Looking back on 2011

Leo's favorite things from this year: Sleeping in his own bed in the same room as his brothers. Watching Baby Signing Time over and over and over and over. Going to Nursery with Dad.

Hyrum's favorite memories: Opening "Blacky" on Christmas morning (his new puppy). Going caroling on Christmas Eve. Eating pie on Thanksgiving.

Roderic's favorite memories: Going to Monkey Bizness for his 7th birthday party! Receiving the Lego Toy Story 3 train set for Christmas. Swimming lessons at the YMCA over spring break. Riding on the Arcade & Attica Railroad. Watching the Hill Cumorah Pageant twice.

Sabrina's favorite memories: Going to New York. Going on Trek. Earning the Gold Presidential Academic Achievement Award. Learning double dutch. Catching the bus at 6:32am daily for TVMSC. Getting her braces off.

Ryan's favorite memories: Crawling through the attic to install CAT-5 wire for the intercom system. Climbing Lucky Peak with the boy scouts in June. Becoming an antelope. Having a stairway to Heaven.

My favorite memories: Teaching Gospel Doctrine to the 14-15 year olds. Our Epic Vacation. Watching the framing of our house addition. Singing barbershop with my mom, sister and aunts in Houston. Teaching our family a song to sing together "Sing Noel".

Merry Christmas!

We are having a great Christmas this year! We went to Sacrament Meeting at 9am today. Malauna and Sabrina sang with the choir. Ryan was planning on singing, but wasn't able to because the people we were going to have our boys sit with didn't come in time and because Ryan is starting to feel sick (sore ears, chills, head congestion, etc.). We sang some awesome songs: "O Come, O Come Emmanuel", "As It Fell Upon a Night" (with descant solo by Malauna), "Once in Royal David's City", "Nativity Medley", "Only a Baby Came", "Angels we have heard on High", and "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing". [Including links to the songs, in case anyone is interested.]

After church (and it was only an hour this morning), the kids were happy relieved thrilled excited that we f i n a l l y opened the presents under the tree. Legos, fire trucks, CD boom box, BYU t-shirts, baby signing time, garlic press are some gifts received. And Hyrum is super-duper excited that fun-pretend Santa brought him a new puppy! (The black poodle puppy is to replace the favorite sleeping friend {puppy} that he lost on our epic vacation. It's a webkinz.)

What a merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas (a week early)

Ryan and I got to enjoy an early Christmas present this afternoon. We had tickets to see


presented by the Boise Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra and Master Chorale, with 4 superb soloists.

We took along my copy of the score and followed along, which was fun to do. This was my first time seeing Handel's Messiah performed. Our seats couldn't have been better: we sat in center of row 3! The tenor soloist had amazing breath support and so did the soprano. The alto soloist had a nice voice, but there was so much vibrato, clear tones were not heard, same with the bass.

It was disappointing to us that they didn't play all of the works. As Ryan said, "They skipped the meat of Part II!" Meaning they didn't do "All We like Sheep", "And With His Stripes We are Healed" and several others. They also skipped some songs in Part III. During Intermission, we noticed the songs in Part III that would not be played, but we didn't pay attention to the fact that songs were missing in Part II. I had to turn many, many pages in the score to catch up to where they were singing.

Handel was born in Germany in 1685 and moved to London in 1712 (to work as court musician to German-born King George I of Great Britain) - about 100 years after the King James Translation of the Bible was published. Would he have attempted to write "Messiah" if the bible was only available in Latin? Would "Messiah" be a crowd favorite if it was in Latin? According to the write up in the program, Handel wrote "Messiah" in 24 days, during August and September 1741 (he was 56). Amazing. Each piece was similar in form, yet it was not boring at all to listen to. So get out a recording and listen to:

"For Unto Us a Child is born"
"And suddenly there was with the angel"
"Glory to God"
"His yoke is easy"
"All we like sheep have gone astray"
"And with his stripes we are healed"
"Hallelujah"
"I know that my Redeemer liveth"
"The trumpet shall sound"

A special thank you to Sabrina for being the babysitter to her 3 little {sick} brothers so we could enjoy this outing! Roderic has an ear infection and a cough. Hyrum has puss-filled eyes and a cough. Leo, who slept the whole time we were gone, has a cough, snotty nose and goo in the eyes. All are being treated with medicine. I am also a little under the weather. Post-nasal drip is causing my ears to hurt and my voice is failing. When I tried to sing along on "Hallelujah", I found that I had no head voice to sing in! Which makes it impossible to sing soprano at the correct octave. We are hoping that we will get the illnesses completely out of our systems by Christmas.