p.s.

Here is a photo of the tree in our front yard, as promised….

I can’t believe I did not tell about the little visit last Tuesday and Wednesday by Emily, Noah, and Lucy.  I guess because I didn’t take any photos is why I didn’t remember.  Lucy LOVED the Peanuts characters nativity that we keep on the cedar chest in our bedroom.  She carted the Snoopy-sheep all around the house.  She also loved the big container of beanie babies.  Two days after they left I was still finding stuffed critters around the house.  Noah is getting so grown up.  He loved helping me with my chocolate advent calendar that I bought from the German club students at Rock Bridge and he and I explored the on-line advent calendar we both got from Joe and Vickie Southerland this year.  I still had teaching obligations both days so I did not get to spend as much time as I would have liked with everyone.  But, we will see them again on the 22^nd and again on Christmas day. 

Finally, some movie and book reports.  My most recent book-on-CD was Red Badge of Courage.  I am not sure why the long, flowery descriptive phrases caused so many eye-rolls as I listened and The Scarlet Letter , which had similar language, did not.  I just found the whole book tedious and the main character was bothersome.  Good thing it was short.  I FINALLY watched my Netflix (after three weeks wait).  It was the original Last Holiday made in 1950 with Alec Guinness in the lead role.  I love the re-make with Queen Latifah so I thought I would enjoy the earlier one.  Well, it was quite similar but I think Queen Latifah acted the roll waaaay better than Alec Guinness.  Who would guess THAT???  And, (spoiler alert) his character, on his way from learning that he really is NOT going to die, ends up dying anyway in a car accident!!!!  How is that for a depressing ending?  I would not recommend the movie. 

Until the next post…….

December update

 Wow! What a month it has been already and it is not even half over!  After coming back from New York, I feel like I have hardly been able to sit down and take a breath.  I will try to catch you up on what has been happening the last three weeks ….( not necessarily in chronological order)

Coco the rabbit has died.  Kirsti got him when he was a tiny bunny back in 2000.  Yep – he lived twelve years.    I attribute his long life to the carrot peels he got every day on top of his regular rabbit food.  How ironic then that for the last few years, he has been blind in both eyes from cataracts, even with all the good-for-your-sight carrots.   I noticed Monday night that his back legs could not support him.  Tuesday morning he was the same – laying on his side breathing shallowly.  I knew it was time.  First thing I did was call Kirsti to tell her the news and I had a hard time keeping it together.  I took him to All Creatures Animal Hospital because that is where Sarah works and I wanted someone from the family to be with him as he was put to sleep.  After dropping him off, I went to the car and just bawled and bawled.   He was just a rabbit that, aside from feeding every day, I hardly had any interaction with him.  Maybe the stress of my life right now caused me to be overly emotional?  I don’t know.  When Kirsti and Ryan are here, we will have a little burial for him.  Farewell, Coco.

 

Speaking of pets, we could have had a Sadie crisis earlier in the month.  I noticed she was chewing something while teaching a cello lesson (she has a little bed right by my chair and keeps me company during lessons) and my student thought it might be a leaf that was attached to her little doggie beard.  Well, a few minutes later, she was still working on something so I had to pry her jaws apart (good thing she is used to me messing with her mouth because I brush her teeth several times a week.  Yes, I brush my dogs teeth.  Isn’t that ridiculous?) and guess what I found????? An open safety pin!!!!!!!!!!!  If she had swallowed it, imagine the damage it would have done.  Perforations all throughout her little body.   

 

Oh, Sadie, your metal-licking fetish is going to do you in someday.  She is so obsessive about metal that when she goes up the stairs, she has to lick the metal strip that covers where the carpet meets the tile on the landing and again to the next level where it meets the wood floor. 

Christmas music, of course, has filled my month.  I saw a small poster outside the office of the choir director at Central Methodist that read “Yay, it’s December!  No, wait, I’m a musician”.  Well said.  However, Christmas music is one of my favorite parts about the season.  If only the performances could be more evenly spaced (which never happens).  My CIS Orchestra concert was in the first week of the month.  I had four ensembles (beginning, intermediate, advanced, and quartet) perform along with the 4^th and 5^th grade honor choir.  It was just the right amount of music and it only lasted an hour.  We held it in a lovely Catholic church and it lent the perfect ambiance.  My six CMU students who took private lessons this semester had their juries this past week.  They each played a short Bach piece with me as accompanist.  Now I am done in Fayette until mid-January.  My Rock Bridge orchestra has their concert this coming Tuesday but, since we had to play our pieces for video-recording  on the 7^th, this upcoming performance is slightly anti-climactic.  I would truly prefer a live performance to being video recorded.  Eeee.  I opted not to play the holiday concert with the civic orchestra and, boy, am I glad about that decision.   I have played my cello in a couple of groups – for church and for Candlelight Lodge – but rehearsal time was negligible for these.  Oh, Steve and I were invited to be part of a Christmas program in the Linn Branch on the 7^th.  I played “O Holy Night” on cello and he spoke for a few minutes.  We got lost trying to find the house of my accompanist and it caused us to arrive with literally one minute to spare.  High blood pressure moment. 

We made goodies last Saturday.  Here is Melanie and Sarah decorating sugar cookies.   

 

Steve, as usual, has been a baking maniac….cookies of all kinds for the people at work, cinnamon rolls for his home teaching families,  fudge. 

House decorating for the holidays gets more exhausting each year.  Or, maybe I am just getting older and tireder.  We didn’t put up as much this time.  Might even downsize even more next year.  We have started decorating our blue spruce tree in front with the large, shatterless ornaments and it looks really nice.  I will take a photo and post it tomorrow.  Steve got a new multi-position ladder recently and last Saturday, it was very helpful in hanging these ornaments – until he tried to close it on his hand.  You should see his finger.  Well, maybe you shouldn’t. I can barely stand to look at it.  In hindsight, he probably should have gotten some stitches. And, he is most certainly going to lose the fingernail.  Yuck.  

OK, I think that is it.  In spite of all the craziness of the season, I DO love the reason for Christmas.  I love our Savior and all he did for us.  I love celebrating His birth.  

Thanksgiving week

What a great Thanksgiving week Steve and I had!  We left on Saturday, the 17^th, to fly to Syracuse, New York, to visit Elise.  Here is a run-down of our week: 

Saturday – arrived, checked in to hotel, ate dinner at Cracker Barre.  Not a very original choice but it gave us a chance to meet some of Elise's co-workers.  

Sunday – church with Elise.  She has a great ward.   

Here we are in the parking lot of the meetinghouse.

After lunch and a nap, we took a walking tour of Syracuse University campus.   Assorted photos below.....

 

 

 

 

After dinner, we watched “Family Man”( Steve’s November movie-to-watch)

Monday- Steve and I rented a car and drove to Cooperstown and visited the Baseball Hall of Fame.  Although it was Steve’s third visit, it was my first time to actually go INSIDE the hall of fame.  First visit, in 1999, we were on a tight budget so I opted to stay with kids who were not that excited to go inside (I think it was Kirsti, Sarah, and Emily).  Second visit, in 2010, we had two dogs that were not allowed so I offered to stay with them while the rest of the family went inside.  It was nice to finally go in.  While many of the displays had not the meaning for me that they did for Steve, I still found many things to enjoy and admire.   I loved the actual hall with all the inductees.

 

 

 Steve, a happy man (although blurry - oops)

Tuesday – Elise took the day off and we three spent the day at Niagara Falls and Palmyra.  Niagara Falls was simply breathtaking.  I just couldn’t stop taking photos.  

 

 

  In Palmrya, we visited sites where we had not previously not gone:  the E.B. Grandin print shop where the Book of Mormon was first published, 

 

 Here I am learning to fold a printed page as it would have looked before being bound. Pretty cool.

We toured inside the two homes that the Smith family lived, (below is the first one they built)

 

  and we saw the Martin Harris home.  We ended our visit with a session at the temple.

Wednesday – While Elise worked, Steve and I puttered around her apartment doing some small chores (shades of what my mom and dad did when they came to visit us).  We watched "Home Alone" that night. Elise has the cutest apartment on the second floor of this house.  Her door is the one on the right....

 

  It is just one of hundreds of similar-looking houses surrounding the Syracuse campus.  She has lots of windows, hardwood floors, a working fireplace (!), three bedrooms that she and her roommate, Alison, share, two balconies, and a modern kitchen with tons of storage cabinets. 

Thursday – Turkey Day!  Elise had to work – of course – so during her shift from 8:20 – 2:30 (which stretched out to 3:30), Steve and I watched the Macy’s Parade and the Purina Dog Show while baking a gluten-free pecan pie, the turkey, and making cranberry sauce and Waldorf salad.  Once Elise got off, we made the mashed potatoes and gravy.  Simple and delicious – probably the most relaxed Thanksgiving dinner I have had in recent memory!  

 

  We watched “White Christmas” that evening.

Friday – Elise worked again and Steve and I watched my Netflix selection “Mr. Blanding Builds His Dream House” (a classic featuring Cary Grant and Myrna Loy).  When we picked up Elise, there was just time to eat dinner (yummy leftovers) and visit an amazing mall near the Amtrak station and then it was 9:30 and time to board our overnight train to Chicago.  We did not choose to pay the ridiculous price for a sleeper car so we got to spend our night in a “cold, drafty club car” (see “White Christmas”) but, thankfully, it was not cold nor drafty – just not our bed so sleep was not the best.  But, we knew that coming in.  Overall, though, the train travel was great.  Leg room is soooo much better than on a plane.  We would do it again but, next time around, I will bring a sleep mask to block out the light.  And, I will have more pillows.  I was just grateful for my book, Ender's Shadow, to help me through my sleeplessness. 

Saturday – We got to Chicago around 9:30 a.m., 

 

 

 We hung around Union Station, mostly in the Great Hall, which was decorated beautifully for Christmas.  Above is Steve catching a quick nap.  At 1:45, we boarded the train to St. Louis and we were picked up by Joe and the grandkids at 8:00.  We finally pulled into our Columbia garage at 10:45 p.m. 

Sunday – I turned 57 today.  And had a great day:  relaxed morning, church from 1-4:00, dinner at 6:00, lots of great gifts and phone calls.  Here I am with my pumpkin cheesecake.  Mmmmmm.

 

Try, try again

It has been a trying week – literally!  On both Monday and Thursday nights, the annual Try-Me-Out night (only now they are called Instrument Exploration Night) occurred at Lange and Smithton Middle Schools.  I manned the string bass station and for over two hours at Lange and over three at Smithton, it was “What is your name?”  “Do you play an instrument now?” “Do you have a vehicle that can transport a bass?”  all the while keeping at least one hand on the scroll of the bass at all times since most of the kiddos at that age are quite small and the bass is HUGE in comparison.  My left arm is still sore! And I have one more to do tomorrow night at Gentry Middle School.......

Our patience was also tried this week on Wednesday when the truck had a flat tire – REALLY flat (no fix-a-flat, unfortunately, was going to work here).  Usually this is not a problem but the Volvo was in the shop for new brakes (front and rear – ugh) so I really needed the truck to get to all my schools.  And, when we took the spare tire off, it was too BIG!  Whaaat, you ask?  Well, the original tires way back in 2004 were all actually bigger.  When it came time to replace them, we were able to go with a slightly smaller tire for less money so that is what we did.  And, have done ever since.  And, I guess we have never needed to use the spare all these years!  That is pretty amazing, actually.  Anyway, thankfully, Sarah had just pulled up to go on a bike ride on the trails nearby so I was able to use her car to get to CIS.  And, she could drop me off and pick up me from Lange while shopping at Aldi in between for the YSA Regional conference held this weekend.   Steven was able to take me to pick up the Volvo later in the afternoon.  And, Steve was able to take the spare tire in the trunk of the Volvo to Wal-Mart that evening to get a smaller one put on.  So, 24 hours later, we had both vehicles up and running again.  Whew!

Tuesday, election day, the public school kids had a day off but the teachers did not – boo.  However, I spent a very productive couple of hours with the Performing Arts faculty planning for next school year (that is all we seem to be doing this year –plan for 2013-14 – reason being, we are opening up high school #3 and changing from 10-12 high school to the more normal 9-12 model.   So, there really IS lots of planning and preparing that needs to be done.  In fact, the Try-Me-Out  a.k.a. Instrument Exploration Night events usually happen in the early spring but they were bumped up to now so we can get an earlier picture of enrollment to know how many more music teachers will need to be hired.)  Well, after that LONG explanation, I have to post a hilarious photo we had taken during our faculty meeting.  I am not sure where it will ultimately end up but the goal was to depict our specific areas of expertise.  

 

It is hilarious that I have a violin! But the cellos were all locked up in lockers and no one had the master key.   The back row ( left to right)  is Mike -  choir, Mary Margaret - drama, Dee – theater tech.  Front Row is Katrina – music secretary, me, Steve – band.  The other band teacher is going to the new high school next year so they will have to hire a new assistant.  And, probably a second choir teacher, too.  I hope to have two orchestras – one open to everyone and one that is by audition only.

I had my fall studio recital Friday night.  Here are the participants (minus the six students who could not come).

 

Some brief updates:  I am not sure whether I reported that we can now park both vehicles in the garage for the first time in about two years.  Woo hoo.  We had stake conference all last weekend.  It was really good from beginning to end.  The YSA conference has been this weekend and we have put up guys to sleep the last two nights – seven on Friday and five last night.  Trissy continues to escape from the back yard.  We are now looking at having to tie her up every time she is let out.  I watched TWO DVDs last week – “Snow White and The Huntsman” and “Elizabeth the Golden Age”.  And, I got to work in the yard Saturday morning.  Wow, getting to live a bit of my “old” life for a brief bit.

Here is what our maple tree looked like two days ago.  

 

Here is what it looks like today after two days of wind.

  

Finally, look at this angel wing begonia that I have had for many years (at least seven).  It has bloomed for the first time!