Romeo and Juliet

My sisters, Becki and Deborah, and I went to the ballet! We went to see the Pacific Northwest Ballet perform Romeo and Juliet in downtown Seattle. Actually we didn't see the actual performance. We went to what is called "five buck fridays". Once a month the company does an in studio, 1 hour long performance of one of the acts of the upcoming ballet. They set up 3 rows of bleachers for the crowd. It was awesome to see the dancers so close. I liked looking at how muscular their bodies are. No one has a butt like a ballet dancer! It was cool to think that dancing is their career. Deborah told me that this particular company sets up a fund for their dancers so that when they are done with their short ballet career (probably 10 years), they have money to go to college for their second career. And I learned that the score to the Romeo and Juliet ballet is always the same, like The Nutcracker or swan Lake always have the same score. It was very cool. Thanks for taking us Deb!

Devin crawled, then stood up and walked!

Seriously, Devin had his last therapy appoinment two weeks ago tomorrow. A couple days after that appointment he started crawling, and yesterday he started walking. I took the video of him walking tonight, but somehow my camera didn't record it, so I put the vid of him crawling up instead. Amazing. The other video is just too cute to restist. Brooklyn is making Devin laugh by saying "oops" over and over again.

She's Here!

It's official. Becki moved up here this weekend. Tamara was so nice and drove up with her through the snowy mountain passes. Luckily they never had to use the chains she bought for her tires. We are very excited to have her here, and everyone else is welcome also. In other big news, I finally finished a photo disc that I have been working on for years. It was a project my sister Hannah originated. All my siblings are photo hounds. We have all been accused of stealing treaured photos from each other, and the stolen photos are never seen again. Hannah gathered everyone's stashes with the promise to return all photos to the person who gave them to her, no questions asked. I scanned them in, and like I said, years later, they are finally printable. I sent for a bunch of them printed to put into my photo albums. They are a little more grainy than the originals, but they are truly a treasure. They are pictures all the way from when we were young kids to when we were teenagers. Good times!

P.S. when I printed the photos they printed in normal colors. I don't know why they look like negatives here.

The Twilight Series!

I finally broke down and bought the Twilight Series by Stephanie Meyer (funny, I knew her name without even looking). I have had my name on the waiting list at my library for months now, but with over 150 people ahead of me in line, I knew it was going to be a long wait. I asked my lovely sister Becki (who is MOVING UP HERE, she'll be here this weekend. More on that later) if she has read them, and she said, "No, I don't really feel the need to read about mormon vampires." I laughed at that one. She is kind of a literary snob, though she won't admit it when I accuse her of that. She reads books like, Wicked, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, and The Time Traveler's Wife. She would never read Harry Potter when all the hype was going on. But she bought the set of seven for herself for Christmas. We'll get her hooked.

Happy New Year!

We spent the holidays back and forth between our house and the Jensen's (My sister and her family). Damon, Deborah and I went snowboarding on Monday (Deb skiied), and Marc was very nice and watched the kids all day for us. I haven't been boarding since before Brooklyn was born. I used to go 4 to 5 times a season, more when we would go to the cheap night boarding at Brighton in Utah. And at that time I felt I was getting pretty good, but Monday was disastrous. Actually, I had a few good runs, but I tried the rope tow for the first time in my life, and let me tell you, it is not for me. I fell twice, hard, and that thing goes fast. After the second fall, and some unseen person stopping the rope for me so the people behind me didn't ski over me, I crawled off to the side and walked the rest of the way to the lodge. The day didn't get much better after that for me. I came to the conclusion that unless I can go more often than once every three years, my snowboarding days might be over. I thanked Deborah and Damon for helping me admit this truth to myself: that I just don't like boarding enough to beat myself up that bad. Phew!

I had better get busy

Man, December is going to slip by without a post from me if I'm not careful. The kids and I recently took a ten day trip to Utah. The trip was great, but all of us came back with colds. And yesterday I lost my voice. Today I tried to read to Brooklyn but told her I had to stop because I lost my voice. She got up and followed me into the kitchen and told me she would help me look for my voice. I had a good laugh at that one.
Some additional funny thoughts: When kids are babies, the only way they have to let us know they need something is to cry, a habit that continues long after they can talk. So we spend many years asking them to stop whining and use their words. Also we're overjoyed when they can feed themselves, we put little chunks of food in front of them and they grab it with their chubby hands and shove it in. Then we spend the rest of our lives begging them not to eat with their hands. Ironic. I'm sure there are more examples, can anyone think of a few?

Something I heard on the Radio Today

"We've only been here in Seattle for a few hours and already we've started a crummy band."