Quizzing and The Egyptian

We leave in the morning for our fourth and final quiz meet of the 2007-08 season. We'll be traveling to Hayden Lake this time and I'm actually looking forward to a long, relaxing bus ride. I think I'll sleep! We had a very successful mock quiz meet at MFC on Sunday and I couldn't take a decent picture to save my life so this one will have to do. . . sorry, Jered. . .

In the meantime, Rob and Dale are setting up and running sound for a very large group called Onomatopoeia at the Egyptian. The concert is on Friday night but the set-up was today- I helped them a little bit and it was pretty crazy. We were set up just in time for a sound check and the arrival of a local news crew. I'm actually a little disappointed that I won't be in town for this show, I think it will be a good one.

Gloria and Megan Go Skiing!

Kristin took the girls skiing Sunday after church. It sounds like they all had a great time! (These are K's photos- I'm sure the pics straight out of her camera are beautiful but they didn't transfer very well to my computer!):

Barrage Music Video: Bolero

Rob had a great time at the Barrage event. These are pictures from the Saturday show:

The Trade

Back in November, we traded a future show for a beautiful baby grand piano. The time finally came this weekend for us to fulfill our end of the bargain. In order to do this show right, we needed to supply a "line array" of speakers that "fly" from the rafters. It always makes me nervous to suspend heavy things over unsuspecting people's heads but there are safety ratings and guarantees that bring me a little comfort. We picked up these fancy speakers in Salt Lake on Tuesday and, using the genie lifts provided by the civic center, we went up, up, up into the tip-top of the ceiling to hang them with heavy-duty span sets. I was a little freaked out by the ascent but managed to help Rob anyway. I took this picture while looking down on the skinny little genie-lift legs that are the only things keeping me from plunging to my death:

After the speakers were hung we had to run the cables. Rob isn't too crazy about heights so it's not easy for him to be up this high. He's macho, though, so he never complained.
We also had to supply "intelligent" lights for this show so we rented 4 Accu-spots from another company and bought 2 of our very own. (The lights we usually run are par cans or "dumb" lights.) Dale is comfortable with the computer program needed to run these lights so he was our lighting guy for the event. This is one of our new toys:

And this is what the intelligent lights look like when they are in use:

Our time and equipment was needed for three shows- two on Friday and one on Saturday. The kids and I chose to go to the show on Friday afternoon and it was really good. The group is called Barrage and they travel all over the world with their high-energy performance. They sing, dance and play violins to a wide variety of music. They obviously love what they do and they connect really well with their audience. Gloria especially loved the show and even had a chance to meet the girls afterwards. I'll be posting some of Rob's pictures from Saturday night and a You tube video of one of their performances in the next day or two.

I think this was a pretty fair trade. . . for us anyway. :)

Lucy Shows Her True Colors

Proof That Age 9 Is Too Young For Makeup!

Gloria is very much a girly-girl and she loves to fix her hair and experiment with the loads of make-up she has collected. She even does a pretty good job most of the time and begs to wear it when we leave the house. Even though my answer is always "NO" she usually has traces of it on her face most of the time. So the other day she was once again primping in front of the mirror for a very long time- NOT unusual- when she came out looking like this:

Most of it came off in the tub but one of the lines above her eyebrow was still there the next morning and it kept me amused for quite some time before I had her scrub it off!

It's been quite a week. Between school, work, quizzing, food poisoning and a day trip to Salt Lake City and back, I'm feeling just a little tired and overwhelmed. There is so much to do and it's almost like I'm paralyzed by everything that is required of me right now and I can't grasp where to begin . . . Anyway, here's a few snapshots of the surfacy stuff from the last week:

We went out to dinner for Valentine's Day:

Rob got a new welder. Woo hoo.

There was a beautiful dedication service on Sunday for pretty little Eva Grace:

We celebrated my mom's birthday:

I retched violently for 6 hours on Monday evening. Thankfully there are no pictures.

AND we drove to Salt Lake and back on Tuesday to pick up some fancy speakers for an event this weekend. I was still feeling quite puky so this is the only picture I managed to take:

If life and my stomach will just settle down a little bit, I'll be fine. . .

In Better Hands by Natalie Grant

My new favorite song. . .

Tracie's Reading Meme

I didn't know if I was to put this as a comment on your blog and put it on my blog. So I just e-mailed it to you :-)

Well I actually had 3 books to choose from. They were all stacked on top of each other. I had "His Excellency George Washington", "Lincoln and Booth Beyond the Conspiracy", and "The Civil War". Any idea what I have been obsessed about lately. :-)

This is from "The Civil War":

Coffee was the preferred drink of both armies. Union troops crushed the beans with their rifle butts, drank four pints of it and day, "strong enough to float an iron wedge," and when they could not build a fire were content to chew the grounds. Southerners often made do with substitutes brewed from peanuts, potatoes, chicory.

Love and miss you

Tracie

Katrina's Reading Meme

The rules of this meme are as follows:
1. Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. No cheating!
2. Find page 123
3. Find the first 5 sentences
4. Post the next 3 sentences
5. Tag 5 people

Hey there, Here's what I came up with. The closest book was entitled Treasury of Children's Literature and page 123 contained a poem I had never read before. It had no punctuation and since it could've been written by Elsie a few years ago, I decided to cheat and post the whole poem. Maybe when I'm a granny, I won't always be in a hurry :) --Katrina

GRANNY GRANNY PLEASE COMB BY HAIR
by Grace Nichols

Granny Granny
please comb my hair
you always take your time
You always take such care
You put me to sit on a cushion
Between your knees
You rub a little coconut oil
Parting gentle as a breeze
Mummy Mummy
She's always in a hurry - hurry
Rush
She pulls my hair
Sometimes she tugs
But Granny
You have all the time in the world
And when you're finished
You always turn my head and say
"Now who's a nice girl."

Victoria's Reading Meme

The rules of this meme are as follows:
1. Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. No cheating!
2. Find page 1233. Find the first 5 sentences
4. Post the next 3 sentences
5. Tag 5 people


"I should of been wearing white from day one, but it was one of those rules I felt I had to build up to. Now that I'm doing it, I don't want to stop."

- The Year Living Biblically, One man's humble quest to follow the Bible as literally as possible. By A.J. Jacobs


This is a great book and has been very funny, it does a good job at putting what God really wants out of us into perspective. God has given us so many laws over time but, to love stands above the rest. Love you lots - Vic

Lori's Reading Meme

Oh the things I do for you Baker.

Anyway here it is.....from "Maximum Ride" by James Patterson.

"There," he breathed, as six orangey yellow images emerged from the red river. He grinned. The bird kids ran hotter than humans, hotter than Erasers."

I have not read the book, so I have no idea what this means. It was the closest other than "Geometry and Problem Solving for Teachers".

Love ya,

Lori

A Reading Meme

I have been tagged by Gregg with a meme!!

The rules of this meme are as follows:
1. Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. No cheating!
2. Find page 123
3. Find the first 5 sentences
4. Post the next 3 sentences
5. Tag 5 people

I had to cheat just a little bit on number one because I'm surrounded by the kid's school books. My immediate choices were The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Exploring Creation With Physical Science and page 123 of both of those books just didn't make any sense!! So I reached for the next closest book and found The Relentless Tenderness of Jesus by Brennan Manning. While I'm tempted to post more than 3 sentences, I've already cheated enough so here are the next 3 sentences on page 123 after the first 5 sentences:

"The second aspect of the word father in Scripture involves care, concern, compassion and reliability. We are not only invited but actually called to enter into this warm, liberating experience of fatherhood. In Romans Paul is explicit: "Those who are led by the Spririt of God are sons of God. . . "

I tag:
Melanie
Victoria
Tracie
Lori
Katrina
(Lori and Katrina- you can e-mail me and I'll post it on my blog OR you could just start a blog of your own. . . !!!!)

"Look, Mom, No Braces!"

Today Zach recieved the best Valentine's gift of all: Dr. Gold took off his braces!!!!:

This picture was taken right after they were put on in July of 2006:

This was one of the best pictures I could find of how his teeth looked BEFORE he got braces. This was in the fall of 2005 at the Taffin's house. I love this picture!!

Zach and I both agreed that his time spent in braces was well worth it. Look at these beauties!!:

Rob's Party

When we pulled into town Monday evening, we quickly upacked a few things and headed over to Rob's parent's house to celebrate his birthday. . . better late than never!! Rob had plenty of help opening his gifts:

His mom spoiled him in the usual way, fixing his favorite meal and laying out all of his favorite snacks. His birthday dinner was turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy and all the other fixin's of a full Thanksgiving dinner! It was a lovely evening and we had a nice time relaxing with family.

Going Home

This week just flew by. It was a lovely working vacation and now it's time to go. I'm not looking forward to going home to floors covered with dog hair and mud (from all the melting snow) but reality must be faced. I've enjoyed this little piece of heaven while it lasted:

Getting everything back down the mountain and loaded into the truck was a huge chore. We didn't have the help that we were told we would have and the people we rounded up to help weren't really thrilled with the job but we finally got it done. This cat made 4 round trips from the superpipe to the truck:

Gloria practiced her skiing while we worked. She would ski down the hill closest to the truck and wait for Rob to bring her back up on the snowmobile.

Rob would take the snowmobile to the top of the hill, put a load in the snow cat and then ride back down to the truck to wait for the cat so they could unload it and do it again. He rescued a little girl while he was waiting and it wasn't Gloria. We heard desperate screams that caught the attention of everyone in the area but we couldn't tell where they were coming from. Rob jumped on the snowmobile and headed over to the slope where they were coming from. He found a little girl, about 4 years old, stuck in a snow bank. Turns out she had gotten seperated from her class and had gone over a steeper edge and plowed into the soft powder. Her coach came along shortly after Rob pulled her out, setting her back on her skiis and giving her a little shove in the right direction. She seemed to recover but I felt so sorry for her.

We finally left the resort at about 3:00 and made the uneventful trip home. It was quite a week.

Just Another Day In Paradise