Back again

It's been a long while since we've posted and it would be tempting to try to update you on everything you've missed in the past several weeks, but to save time and in an attempt to avoid boredom, I'll just give you a brief summary:

• We had a great visit to the Allen Homestead (aka, "the farm") in upstate New York to celebrate Aunt Emily and Uncle Matt's wedding. It was a beautiful, intimate wedding and a really wonderful weekend for all of us.
• Happy has been asking about October, Halloween and his birthday for the past several months and now that October is finally here, he cannot get enough of spooky stories, pumpkins and ghosts. In fact, he is wearing a blanket and "whoo-ing" right now.
• Chubbles is talking more and more all the time. She entertained us all tonight by counting up to 10 then racing herself around the living room...many times. The more times she did it, the fewer numbers got counted "count again? one... three... GO!" and off she runs.
• We got our family pictures again a couple weeks ago by a very talented photographer friend. They're not finished yet, but she did send us one preliminary proof:

I'd like to direct your attention to my mid-section. Now normally, I'd never purposely invite you to stare at my not-so-muscular middle. This time however, you might have noticed it as soon as you saw the picture (That's certainly the first thing I saw!). So I'll save you the trouble of not asking--yes, it is a larger-than-normal belly and yes, it will continue to grow for another 6 months until we finally welcome its current occupant into the outside world. 

Here's to number 3, due April 12th, 2013.

Bait and Switch

Curmudgeon got called to teach early-morning seminary this year.  Once we'd taken a couple of weeks to adjust to it they pulled a bait-n-switch. "By the way, we neglected to mention it before, but there are some dress and grooming standards for seminary teachers." Whaa?! Curmudgeon took it a lot better than I did, but we made the transition a fun one by milking his wooly beard for all it was worth during the shaving process. Anybody want to cast a vote on your favorite look?

Besides adventures in shaving, life continues much the same for us here. Happy has started playing "caves" a lot so we've got a semi-permanent blanket fort set up in the living room. 

Crazy kids.

Anyway, it's all fun here.

Two Years Old!

We celebrated Chubble's 2nd birthday last week. Isn't that amazing!? She is our dancer and artist, so mostly her presents revolved around markers, drawing and--the highlight for me--a tutu.

Here she is at her own little desk+chair (and wearing the tutu) with the magic color wonder markers that my sister-in-law introduced us to. Chubbles colors on everything--our walls still have some scribbles that I haven't taken care of yet, so having markers that only work on the special paper is, in my opinion, a great breakthrough.

I love this picture of the kiddos getting ready for church in their handsome clothes.

In other news, the weather has made an abrupt about-face and after more than a month of 100+ temperatures, we're finally able to turn the AC off, open the windows, and put the covers back on our beds.  And I for one am relieved to be in long sleeves and to take my hair out of its constant summer-time ponytail. Downside: school starts this week, which means that Curmudgeon won't be with us  during the days anymore. Sigh. He's also teaching seminary this year, so he has extra-early mornings and won't be able to bike to work. I'm thinking we'll be having early bedtime for the lot of us here. 

A Life Changing Event?

I spent last week at the Jewell Early Music Festival Workshop. It was a great experience and has taken a few days for me to digest my feelings about the workshop. For one thing, this was the first time since Boyo was born that I've been away from my children. Sure, I saw them each morning before I left for the day, but they were always asleep before I got home and I was basically away from them for 5 days straight. (Thanks to Curmudgeon. A lot of husbands might complain or feel put-upon to do that for a full week, but not mine. He's enthusiastic, supportive and excited to spend time with the kiddos. :)

Those of you who know me well know that for the past 12 years I've had an unhealthy, unproductive relationship with my voice. I have never quite been able to get over the disappointments of college or the shattering blows to my self confidence. I've gone back and forth between heartbreaking desire,  crippling fear and bitter resentment at the perceived injuries done to my nonexistent career.

At the same time, I've continued to sing here and there, even doing a public solo recital in Alaska and joining Curmudgeon in his recital at OSU. When we moved to Kansas I was determined to find a way to sing here so I began researching for a teacher. I was lucky enough to get a place with the best early music specialist in the area and we've been working together now for about six months. The improvement in my vocal health, confidence and knowledge is plain. 

When I found out about the JEMSfest and immediately knew I needed to attend. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the experience will change my life. The workshop was a fun mix of vocal masterclasses and lessons, ensemble work, rehearsals with instrumentalists on period-instruments and finally, solo and ensemble recitals and a final concert including the performance of the first English opera: Venus and Adonis by John Blow.  As much as I enjoyed all of the work and the rehearsals, the most important aspect of the week was making connections. Getting work in this (or any) business is 90% about who you know. Cynical as it sounds, it's been a huge boost for me to realize that. 

My confidence also got a big shot-in-the-arm as I worked with other professionals who treated me not like a student and not like an amateur, but like a fellow musician. I came out of the workshop with invitations to join a number of local ensembles and I'm on "the list" now. One of the voice faculty, a professional countertenor, told me that he was so glad I was in KC and that he is going to do whatever he can to make sure I get work as a soloist around here.  For the first time since I was a teenager, I feel like I am not just a pretend-musician. I feel like I just found the golden ticket...I have relationships now and there are people in my corner.

It has all been a treat. In September I'll start rehearsals with these different ensembles. I'll continue working with my own fabulous teacher and keep building my skills and repertoire. It's exciting.

Less exciting is the fact that I can't seem to make embedding audio in blogger work anymore, so if you want to hear anything, you can check out my website here on the ABOUT page. There's one recording from the workshop and I found it a little disappointing. The mic was too far away so it's a bit quiet and when I listen some major things pop out that I'd do differently next time, but it at least gives you an idea of the stuff I'm working on. That piece, by the way, is one that I transcribed from a facsimile of the original 1664 printing...pretty fun project.

Boyo's Room

I have some more photos of the slow progression of making our house a home. We repainted boyo's room. I know the angles are off, but picture yourself standing just where the door in the old picture is to get the vantage point of the new views. I know the old taupe doesn't look that bad in this photo, but you just have to remember that that photo was taken before we bought the place and by the time we moved in it had had big patches of plaster all over the walls and a halo of pain around the moulding where the contractors had repainted without taping anything. It looked awful.

And now, with the bright white, intense blue and green shades I think it's a pretty great little boy's room. Evidently Happy likes it too.

 Some summer cuteness:

 and Daddy keeping fit. It's about 150 degrees outside (okay, 107) and here he is hauling about 100 pounds of baby behind him. He's my superman.

Mystery Summer

We continue this week with another American (Canadian) made mystery. The nearly-always insufferable Maury Chaykin takes an enjoyable turn as the grouchy, misanthropic, hermit private detective Nero Wolfe. Wolfe can't abide time-wasters or imbeciles. His dearest friends are his collection of rare orchids and his only passion is haute cuisine. His is an exceptionally sharp deductive mind, but leaves all the footwork to his capable assistant Archie (Timothy Hutton), a debonair ladies man who can talk himself into--and out of--any situation. 

Nero Wolfe is a light-hearted, humorous and colorful take on film-noir style (as contradictory as that may sound. All pinstripe suits and mysterious damsels in distress, the writing is clever and fun, the production low-budget but highly entertaining. But our favorite unique quality of the show is the rotating cast. The main characters remain the same, but the supporting cast of actors can be found playing new roles in each new mystery. The blond above must show up at least a dozen times throughout the series...always as a new character. Seeing familiar faces crop up again and again makes you feel like you're participating in local dinner theatre or something. 

Check your local library. I hope you'll be able to find some of these. If you get a chance to watch, let us know what you think of them!

Summer Projects...

We've had an alarmingly short, action-packed summer and I'm sorry to say that it is almost over!! Only 3 weeks before Curmudgeon heads back to school. Busy as we've been with family and workshops and well-deserved (I think) lounging, we have gotten some major home projects done around the house. I foolishly neglected to take photos immediately after the work and since then haven't gotten around to all the cleaning, rearranging and fussing needed to take photos of every room, but I'll present them as I clean... a little bit at a time. So first up is Chubbles room (aka the laundry room. what? she loves it!). 

the laundry room when first saw the house.
The same ugly, drab taupe that filled the whole place.

Updated with fresh bright paint, fun curtains, and that same cheap IKEA rug you've seen in a million pictures from every design mommy-blog out there. But it was cheap and pretty, so there. Also, though you can barely see one of them, four gorgeous prints of fairy-tale scenes in watercolor by Edmund Dulac surround the crib. I have been carrying these prints around for almost two years meaning to put them up in her room and now they're finally up. makes me so so happy.

We're also almost finished with our entryway. Remember this? 

   




















and this?
It also started with that bleak taupe color painted over a mish-mass of textured wallpaper and plaster. What a nightmare to get all of that off!

And now it's all bright, happy and colorful. Deep sigh of relief. 

And for the grand finale, our cuties in character: The dour Chubbles and the always silly Happy.

Mystery Summer

Again going along with PBS's programming schedule, we bring you another of our favorites:

Inspector Lewis which is airing on Masterpiece Mystery this month.

It doesn't take a whole lot of viewing experience to get used to the key ingredients of classic British detective stories. One important element is setting, which for many mystery series is the only constant amid a flood of constantly changing characters. In this case, Oxford is a main character in itself, with both victims and perpetrators inhabiting a world where academic stardom is the first order of life. The ancient university, its hallowed halls and looming secrets provide more than enough material to keep the series varied and interesting.

Next, there's always the chief detective and his sergeant.  In virtually every inspector + sergeant partnership we've ever seen, there is some major incongruity between the two characters which provides enough personal tension between them to keep things interesting while at the same time fueling each individual's creative and deductive powers. Inspector Lewis is a working-class bloke with intelligence to spare but no patience for the head-in-the-clouds lifestyle of his academic neighbors. Sergeant Hathaway is his opposite in every way, educated at Cambridge, he studied theology until an existential crisis turned him away from the priesthood and toward a career with the police. But despite (more likely because of) their differences, Lewis and Hathaway make a formidable team. 

 As mysteries go, Inspector Lewis strikes that perfect balance between dark and light... the stories almost always have some gravity to them, but there's enough lightness and humor to keep you from getting depressed (Unlike Inspector Lynley, a similar series with many of the same standard elements which, by the way, didn't make the cut for our summer selections). Lewis is enjoyable and definitely worth the time. 

One tiny little side-note: some of you may remember Lewis as Sergeant Lewis, Inspector Morse's protege from the earlier TV Mystery Inspector Morse. We didn't include Morse in our summer series either mainly because, well, we've never watched it. But anyway, I figured if I didn't mention it that I'd hear about it from all you Morse fans out there.

Family Fun

We've had a great couple of weeks with Grandma and Grandpa from Ohio, Grandma and Grandma from Utah and our Okie cousins. No play-by-play narration of our visits, just a few pictures to illustrate our fun times:

reading with Grammy

an Independence Day waterfight with the Okies

water balloons, cannons and plastic cups gave our kiddos all the ammunition they needed to join in the fun.

visiting our favorite sculpture park with Grandma and Grandpa.

We took a vacation both hosting and visiting family this week, so we also took a vacation from our mysteries. Check in again this weekend for the next installment.

Mystery Summer Week 4

This week we move back to our side of the pond with the American-made (though largely British-cast, what do you know!) Pushing Daisies. Part fantasy fairy-tale, part crime drama with characters that could have been written by Roald Dahl and sets and costumes that look so deliciously bright they could be made of candy. The show only aired for two seasons, but received (well-deserved, in our opinion) critical acclaim including 17 emmy nominations and 7 wins.

Ned is a lonely young piemaker who possesses the unique power of being able to bring the dead back to life--once. One touch brings life, but the next instantly kills whoever or whatever he just brought back. The story takes off when an enterprising private detective happens to see the phenomenon in action and immediately invites Ned to join him as a partner. After all, there's no easier way to solve a murder than to ask the victim what happened, right? But when one of their first cases involves Ned's childhood sweetheart Chuck--all grown up and beautiful--he can't bring himself to give her that second touch and so begins the sweet and frustratingly anti-physical relationship that binds the whole show together.

The characters are all larger-than life, the writing is witty and the stories are completely over-the-top. An especially bright spot in the show is Kristen Chenoweth, Ned's only pie-shop employee who is desperately, secretly but not very discreetly in love with him. And of course, she occasionally breaks into song about it.

All in all, Pushing Daisies is lovely, funny, enchanting and completely unique. You can find it on Hulu or at theWB.com. Hope you  enjoy it!  Whoops...just noticed that only Season 2 is available online. Maybe you can find Season 1 at your local library or rent it through Amazon or iTunes or something.

More Summer Fun with Cousins

Riding the stone elephant at the zoo,

Daddy and Chubbles,

Baby Vee in her swing at the playground,

the boys waiting to get on the zoo train.

Mystery Summer: Week 3

We continue our mystery summer with our no. 1 favorite: Foyle's War. This is a British period mystery set during and immediately following the second World War. It is set in the coastal town of Hastings (as in the same Hastings that was the site of the famous Battle of Hastings when William the Conqueror came in and cleaned house with the Anglo-Saxon nobles, making Britain a Norman holding for the next...well, basically forever).

Michael Kitchen is Detective Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle and he is a man for whom right is right and there is no room for legal compromise, moral ambiguity or justifications of wrongdoing in a time of war. And for his perfect moral uprightness, sharp intelligence and ever-polite, courteous (but definitely not friendly) manner, he is probably our very favorite of all detectives. And really, that is saying a lot!

He is backed by Sergeant Milner, a war veteran sent home from the fight because of the loss of a leg in combat. Milner (Anthony Howell) is not your typical bumbling, ineffective sergeant. He is extremely intelligent and capable but lacks Foyle's black-and-white confidence about questions of morality, intent and the violent, war-torn world he lives in.

Rounding out the crew is Sam (Honeysuckle Weeks), a can-do girl who performed so poorly in the women's mechanized transport corps that she was transferred to the police as Foyle's driver--which suits her just fine. Her constant optimism and childlike humor brings some lightness to the series and even gives her boss something to smile about.

The series was meticulously produced with historically accurate details from the costumes and uniforms to the aircraft and cars, telephones, weaponry, etc. and provides a fascinating glimpse of everyday life in a terrible period of modern history. The whole series is just fantastic and is available on Netflix instant. Well worth anyone's time. 

Fun With Cousins

Chubbles looks just like a little southern miss.

and Happy is still always happy.

Happy and his cousin Bug were born six days apart and have been good buddies their whole lives.

We've been having a great time hanging out with visiting family. My sister, her husband and their three children have been staying with us and we've loved exploring with them.

We took them to the sculpture park at the Art Museum. The kids all had a great time running over the fields, crawling under sculptures, and playing on the steps of the museum.