Briefly

 I have been busy all week working on the St. Louis Civic Orchestra program and on completing the second volume of my mother's life history.  

The printer likes to have a two week window to print the programs and our concert is on Saturday, December 2nd but, with two days off next week for Thanksgiving, they needed everything by the end of this week.  Most of the pages stayed the same from the October concert so collecting the information for the rest should have been easy, right?  Ha Ha!!!!  My amazing proof reader, Jayne Hanlin, has been in Italy celebrating her 80th birthday until Thursday so she was proofing at the Heathrow Airport!  And, happily, everything was sent to the printer Thursday night!

Steve and I finished transcribing my mom's book Monday evening and every spare moment since then (when not teaching or working on the program) I have been thumbing through five photo albums and scanning and cropping pertinent pictures to accompany the text.  I have two more albums to go through and then I have to upload everything into Blurb before their 50% off Black Friday deal begins.  Steve is also working on a quote book so he and I have had to (and will have to) share the computer these next three days.

But, we did take some time off yesterday to drive to Ballwin to help celebrate Noah's 16th birthday!  Following a delicious dinner of street tacos and a raspberry chocolate cake (Emily saved some of the frosting, filling and gnash for me to make my own concoction with a couple of gluten-free chocolate cupcakes I bakes - delicious).  Our gift to Noah was to take him to a St. Louis Symphony concert.  The music was pieces I had never heard before:  Rustic Suite by Kapralova, the Violin Concerto by Korngold and the 7th Symphony by Dvorak.  All so beautiful!  We topped the evening off with ice cream at Oberweis Dairy.  Below is Noah singing the happy birthday song along with the rest of the family...