Brittany Concert, Zachary Boo Boo
Today was quite the interesting day! Brittany had a concert tonight featuring all the honors music groups. She sang with the Honors Chorus and played her violin with the Chamber Orchestra. She is doing quite well! She just got a brand new violin ($1400 ouch!) but it sounds soooo much better than her old rented one. She loves to sing and play! Just like with Kirstyn, last Thursday, it is amazing to see how much progress these kids are making!
Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see the concert, and Angela only got to see a little bit of it. While I was taking Brittany and one of her friends over to the concert, Zach fell after getting out of the tub and cut his forehead open! 🙁 When I got home, they were stopping the bleeding and Kirstyn felt horrible (she was in charge of making sure he got out and dressed). 😐 We took him over to the emergency room at the hospital and got him taken care of. He was very worried that it would hurt like crazy when they stitched him up! We helped calm him and he was VERY brave.
While the doctor was deciding whether to glue or stitch, Zachary said: “I don’t want sew, I want glue!” It was pretty funny and we had to laugh! 🙂 The doctor decided to glue which was a big relief for Zach and he didn’t even flinch during the process! He was quite happy after that. He got a popcicle for being so brave (Ben got one too which he thoroughly enjoyed)!
After leaving the hospital, Zach, Ben, and I dropped Angela off at the school for the rest of the concert and we came back home. We all felt very bad that we couldn’t support Brittany! She was very sweet and brought Zach back a bunch of cookies from the reception after the concert. 🙂
Tonight Kirstyn had her very first band concert! It was held over at Waubonsie Valley High School in the auditorium and her school was combined with 4 other elementary schools in the district. It was great to hear them play for the first time together. They showed examples of what was good and what was bad which was very funny for us and fun for them to show. They then played 6 or so songs, splitting up the different parts so we could hear what the melody, harmony, baseline, etc. sounded like, and then they played altogether. It’s amazing to hear what these kids have done in 4 short months! We are very lucky to be in a district that has one of the best music programs in the nation. They really emphasize excellence and hard work. All three girls have great band and orchestra teachers that are very committed to the students and that makes us very happy!
We hope you all had a very happy Thanksgiving! We sure did! The day started off with Angela and Brittany running the 2009 Naperville Turkey Trot 5K. They had a great time and although it was a little chilly, it could have been much colder!
For an activity, we drew a featherless turkey and had everyone write what they were thankful for on paper feathers and tape them on the turkey. Kirstyn was in charge of that and she had a great time collecting the feathers. It was fun to read what everyone was thankful for!
Today, the Comcast cable installer came and hooked us up with new internet access (cable with up to 20 Mb download), new internet phone, and a huge cable package of over 300 channels (HD included), and an HD DVR! We are very excited! We were on Dish Network, AT&T DSL, and standard phone service and were paying about $30 more per month. The only thing we’re missing is the BYU channel! The phone is working wonderfully well, despite my concerns of being internet-based. We’ll see how this goes!
Tonight Sarah and Brittany had their Young Women in Excellence program. What a wonderful program! The cultural hall at the church was decorated to the hilt and on the walls, each girl had a side-view of their silhouette. We all had to go around and match these to their names. It was very interesting and fun! 🙂 They hold this every year and the young women in our ward look forward it. They seem to always outdo themselves from one year to the next.
We had a great second day of SIMposium in Seattle! It was full of great keynote presentations, breakout sessions, and good food! I learned a lot of great things not only about Information Technology but about leadership in general. There were a lot of CIOs from around the country that we were able to talk to and participate in sessions with.
When we arrived, they had a cocktail hour to loosen every one up. 🙂 Then they had a great buffet of food to eat. After eating (and more drinking for some), we went into the museum and looked around for the rest of the time. We saw all kinds of things from Michael Jackson’s jacket and silver glove, to Jimmi Hendrix’s guitars and memorabilia, to Eddie Van Halen’s red and white striped guitar, and much more. In the atrium, they had a “guitar tree that spanned all the way up to the roof (shown to the right).
After listening to them, there were a bunch of the group who got together and decided to go into the mock concert stage (sound room) and make a recording together. In honor of the bead necklace concept and nuts (long story, I won’t elaborate here), the group named itself “Rusty Nutt” and performed. Here is a link to the video: 