Some lovely spring weather we are enjoying. I heard peepers for the first time last week which is a certain sound of spring. Noah and Emily came for a visit Wednesday and stayed until Thursday morning. Noah is now not sleeping in a crib so he took the finch room bed and did just great. He enjoyed Alfred, of course, and the trains downstairs, as usual. He also “helped” me clean the garage while his mom cheered us on. (pictures to follow)
Tuesday was the Ides of March and the CIS drama/music department celebrated with a night of Shakespeare. The choir and orchestra presented a 20-minute program of music inspired by Shakespeare. The orchestra played two numbers from Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream – the Wedding March and the Nocturne. Throughout the school were presentations of various acts from Shakespeare’s plays and guests could take in several during the evening. It was quite a shuffling act since many of my string players were also in these dramatic presentations. But, it turned out really well and it gave the orchestra a chance to show off a bit. Up until this year, the CIS advanced orchestra was ……um, well……not that fantastic. It was small and there were amazing musicians that did not participate. However, when CIS changed its start time to 8:30, all the amazing musicians just came out of the woodwork and we have made remarkable strides. And, people are noticing.
Thursday morning, Steve and I had a chat with a fellow at the MU retirement benefits office and were delighted to learn that he can retire with full benefits in four years! Actually, less than four years since his last day could be January 18th, 2015. Wow. That must mean we are old…..
Speaking of old, we oldsters are both assigned to advise the stake Young Single Adult committee (due to our callings) and they had a fun activity Friday night at a city park. It was beautiful weather so Steve loaded up our bikes into the back of the truck and we made a brief appearance with the youngsters before wandering around the park on our bikes. We cancelled out all that calorie-burning exercise, though, with a visit to Culver’s for some frozen custard afterward. But, at least we broke even? We also learned that Culvers is test-marketing a gluten-free bun. How wonderful will that be???
And, speaking of gluten-free, we had a celiac family from the Highlands Ward over for dinner on Saturday night and just stuffed ourselves with all kinds of delicious gluten-free Mexican food and cake. Mmmm. Then, I stayed up too late and watched “Despicable Me”. It was delightful! I want a minion.
Sunday was third for the month so Steve spoke in the University Ward. I didn’t have a speaking assignment but I decided to visit the Fayette Branch where, coincidentally, Steven (jr) had a speaking assignment. So, Steven, Tamara, me, and friend Jason Bell all ventured up to Fayette for the day. It is quite a small branch but full of incredibly nice people and they always have a pot-luck on the third Sunday so we got to stay for that! The Jamisons are in that branch and they are exploring going gluten-free so even I had plenty to eat. They brought tapioca pudding for dessert. MMMMMM – my mom made that all the time and it is so tasty (even though my dad called it “fish eyes in snot”)
So, it was a nice mid-March week here in Columbia.
I am finally taking some time to write a new blog. March just roared in and has left me wondering what happened to the first thirteen days of the month. CIS took students to the music festival at Central Methodist University on Friday, the 4th and that was an all-day affair. I always like going and this year, it was not even too stressful for me. Some years, I accompany someone and I am not very solid on the music and that creates a bit of nerves. Not this year – the music was all very playable and the piano was decent.
We had Stake Conference last weekend. It was a regional broadcast so all the stake leadership had to worry about was Saturday night. As it was, Steve had two talks and a lesson to. I just had to help serve the meal to the Priesthood leaders on Saturday.
We celebrated Tamara’s birthday last weekend. Happy birthday, Tamara.
I’ve watched a few good movies lately. How to Train Your Dragon is really cute. And, I quite enjoyed the A-Team. Crazy, huh? Steve and I have been spending our last three date-night Fridays watching the multi-disc A&E version of Horatio Hornblower. A well done series. And, yesterday, as I was cleaning and fixing food, I watched Calamity Jane – an old 1953 Doris Day musical – on instant Netflix. Very politically incorrect, very corny, and yet, very entertaining. I have been humming the tunes ever since.
Steve and I had some free time yesterday so we visited a dollhouse shop in little, out-of-the-way Millersburg. What a delightful place. Of course, it sold items for doll houses but it was also like a museum with maybe twenty completely furnished doll houses on display. They were just amazing. We stopped in a new antique mall on the east side of Columbia on our way home and enjoyed walking around.
We fixed Chinese food for dinner tonight. I found a recipe for gluten-free egg rolls that uses rice paper. What a strange substance it is – it comes out of the package crispy and brittle but becomes soft and almost squishy after it is moistened. When I make them again this summer (when Kirsti is home), I will wrap the filling in two sheets because some of the rolls broke apart in the fryer. I also used the rice paper to make crab Rangoon and those turned out beautifully! Beckie brought a veggie noodle dish and Melanie brought a lovely spinach, strawberry, Mandarin orange, almond salad. It was a delicious, fattening feast.
Max finally got a haircut – here are before and after pictures.
Words of Wisdom from Steve
Since Steve does not have a blog, I would like to insert something that he and I discussed the other day as we were worrying over all the challenges that our children are having. Below is what he said:
The gift of the Holy Ghost, the right to have his influence always with us,is one of the greatest blessings given by a loving Father. Sometimes we are distracted by the difficulties and challenges in our lives to the extent that we think focusing most of our attention on the difficulties is our highest priority; yet by increasing the consistency of the gift of the Holy Ghost, his influence,we are blessed in two ways: we are guided in the ways we can meet the challenges, and as we work through them, we are given comfort that all will be well.
But the comforter, whom the Father will send in my name,
he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your
remembrance, whatsoever I have spoken unto you.
John 14:26
It would seem, then, that while we focus attention on our challenges, we should not forget to do those things in our lives that will allow the gift of the Holy Ghost to be more consistent. In fact, if one had to choose, the latter would be the better choice.
President’s Day weekend was spent with Noah. Steve and I drove to St. Louis Friday night, we went to the temple, and then we spent the night with Emily, Joe, and Noah. Saturday morning, we loaded up the pack and play, the diapers and p.j.s, the smarter-than-grandparents car seat, and, of course, Noah and took him back to Columbia so his mom and dad could enjoy a small get-away at a bed and breakfast in Rocheport. Yea, they were practically around the corner from us and so on Sunday, they joined us for the afternoon and dinner before they drove back to St. Louis. Noah was just great at our house.
He ate well, went to sleep when he needed to, let me wash his hair Saturday night and comb it Sunday morning for church (it tickled Emily that I actually wet down and parted his hair, keeping it in place with spray gel) Here is grandpa helping Noah brush his teeth.
I WISH I had pulled my camera out when those two baked mint brownies together…..
And now this weekend is over and I have been relieved of two big burdens. The string quartet had a wedding Saturday afternoon at 4:00 and then the Civic Orchestra had a concert at 7:00 and I spent every spare minute last week preparing for both events. BIG sigh of relief when the last note was played in the Missouri Theater last night! First, the wedding was booked by a coordinator whose business I want to keep so, even though Siri and Julia, the amazing violinists in the Prairie String Quartet could not take part in this wedding due to a run-through of the CCO concert for that night, I said we would take the job. It took some looking but I finally found two violinists not involved with CCO. OK. Whew. But then I learned the bride’s music selections. She wanted “All I Ask Of You” (which we did not have), “Hallelujah” by Cohen (did not have), and, for her recessional, “Be My Baby” (the old 50’s song – definitely didn’t have that). Add to the mix a tenor who couldn’t sing the “Lord’s Prayer” in C (the key we had) but it needed to be in B-flat. How hard is it to sing just one step higher??? So, I set to work to get the music lined up. I found an arrangement of All I Ask Of You in both C and D (the original is in D-flat) and I bought it! The organist for the wedding gave me piano versions of Hallelujah and Be My Baby and I decided that the first was pretty enough to make a simple string quartet version so I spent some time in front of Finale to do that. Be My Baby was hopefully going to be dumped if parents could talk some sense into the bride and groom so I just decided we would hack our way through a piano copy as best we could. Turned out, it was scratched and the normal Wedding March was put in its place. Hooray. Finally, I decided that having the Lord’s Prayer in B-flat was probably a good idea for future requests so I wrestled with Finale yet again. And this one WAS a tussle because I have a watered-down version of the program and it does not like multi-meter. And the song starts in 4/4, goes to 9/8, spends four measures in 12/8, and ends back in 9/8. Yikes! I did a LOT of cutting a pasting. Then, I had to deliver all this music to the substitute violinists after organizing their gig notebooks with all the music in order. Whew, this is a really long description but now you know why my life leading up to this wedding was so crazy. When the big event actually arrived, things went fairly smoothly except for the fact that the first violinist – a masters student in violin performance – hadn’t even looked at his music for the week he had it! He sight read and did that rather poorly when he had to do some serious counting! The prelude was thirty minutes of ulcer, wondering when he was going to miss-count a rhythmic passage again. That kid is NOT going to get hired by us again, that is for sure. The second violinist, bless her perfectionist freshman heart, DID practice and she was solid as a rock. Yea, Tamara. Wedding over and I drove over to the theater for the CCO concert. It was an all-21st century composer night which meant much of the music was difficult – to play and even to listen to. When I wasn’t working on wedding, I was practicing my cello. There was one number that I really liked – written by John Cheetham, my former theory prof at MU – and I wanted to play it my very best. When he came to a rehearsal two weeks ago, he sat right behind the cello section and, because I had not practiced it very well, I stank. I was so ashamed to have him hear me play so poorly that I worked and worked on his runs and tricky syncopated rhythms in three flats. And, in the Dark Knight piece, I wanted to get the cool sixteenth note that went really fast. Lots of practice. I am happy to say the work paid off. The concert went well. And, best part was that I had four people in the audience: Steve, Steven, Jason Bell, and Melanie.
Final note (no pun intended) - We had a snow on Thursday that was just beautiful. I couldn’t stop taking photos.
Notice how the snow stuck to everything like there was glue. I call the photo below Trissy's water bowl margarita.....
