My Thursday in bullet points

*Blearily up at 6:00 to make it to my "insane" workout by 6:15. But it's cardio recovery day so blessedly the workout is filled with lots of stretching and yoga. Home by 7:00.

*Spent the next hour and a half getting myself showered and dressed and the kids fed and ready for school.

*Climbed in the car at 8:30 to head to school. Kids went to their classes. I spent the next 2 and 1/2 hours helping decorate for the book fair. It's a 1950's diner theme. Masking tape was my constant companion. I think I may hold a new record for how many loops of tape used in a period of time. But it looks darn impressive and the kids and teachers are making excited comments as they walk by so I guess it's all worth it.

*Had a half hour at home before Lilian and I got back in the car to drive to Sandy. A long drive made solely to buy myself some Vibram Five Finger shoes. (More on that later.) We had lunch at Schlotskys...the only one left in the state. Y-U-M-M-Y!!

*Got home around 2:30 and had an hour to putter around at home before the day kicked into an even higher gear. Should've been cleaning. Spent the time catching up on email instead.

*3:45 saw me piling Brandon, Rebekah and her friend Jenny into the truck. Left Julianne home to babysit Lilian. Dropped Brandon at gymnastics and the girls at Classic Skating for a school choir party.

*Stopped at Chevron to get gas for the car, at Target to get some snacks for me and then continued on my way to Gary's house for a master class.

*5:00. First up of the performers...I sang two songs. "Oh Had I Jubal's Lyre" by Handel and "Veille Chanson"...a french song. Amazingly I actually remembered almost all my french and it was the better of the two songs. Thought it would be the opposite. Overall, was pretty happy with my performance.

*Left early at 5:45 so I could pick up Brandon by 6:00. Got home at 6:15 and anxiously awaited Rebekah's arrival home so that Julianne and I could leave by 6:30. She didn't come...didn't come....didn't come. Reluctantly I left Brandon in charge with promises that Rebekah would be walking in that door momentarily. (Apparently she did come about 5 minutes after I left.)

*Broke speed limits to get to Ogden for our rehearsal for "Power in His Touch" at 7:00. Spent the next 3 hours blocking the scene for "King of the Jews." Julianne and I have been officially cast as a wealthy mother and daughter who haughtily stand on the steps and look over the poor beggars and lepers with disdain.

*Home at 10:30. Ate dinner. Went to bed at midnight. Long day.

Insane

I've started a new workout. Six days a week for 10 weeks I'm going over to the church at 6:00 AM and joining a bunch of my neighbors in doing the "Insanity Workout." Umm....yeah. It IS pretty insane. It's advertised as being "the hardest, most extreme home workout ever created." They claim it's for "those hard core, fitness nuts ready and willing to workout in a pool of their own sweat." Well, I'm not sure I'm a hard core, fitness nut. Which means, I suppose, that doing this really does make me insane. I'm 8 days into the program. Last week I could barely walk, I was so sore. And tired! I find myself falling asleep in bizarre places. In the middle of Brandon's FHE lesson, during "The Importance of Being Earnest" at Hale Theatre, while spell checking a document on the computer. But I am determined to see this 60 days through. Which is why I'm talking about it here. Accountability, you know?

45....

As most of you well know, being productive with a two year old hovering and ever-present at your side can be difficult. To have a better chance at getting things done today I tried to involve Lilian as much as possible...even if it meant that the chore took me almost twice as long. On my to-do list today: organize and de-junk the towering shoe pile in my closet. It didn't take long before Lilian realized that pairing the shoes was like a matching game. Next thing I knew she had lined them all up, filling the floor of my closet.
Wow.
I have a lot of shoes.
Lilian started counting but couldn't get past 6. I took up the count where she left off. 45 pairs of shoes. And that was AFTER I chucked some out.

"Power In His Touch"

Part advertisement, part "save the date," and part just sharing....
Julianne and I are in rehearsals for a musical called "Power In His Touch." Click on that title or on the picture and it should take you to the website which gives info on the story, songs, pictures, performance dates and history of the show. It's an Easter musical written by Collette Call...a girl I know from being in Millennium Choir together for a few years. Back in 2000 she was looking for some singers to record the soundtrack of this new musical she was writing and pulled some of us from Millennium to help her. A few years went by. Eventually I heard that that "Power in His Touch" was going into production. I have friends who have joined the cast over the past few years but I have never actually seen the show. This year, my friend and voice teacher, Gary is the music director of the show. He encouraged me to come be a part of the show and even though I had conflicts with the audition date, he still slipped Julianne and me into the cast as part of the ensemble. It looks like it will be a pretty impressive show. Lots of AMAZING talent. But mostly, I'm having such a wonderful time doing this with Julianne.

Side note: Funny thing, I'm singing alto in this production. First day of rehearsal revealed a whole lot of sopranos and a lot less altos. Gary asked for soprano volunteers to join the alto section. No one raised their hand. Sopranos are divas (I can say that because I am one!) and very much feel that singing alto is not being true to themselves. So reluctantly, mostly as a favor to Gary, I raised my hand. I have a pretty wide range and although I am naturally a high, high soprano I can sing fairly low as well. But you know what? I'm having a great time singing alto. It's darn fun singing harmony and it's a great way to sharpen up my sight reading skills...something that sopranos are usually somewhat weak on because they are used to singing the melody most of the time. I have to admit...I do sigh a little every time the sopranos hit those extra high notes, though.

Favorite Photo(s) Friday: Batter hair

August 2003. This is what happens when you don't supervise your 2 and 1/2 year old who is trying to lick the last bits of cake batter out of a bowl. Really, at this point, all you can do...besides start filling the bathtub...is laugh and grab the camera.

Can I keep them alive?

I don't have much luck with keeping fish alive. Or potted house plants either. In fact my mother-in-law,who is an amazing green thumb herself, once dubbed my house "the place plants come to die." And she was so right! But a few years have gone by now. I think I'm ready to try again. I'm being bold and daring by trying them both, fish and plants, at the SAME TIME! And okay yes...if I'm being entirely truthful, I've already killed my first two fish. I didn't mean to! They died in the noble cause of research as I figured out exactly how much food they need and how often I need to clean the tank. (Less food, more cleaning.) And to be on the safe side, I bought only the cheapest .13 cent fish so I'm only out a quarter if I find that I'm still just not a fish person. So wish me luck. On the fish AND the plants. And yes, I know that those plants will eventually grow to the point that I have to re-pot them and all. We'll cross that bridge if and when we get to it.

"Lacrimation Prohibition" Meet

Woke up way stinking early this morning so we could make it to Brandon's first official gymnastics meet. It was over an hour drive to get there. And once we made it to the general vicinity of the gym, we took another half hour trying to find the actual building. As much as I love the reality show "Amazing Race," I would never make a good competitor...I get stressed out way too easily when it comes to following directions under pressure. And just a note to google maps: you were SO off today! But we made it. Grumpily but finally.

The girls got asked to be runners for the judges. They were quite happy about that. Especially when they found out the job included free snacks.
Brandon was amazing! And even more than that, he had TONS of fun. That kid has some serious potential. He took 5th place in his age group overall. Not bad for his first real meet.
I know that I posted a bunch of Brandon-the-Gymnast pictures last month. Humor me while I post a few more. Here are a some of my favorites: Brandon looked over his scores and fingered through all his ribbons all the way home, making comments like, "Look at this! I earned these!" It made my heart, as well as my face, smile. And lunch at The Cheesecake Factory, I think, was the perfect icing on the cake.

P.S. Wondering what "Lacrimation" means? I didn't know so I looked it up. A hint....the motto of the meet was "No tears allowed."

Favorite Photo(s) Friday: Horses

I miss these horses. I often found myself standing by the back door or a window that looked out over the back yard watching them. Then there were cows. Not as beautiful, obviously, but the sheer number of them back there...probably about 100...made them fun to watch. But right now we've got nothing. Just an empty field. And it's been empty for awhile. It's not as fun to stand at my back door and look out anymore. I miss these horses. Did I mention that already? May 2008.

Twenty Years Difference

I've been wallowing in old high school pictures this week. In honor of the so-called "Way Back Week" on Facebook I dug out my old sophmore picture. Once posted, I noticed that its place in the "album" was right next to a much more current picture of me and the difference was rather extreme. It's kind of amazing what twenty years can do.

Be-lated sugar cookies

We never did get around to making sugar cookies at Christmas.

Luckily sugar cookies taste yummy any time of year.

Tall

The strap on my very favorite black church shoes broke a few months ago. I looked and looked, hoping to find some just like them but to no avail. Reluctantly I decided to look for some in a different style. I finally found some I liked this past week and wore them to church today. I'm used to wearing high heels. I wear heels almost every day. And when I bought these shoes I noticed that the heels looked a little taller than what I usually wore. But, whatever. Heels are heels, right? But after feeling like I was walking around on my tiptoes all day I decided to pull out the ruler and officially measure. 5 inches! I was wearing 5 inch heels! No wonder my feet were sore.

Side note #1: I was 5' 9" today. Never been that tall before.
Side note #2: Yes, that is a zipper across the top of the shoe....how cute is that?

Rolling Sushi

Date night yesterday consisted of Bryan cashing in on his Christmas present....a sushi cooking class at Sur La Table. I crave sushi like nothing else, (well, except maybe chocolate) so it was great fun to learn how to make it.
After we were all done slicing, dicing, and rolling the chef and his assistants sent us off for a break while they cleaned up. How nice is that? To cook up a big mess but not have to clean up after yourself? When we came back they had all the sushi set out nicely on plates ready for us to eat....a buffet of sorts. The chef commented that he'd be impressed if we could eat even 60% of what we had made. I was doubtful. I can put down a lot of sushi. But he was right. We only made it through about 55% before we were all filled to bursting. Bryan said that if this had been a real sushi restaurant he wouldn't return. Apparently many of our sushi creations, made by 13 newbie sushi chefs....well, lets just say that some of the filler combinations didn't quite gel perfectly. :) Amazingly enough, my favorite was the very first roll that I made. Rice, of course, and salmon, cucumber, sprouts, basil, lemon and some kind of citrus sauce. Yum! I think it was the basil that did it. I've never had a roll with basil in it before.We had so much fun that we're thinking we might make cooking classes at Sur La Table a semi-regular addition to our date night repertoire.

Favorite Photo(s) Friday: Zions retreat

Back in...um, actually I don't remember what year it was. 2005, maybe? Bryan took his co-workers on a "retreat" of sorts, to Zions National Park. A friend of ours who lived nearby arranged to guide them on a hike that had them repelling down 7 different cliffs. Some of which ended in pools of water....some seriously COLD pools of water. Apparently it was all huge fun. I've always really liked the pictures they came home with and envied them the experience. Driving down, doing the hike, and then driving back all in one day? That part I don't envy.
(That bottom picture always reminds me of lizards sunning themselves) :)

The time has come....

Just so I can't back out and wait another few months, I am announcing that the potty training has begun. Of Lilian. Just in case you were unsure. It's been 6 years since I last potty trained a child and my memories are a bit fuzzy. From the long lapse of time or from banishing the whole experience from my mind, I'm not sure. So just to let you know....because I'm sure you all are SO interested...things are going well and we are cautiously optimistic. Lilian is thrilled, of course, because this all means that she is allowed to run around the house nearly nude. And play with stickers.
And just in case you were getting nervous that I was going to update you on each and every success and accident in turn, don't worry. I don't plan to say anything more on the subject until the whole thing is done. I'm hoping that post will come sooner rather than later. Time will tell.

Dr. Ju-little

For years Julianne has begged for a pet. Knowing of her Dad's allergic reactions to almost any animal with fur, she long ago set her sights on parakeets. She even wrote her 4th grade persuasive essay on the reasons why parakeets would make a good addition to our home. But the noise, the mess...the answer has always been "no." As it has been for any pet, really. But a little over a year ago, after much research and persuasion, Julianne talked Bryan into letting her adopt a baby dwarf hamster. And she has taken that responsibility seriously. "Pepsi" has daily water and food, a cage that is cleaned weekly, and plenty of cuddle time with the girl who loves him.
So when Julianne, armed with research on care and costs, started talking parakeets again about a month ago, Bryan, amazingly, said yes! Julianne was practically giddy the day she brought "Duke" and "Zeus" home. She has spent so much time with them in just the 2-3 weeks that they have been here that they already seem to light up when she walks in the room. They chatter to her more than anyone else and really seem to trust her. It's been kind of fascinating to watch. Both pets, the parakeets and the hamster, have their cages in her room. I started calling her Dr. Doolittle. One day she corrected me and said, "No Mom. It should be Dr. Ju-little!"