Christmas Pictures:

Christmas Season Craziness!!

Wow! It's Christmas day already! It's been a busy and fun December. A week ago we had Reagan's 6th birthday. It was great! 6-year-old girls are especially cute. She wore the 'crown' she got at school all day. The present she wanted most was a horse-drawn Barbie carriage - very sparkly and gaudy - but perfect for her! And the Barbie cake was a hit as well. I will post pictures. We have had it a week now and it has many miles on it already! For Christmas she got a bunch of Disney princesses, so the carriage has been extra busy today and so has the one prince we have.

Brig had an adventure this week. A friend from school invited him to go to the sold-out Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert in Indianapolis on Monday night. What a treat for him! His siblings were very jealous and he said the concert was awesome. But Eric gets to go and see the stage production of 'Lion King' in Indy tomorrow night with a friend, so there's plenty of good stuff going on - I know I'm jealous! Justine says she doesn't get to do anything fun. We have the family skating party coming up and hope to spend new year's with family as well.

We all had a good Christmas. The kids didn't get us up too early - it was about 7:30am when we went downstairs. Our usual early riser (Brig) didn't wake up too early because he was so excited that it took him a long time to fall asleep, so he was extra tired.

I will post the Christmas pictures separately.

If you've heard rumors of our family growing again, they are true. We will be adding number 5 at the end of July (the 22nd is the due date, but historically that doesn't mean much for me - it will most likely be sometime after the 22nd, probably at least a week). 10 weeks down, at least 30 more to go!! Yes, I feel nauseous all the time.

On Dec. 6, Brig's middle school band marched in the 'Festival of Lights' parade. We went to watch. It was fun, but VERY cold! At about 22 degrees F and breezy, the parade was too long for how cold it was. An hour and twenty minutes is too long to be standing out in the cold - you would think that parade planners would take this into account when planning a WINTER parade. Many people started leaving after about an hour. We lasted a little longer than that. But Brig's band sounded great and we had a fun time!

Ponytails and poodle skirts...

Auditions are finally done and the cast list for the spring musical ('Grease') was posted this afternoon. Eric got the role of 'Danny' and Justine made the ensemble. I'm excited for them both! 40 girls auditioned this year, so Justine was happy to get into the show as a freshman. Eric said her auditions were great, but it was pretty stiff competition this year. There were not enough female parts to go around, so there were some very disappointed girls. She will know more about what she will be doing as rehearsals get under way. A girl named Marby got the part of 'Sandy'. I'm excited for her. I've been watching her the last couple of years waiting for her to break out - she is very talented.

When your piano is being tuned, please resist the urge to vacuum!

Vacuuming is probably the most avoidable background noise I have to contend with (besides loud TV's) when I am tuning pianos. This seems really obvious to me, but perhaps it isn't: the less noise, the better the tuning!!! Should I really have to ask for quiet? Just something to keep in mind...