More Godspell!

I've been really busy the past few days, finishing an indexing project and getting ready for Thanksgiving. I've managed though to upload a couple of clips from the show to YouTube. This little non-musical snippet is one of my favorite parts, where you can really see Annabelle hamming it up:



And here are the first 2 musical numbers from the show:



Our poor old video camera, which was such cutting-edge technology 10 years ago, is an absolute dinosaur now, so I borrowed a high-def handycam from a friend to shoot the show. I'm very impressed with the quality of the recording when it's on the computer, but unfortunately when I burn it to DVD, it loses its high-def-ness and looks decidedly meh. I'm thinking there may be a Blu-Ray burner in my not-so-distant future.

As much fun as it is to see the production, it's also fun to watch Annabelle and her friends celebrating after the show. They sure are a loving, happy bunch!

Opening night: Godspell

I've decided the only way to get back into blogging is to just dive in where I'm at. I've spent the past 2 months thinking I would get all caught up, but instead I just get further and further behind. I can't think of a better reason to fire up the ol' blog than opening night of Leavenworth High School's fall musical, Godspell.

Annabelle has been a fan of this show for ages and was very excited to be a part of it. I loved Grease last year, but I have to say, I think this show is even better.

I borrowed a high-def video camera from a friend but I wound up not recording so that I could just sit back and enjoy the show. I found a new (to me) setting on my regular camera and took a few shots in each song. They're not great, but they're better than anything I've ever taken before in that sort of lighting condition, and it'll give Annabelle something to remember the show by.

This is Annabelle being tormented by the Village People:





And as one of a trio of rather freaky angels:



Check out my Flickr account for the rest of tonight's photos:

Veteran's Day

Fun fact: The Leavenworth County Veteran's Day parade is "the oldest Veterans Day observance in the nation and the largest parade west of the Mississippi." Here's the Leavenworth High School marching band participating in this year's parade:



Look for Annabelle and her bari sax!

Central States Marching Festival

Remember how 2007 was the last time Leavenworth High's band scored a 1 at the Washburn competition? Well, today marks the first time since 2004 that they scored a 1 at this festival, held at Kansas State! And nobody knows the last time that they scored 1's at both, but it happened this year!

Part 1:



Part 2:



Part 3:

Capitol City Marching Festival

According to the band director, this was the first time since 2007 that Leavenworth High scored a 1 at this festival, held at Washburn University!

Part 1:



Part 2:



Part 3:

Homecoming 2011

The past 2 weeks were homecoming for the high school. They had a variety of dress-up spirit days. Annabelle participated in a couple of those, such as "generations day," in which juniors dressed as little kids:



And "would you be my friend if I wore this day":



Unfortunately, I didn't get up early and take pictures on "identity theft day," in which she poofed her hair and donned a black blazer and flag pin and went as Sarah Palin. I hear she had some of the teachers in stitches with her spot-on impersonation!

Friday night was the homecoming parade and game. The band performed their show before the game (along with the national anthem and school song) since half-time would be all about the homecoming court. I recorded it with my dinky little camera, but I found a better recording on YouTube (Annabelle starts off on the right-hand 45-yard line, in case you want to try to follow her):



Here's a still shot of part of the band. You can click to make it bigger, the better to see Annabelle standing on the 40-yard line:



Saturday night was all about the dance, which she went to with a group of friends. They met at one friend's house for sparkling cider:



and pictures, first inside:



then outside:



and finally, outside with a touch of crazy:



Then they set off for dinner at a local Chinese restaurant before going to the dance. We picked her up at 11, and she reported that it was a great evening but that her feet were killing her!

Playing tourist

We had a great time this past weekend! My friends Pat and Melissa came up from Texas for a business trip and planned a couple extra days for hanging out with us.

On Sunday we drove over to Kansas City to visit the World War I museum, which was fascinating. The museum itself is underneath the Liberty Memorial:





After we wandered around inside and looked at all the exhibits, we went to the top of the memorial for some really great views of the city:



We thought this was interesting. We drove past it on our way in, and it looked like a stack of random shipping containers. If you look at it kind of squinty though from a distance, it sends a message:



Here we are up at the top, Fred and me:



Pat and Melissa:



After the museum, we went over to Union Station, which you can see just beyond the green lawn in this picture:





Today Melissa and I were able to squeeze in one last lunch together:



We need to not wait 8 years to get together next time!

I've heard of a guard dog before.

But a guard grasshopper?



That's just ridiculous.

Brace yourself!

Braces on:



Braces off:



It's a big day for the Taylor family! I think we've had one kid or the other in some sort of orthodontic treatment for the past 5 years.

Here comes the band!

After many exhausting, painful, and sweaty hours spent at band practice over the past month, Annabelle finally got her first taste of a marching performance and loved it! The band performed for the first time this year at the football game last Friday night.

Here is part of the band lined up for the pre-game show:



This is a close-up of the same view. Annabelle is the one with the big-ass saxophone:



Here's a video of them playing the National Anthem:



Some sky-divers landed before the game, including the LHS mascot, Pioneer Pete:



Annabelle's friends Ben and Edd accompanied us to the game. Ben is also Annabelle's saxophone teacher:



Lined up on the sidelines, waiting for halftime:



And here is the halftime show:



We lost the game, but the consensus among people who know these things was that we did better than expected. Can't wait for the next game!

Never too old for a first day of school pic!

Mike had a great first day of his sophomore year at FSU:

Tea party (the good kind)

Annabelle and I went to a tea party yesterday at the home of our British neighbors. We decided to wear dresses just in case the queen was there (she wasn't, but one never knows). Annabelle looked so pretty that I had to stop on the porch and snap a picture:



The party itself was wonderful, with finger sandwiches and scones (oh, the scones!) and these adorable miniature apple pies. And Pimms! Did I mention the Pimms? So yummy! One of my fellow tea-partiers (again, the good kind) described it as British sangria, which seems about right.

Tally-ho!

Fred and Mike left at the crack of dawn this morning to take Mike back to FSU for his sophomore year. The last report I heard had them somewhere north of Birmingham, but I suspect that by now they are at or getting close to Fred's parents' house.

They put in a long day on the road today so that they can roll into Tally by early afternoon tomorrow. This will give them tomorrow afternoon, all of Friday, and then Saturday morning to get Mike settled in before Fred flies home Saturday afternoon.

Surprise!

Annabelle came home from school today, did her pre-calculus homework, ate a quick supper, opened birthday presents, and left for marching band practice, thinking that her birthday was pretty much over. Nuh UH!

Little did she know that we've been scheming to bring cupcakes to the end of band practice. As soon as we dropped her off at the school, Fred and Mike and I went over to Walmart to pick up the goodies. We set up shop at the end of the stadium and enjoyed watching the last 20 minutes of practice. We caught the kids as they were coming off the field, and they stopped to sing "Happy Birthday." One girl even chimed in on her saxophone:



Here are some miscellaneous pictures from the celebration:

Tra la-la-la-la la-la-la-la

Where have 16 years gone?! I would swear this photo was taken just a few years ago:



But no, it was 16 years ago and marks the arrival of Annabelle and the completion of our family.

We've been celebrating for several days now. Mike gave her the DVD of Tangled on Friday so that we could all watch it together before he left for school. And then on Sunday the 4 of us went to Kansas City (where everything's up to date) and watched a film of Stephen Sondheim's Company, followed by supper at California Pizza Kitchen. Presents this afternoon!

Happy birthday, Sweet Sixteen!

Happy first day of school!

Today is the first day of Annabelle's junior year! Here are a couple of shots as she left this morning:





She got off to kind of a rocky start. schoolbus procedures changed for this year, and the kids are supposed to have a card that they scan to get on the bus. Somehow we failed to get that memo, and the driver wouldn't let her on the bus this morning. I have visited the transportation office and been assured that she should be good to go for the ride home this afternoon.

I can't wait for her to get home! Mostly so I can hear about the rest of her day but also because I am looking forward to our traditional first-day-of-school cookies. (These are not to be confused with brownie Friday, which is going to be brownie Wednesday this year due to a change in my work schedule.)

Baby Bird is 19!

Hard to believe that Mike is already 19. Time flies blah blah blah! I spent some time with my scanner this morning and scanned in (in something like 8 separate passes, which I then lovingly stitched together in Photoshop Elements) the 2-page spread I made of his first birthday (click to see it bigger):



Also, I don't believe I have ever shared his birth announcement on here:



Weren't Fred and I terribly clever (not to mention young looking!) back in the day?

A river runs through it

Sherman Army Airfield, here on post:

Positively Pottered

Harry Potter entered our family in book form sometime during our Hawaii years (1999 to 2001) when Mike received the first volume as a gift. I started to read it aloud to the kids, but my heart wasn't in it (fantasy is totally not my thing), and we never finished it. Shortly thereafter though, Mike's reading skills took off and he dove right into the series, eagerly awaiting each book as it was released and happily reading them to himself.

Fred and I took Mike to see the first movie in South Carolina when it came out in November 2001, but Annabelle was only 6 at the time, and we decided it was much too scary for her. I took Mike to the midnight premiere of one of the books toward the middle of the series when we were in San Antonio (2001 to 2003), and sometime after that Annabelle hopped on the Potter bandwagon as well.

In August 2005 we visited London shortly after Fred's return to Germany from Iraq. One of the "must see" items on our list was J.K. Rowling's home in London, which I had heard was part of the "Little Venice" London Walks tour. Annabelle dressed a Beanie Baby rabbit as Harry Potter, and the kids took turns posing with him on the wall outside the Rowling home:





We dutifully continued taking the kids to the films as they were released, and I remember seeing one in Germany and another in Kentucky. (You can tell how captivated I was by the whole thing, can't you?) But then they got old enough to start going to the movies with friends, and I was spared the experience for the next few films. In 2005, Annabelle went to the release of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix with her friend Karen while we were visiting Florida in July 2007. She proudly wore her Hogwarts garb:









That was the same month that the final volume, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, came out. In fact, it was released on Mike's birthday, July 21! We were still in DeLand, and we opted to go to the premiere party at the small used bookstore in town rather than venturing forth to Daytona or Orlando. Mike spent the time waiting for the book's release to go over his driver's license manual one more time to make sure he wouldn't have any problem passing his permit test later that same day (doesn't Fred look thrilled?):



We bought 2 copies of that book, and the kids read them nonstop, even at the Boyd family reunion over in Tampa that afternoon. You can see Annabelle's copy in this picture:



We had to stop at a gas station on the drive back to DeLand to buy flashlights so they could keep reading after the sun went down.

Fast forward to this summer! With the anticipation of the release of the final movie, the kids have been plowing through all of the books in a re-reading frenzy. They also have been re-watching all the earlier movies, and Fred and I joined them for the most recent 2, in hopes of having some idea of what's going on in the final movie. I had booked tickets to the midnight IMAX showing at our closest Kansas City theater well over a month ago. Annabelle and I swung by the theater Thursday morning to pick up the tickets on our way to the airport to greet her friend Katherine, who is spending the weekend with us. We were shocked that people were already camped out in line at 10:30 a.m., including this fellow with a Sharpie-drawn tattoo:



Even though Harry Potter has never been my "thing," I couldn't help but feel the teensiest bit excited.

My original plan had been to show up at the theater around 11 p.m., an hour before showtime. After seeing the beginnings of the first lines with over 12 hours to go though, I realized that that was cutting it WAY too close. Fred decided at the last minute that trying to go to a midnight movie on a worknight was craziness, but I was able to get a refund on his ticket. I and Mike, Annabelle, and Katherine took out places in line right at 7:00 p.m.

Fortunately the line for the IMAX was inside the building. We settled down on the floor to read and otherwise kill time while waiting:



With so many people in costume, the excitement was contagious. Annabelle had her tea leaves read by a fellow movie-goer:



I have to admit that the movie was good. I'm glad I had watched the 2 most recent, because I would have been lost otherwise. Annabelle started crying about halfway through and sobbed pretty steadily until we got to the car afterwards. As soon as we got home (at 3:30 in the morning), she wrote the following, which sums it up pretty well:

Excuse me as I lament the end of my childhood

DEATHLY HALLOWS SPOILERS (but mostly just me getting hysterical)

I actually started out the movie (and got about halfway through) feeling pretty sure that I wouldn’t cry. I mean, I never cry at movies! I’ve gotten a little misty in Edward Scissorhands, but full-fledged sobbing? But then Snape died, and…well, things went down from there. Then there was Fred. Then the Prince’s Tale (OHLAWD THE PRINCE’S TALE), Harry seeing Sirius/Lupin/Mum/Dad, and of course “Not my daughter, you BITCH.” After that, I felt a lot better.

Even the epilogue, I was feeling okay. I mean, it’s cute and all, but I’m gonna be okay…but then they have to play the original John Williams music from the first movie. Like, remember when the trio boarded the Hogwarts Express at the end of the movie and explain that they’re not “really going home” since Hogwarts is home and yada yada yada? With all the second generation people getting on the train with that music, and then Hedwig’s Theme…to put it lightly, I was a mess leaving the theatre. A complete, sobbing, hysterical mess. Kind of all “My skeleton will lie in the theatre forever.”

I know it’s been said so many times, but I really feel like that was the end of my childhood. Yeah, I haven’t been a child-child for several years now, but I grew up with Harry ever since I watched the second movie when it was a new release (and even more so after I first picked up the book in fourth grade). I still remember going to the midnight release of the last book and then spending the entire next day reading. I felt okay at the end of that, knowing there were still three more movies to go. I kind of took it for granted.

I’ve been re-reading the books and re-watching all the movies, and it’s just now occurring to me how, for lack of a better term, magical they are. Just…gah.

Long live Harry Potter<3

It's still so totally not my thing, but I have to admit it has gotten under my skin. I'm feeling very sentimental about the tremendous presence these books and movies have been in our lives over the past 10 years. Ever since we saw the last movie, I've been bugging the kids with my stupid questions: "Who was that chick who was being so mean to Lily in the flashback? Wait, why was everybody so willing to make up with that Malfoy jerk?"

They keep saying, "READ THE BOOKS, MOM!"

I just might do that.