearts date.

So, one day during the play rehearsals, my partner Mark came up to me and asked if I had a date to go to Sweethearts. I told him I did not. He inquired if I wanted one because he knew this girl that wanted to go with me. I told him no, because I didn’t want to spend my Saturday going to a dance. Well, then after I told him no, he did a little bit of an identity vomit telling me it was this girl named Kaitlin.

I had a little bit of a crush on Kaitlin last year. She played the lead in the last musical, and was playing the lead this year (with me as lead, casted with me, the person who falls in love with me and I her). After I heard the name, I felt bad that I had said no, but the next day or two she came up to me personally and invited me to go to Sweethearts with her, only we were going on a group date with friends from the cast and not going to the dance. It was dinner, bowling, and a movie.

I found this little card on my porch latter that same day. The card quotes lines that I say in the musical, with a valentine twist. I thought it was weird that she was asking me using the classic tactics after I said yes already, but I just decided to go with it. However, before I made attempts to respond, the party organizer (Anastasia; who’s house we were eating dinner at) broke down and told me it was a prank from her and another that were going on the date with.

So, I was supposed to wear something red, which after dying my hair, I had a natural accessory, but also had this tie that worked really well with it.

We ate an interesting dinner that Cody had prepared for us. It was actually pretty fun. We were talking and laughing, like a normal group date should have been like. There were 7 of us, one of the dates bailed. There was only one couple that were actually dating as well, Anastasia and Erik (Ana being the hostess). We took some pictures and headed off toward bowling. We went to two bowling allies, the first one was closed out to some stupid rented out bowling league, and the second one had around an hour drive and a 45 minute wait once we got there… so we didn’t go bowling like planned.

 Erik and Ana… Lets just say, their favorite part of our group date was most likely the car ride. They paired off and broke off from the date pretty much, sucking face the whole night. We had to pretty much drag them out of the car when we got to our locations. My car was me as the driver and 2 Mormon girls who were mortified, and we were behind Cody’s car, so we got the front row seat to watching them make out the whole way.

 When we got to the movie theater, we punished Erik and Ana a little by making them sit BEHIND us. We weren’t going to have them making out in our row, nor in front of us. It seems inconsiderate to being doing that on a group date anyway. Let me just make this announcement to all those who are still reading. DO NOT PAIR OFF WITH YOUR DATE WHEN YOU ARE ON A GROUP DATE.

 We went and saw New Years Eve (Valentines Day parody). I actually quite enjoyed it, tearing up during a few parts to (holding back the tears, trying to keep control of what ever manliness I have). That’s the only bonus of watching movies at the dark theaters, your eyes can get as red and as moist as they want without people knowing.

Then exhausted, we made our way back home. It wasn’t the best night ever, but it was fun. The only thing is, I don’t really have any remote feelings for Kaitlin anymore. She’s been doing an unconscious competent job of getting herself friend zoned. She really hates kissing to for some reason, and I have to kiss her in the play. She was really pressing for a stage kiss when that part in the play was announced, and I am the only one in the cast that’s like, “Yeah! Kiss me! Lets do it!” Everyone else was like, “Eww, that’s gross.” But now I’m starting to ramble.

 February is actually a strange time for me. I feel that it’s the month that is supposed to bring people love, but so far, it’s just been repelling me. Now if this was a diary, I would totally be spilling out all my thoughts on this subject, but people actually might read this, so I must indubitably refrain from all further thoughts.

 Sweethearts 2012

 Kaitlin and I - Red and Black

 Brady and Cody

 Brady, Cody and Erik

Kaitlin and Brady - Red and Black

Cody and Hailey - Black and White guy with Dark purple girl

Erik and Ana - Black and Grey

Rebecca (Her date bailed) - Black, White, and Red

 Happy Valentines Day!

February 11, 2012

Piano Man

My favorite thing is listening to Brady play the piano. I will miss having his lovely music fill our home when he leaves for college and his mission.

 He did a post on his Tumbler blog and of course it needs to be on my blog too ... here it is.

 (Blogged by Brady)
A new semester, and a new time to shine. During finals this past week, I’ve been getting done early and had time to listen to my iPod until class got out. Recently, I’ve started to listen to LIGHTS again and was especially swooned recently by a song called, “Pretend (Reprise).” It’s the singer singing the lyrics to one of her songs, only it’s slowed and played with only a classic piano. I started to imagine what it would be like if I could play the piano part, and it gave me shivers. When I got home, I printed off the sheet music with a quick Google search, and have basically mastered it.

My choir teacher told me that she wanted me to play a transition piece for our next concert. I was wondering what I was going to do. I was thinking I would just be lazy and play “Cut” by Plumb again, but now I know it’s just got to be this song. All I need to do is find a beautiful, talented, amazing girl that would be willing to sing this for a quarter project and a transition piece for our Spring concert. I am really looking forward to it.

Brady Dyed His Hair again - Yikes!

Blond Brady .....

He always had it streaked blond on the top -- the bottom is his natural color.

Now it's .......

 Burgundy brown Brady ....

I should have went to the salon with him and helped him pick out the color. I'm still freaking out about it a little. . . but what can you do now that it's done?

We've discussed re-dying it, but I hate to ruin his hair by dying it too fast.

This is his post on his Tumbler account:

New hair, before and after.

For the musical Hello Dolly being performed at our school, all the men were asked to grow their hair out, since that was the style back then. Unfortunately for me, my fake blond frost just didn’t look good long, I could only style it downward, not upward. So I went in to dye my hair brown (with permission from the Musical Director). After it was done, I had a little bit of a flip out. My hair was dark red! In my mind I was thinking it should have turned out more like a medium light brown. The worst thing about it I was that I was wearing a green shirt at the time, so the contrast of the red was very very very very prominent. However, when I changed into something darker (and styled it upward) I really liked the way it looked. I’m just going to have to avoid my favorite color green for a while…

                             

 Oh my....

I can't wait until it grows out and maybe he will finally be content with his natural hair color. 

More Pictures of James

 James spent a few extra days in the hospital for a touch of Jaundice. Here he is under the lights.

 He's awake.

 Grandpa Lyle (my brother) and James. Look how tiny James is as he holds onto Lyle's thumb. Awe!

 A proud Grandpa.

Baby are truly a miracle.