Under God's Sea in 3D

This week was summer music camp at church. This means that Mon thru Thurs the kids had practise from 9-3 and on Thursday night they performed their musical during worship.

First I have to say Mrs. H the person the director is a very good friend of mine and does an amazing job with the kids. They work so hard and she always brings out the best in all of them.

Then Mrs. S. also helps and is also fabulous with the kids. Between the 2 of them and their other helpers they accomplish the impossible every year.


This year was no different. In June the kids auditioned for parts. Alex auditioned and really wanted to get one of the parts. He did an amazing job. He really got the feel for the different characters. However, 16 kids auditioned for 10 parts.

ON Monday he found out that he didn't get a part, but he auditioned for solos and was still excited about what they were doing.








On Tuesday he found out that he was Jonah and would be singing a solo. Yipee!

Here he is in costume.

They all have matching T-shirts that they all sign.

They learn some great choreography and all of the songs. It never ceases to amaze me how much they learn in 4 days.


Thursday night was the performance. I am so proud of Alex, he did a really amazing job. He just loved the whole thing. Could it be that I have a budding performer?

Here he is singing.


I included 2 videos, the first is the opening song and the second is Alex's solo. They're a little long, but I hated cutting off the end of the songs. Mother's pride.

They will be doing the show again rally weekend at 3 different services. I think my family will be here and that's really exciting for Alex!

Storm Chaos

This is what our front yard looked like on Thursday night. Mark sent this to me at 7:30 at St. Olaf. This caused a ton of stress and worry from me. Gosh I wonder why.








This is one of the shots of the wet carpet.

Then here we have the carpet being pulled away from the walls.

Here is my workroom starting to get filled up.

You can see how wet the floor was once Mark pulled up the carpet. At this point the floor was very wet and the basement was quite smelly.

Here we have the start of the trimming. We figured that if we had to move everything out and were getting new carpet we might as well paint. The color looks scarily purple at this point, but it gets bluer as it dries. (Ihope)

Here are some pictures of what my workroom looks like now. It is piled to the gills with all of the stuff from the other room. I can't wait to get our spaces back. At this point we are waiting.


We hope to finish painting this weekend. Mark is going to roll the first coat tonight. After church tomorrow I'll trim the 2nd coat and he'll roll the 2nd coat. Fortunately that goes faster the second time around.

On Thursday the pool table is getting moved out and the carpet is getting laid. Then we can start moving furniture back in and I can start to figure out what the heck is piled all over my space.

I'm so looking forward to having our spaces back.

St. Olaf Day 1

So, here I am at st. olaf in Northfiled Minnesota for my 5 day conference on worship, theology and the arts. Now I'm warning you that these posts are entirely for my benefit. It's mostly to give me a way to record my thougts. Although mom, you might like some of the stuff I post.

Today we started out with a worship for advent. Wow! I think that's my favorite part of coming here, all of the different ways to worship. The hymns were ! Then we ended with Once in Royal David's City, one of my favorite hymns.

Then for tonight's worship we had a praise band. They were really good? We started in 4 part harmony a capella on Wait for the Lord. Absolutely breathtaking! On a couple of hymns the organ played along with the band. What a fun experience. Then we ended with Come, Thou LOng Expected Jesus. The organist started us and then it went to the band with organ in the background. We ended the hymn a capella and then went right into the Doxology also a capella. How amazing! What more can you expect when you're worshiping with hundreds of church musicians, pastors, etc.

Of course we also had one plenary session, dinner, and got settled into our dorm room. A busy day and now I"m going to sleep!

Well, I wrote this on MOnday, but have been having technical difficulties ever since. Tomorrow I'll post more.

Kids nights at the zoo

On Friday night the zoo had a kids night. We had a great time. A wide variety of kid friendly foods. Mac & Cheese from Noodles for Alex, Cheese pizza for Dylan, and wings for dad. Me, I just got a few different snacks from the different places. I wanted Saz's, but the line was too long.

After dinner with great music in the background. We headed to check out the animals, bird, monkeys, giraffes. We had to stop for root beer floats. Then we headed to see the big cats.

We have 2 baby tigers at the zoo right now. And since it was evening they were really, really busy. The tigers, not my boys.

The baby tigers are nearly full grown now (9 months), but they were chasing and pouncing on each other and mom.

I couldn't get any pictures of them in action, they were too far back, but I managed to get a couple when they were walking back and forth along the windows.

This picture isn't a very good one of the tiger, but it shows how close they are to the glass. The kids can stand up next to the glass and touch it, then the tigers walk right up to the glass. At one point the tiger put his paws on the glass right next to a couple of kids. Totally cool!

The museum got a new hippo named Happy, this is how big he is.

The last thing we did was check out the penguins, they were having so much fun watching them speed through the water and jump up. Lots of fun.

The last thing we had to do was check out the board that posted the boys names as sponsors of the tiger cubs. That was one of their Christmas gifts from us, a sponsorship of the tigers. While we were there we got to watch a Karate demonstration. It was a ton of fun.

We love the zoo!

Phone, what phone?

I feel like it's been forever since my last post, and maybe it has. I've been so busy trying to keep up with work, and home time just gets away from me.

An example of how well I"m doing these days would be what happened yesterday. I was talking to a co worker about our conference next week outside, because I'd been weeding. AFter I got off the phone I set it down on the bumper of the car. Now, I knew at the time it was a dumb idea, but I had other things on my mind and I thought I'd remember to get it off before we left home.

So, I finish cleaning up outside and make lunch for the boys. Then a quick shower and off to the library. After we left the library I pulled in the garage and thought Oh sh...... as I looked at the empty phone cradle. I looked in the driveway and down the street, no phone. So, later when I told Mark what I had done he gave me a really hard time about it. (NOt the first time I've done something like this) OH, and Alex thought it was hillarious, and was wishing he had facebook and could share what I had done with the world.

Well when we got home there was a message on the machine from Alex's friend I's dad. "Did you loose a Radioshack phone?" It seems a gentleman on the way to the library found our phone and called the numbers on the caller ID and I's dad figured out that the phone belonged to us since I had called Alex at 9:00 yesterday morning and that was the last number on caller id. So, we got our phone back this morning and Alex now has quite a tale to tell on mommy. I just feel like I"M not all there lately. I can't seem to keep things straight anymore.

Maybe one of these days I'll manage to get things worked out and get used to the new routine.
Have a great day!


Update: Okay after Mark gave me a hard time yesterday about being mindful and not forgetting things, etc. WE went to the grocery store tonight and when we got home I had to go to the bathroom. When I came out it seemed like they had unloaded the groceries really fast, but I figured he was just being efficient.

Then he left to go to a movie and I was getting ready to make a snack for the boys, I went to get the milk and it wasn't there. Yep, he left the groceries in his car and took them to the theater. So, I got to go and get the groceries out of his car and put them away.

Oh, and I left a little note for Mark in his car. What do you think? Will he remember they were in his car?