Category: Life in general

Well, it has been for a while, I guess, with Thanksgiving coming early and all. Plus we just had to get out the Christmas decorations since we were already going through everything. Plus Julie got a fancy tree up at Tai Pan in Utah before we came back down. So we had to try it out. My favorites are the head-sized bulbs we got to go on the tree.

Abigail and Grace didn’t really lose a step coming back. They ended up in dance and singing classes the week after we got here. They have some good friends in their classes and they know the teachers, so that really helped. We were so happy that they were able to do it and that they’re so enthusiastic about it. Grace even asks us when she’ll be able to sing a solo. Those of you that know her pretty well know that that statement is a big deal!

Saturday they had their first performances. First it was at Chick Fila, where they did their “So long, farewell” routine from the Sound of Music. I had a hard time getting over how grown-up they looked in their jazzy outfits. Eeesh. They both had parts during this performance that they normally don’t do, and they both did great. Grace did the end part where she sings by herself. I think she loved it, because she’s told me about 4 times since then that she wants to do a solo.

Later that night, their singing group sang a few songs at the Marley Park Holiday Festival. It was quite fancy, and they did a great job.

They had all kinds of fun stuff at the festival. Abigail and Grace both made quick work of the shrimp that they found. The manners are still coming. Lucy had quite a few cookies. They also had some fake snow machines that were kind of cool. The “snow” was some sort of foam or bubbles or something.

To top the night off, Santa himself was in town. Abigail made sure to tell him what everyone wanted.

This week should be pretty exciting as we gear up to have the family over next weekend. Hopefully the kitchen will be done and we’ll be able to get enough patched and painted to look decent. There’s another recital on Saturday (thus the reason they’re coming over here). Fun stuff.

Julie has a sister, Bonnie, who lives up in Grand Junction, CO. She sang at our wedding and has always had an incredible voice and incredible talent for arranging and presenting music.

This past summer, she played and sang a Christmas song for us up at her parents that she had written herself. Aaron must have been there at some point as well, because he mentioned the other night during dinner (thanks again for the sushi!) that he wanted to hear it again. Well, she has officially released her first CD, and it’s awesome. You can listen to most of it over at her page on CDBaby.com. If you choose the “play all songs (Broadband)” option, you can hear them in CD quality sound (the dial-up version doesn’t do it justice). The song I’m talking about is #3 on the album.

http://cdbaby.com/cd/bwixom

If you have iTunes, it’ll open it up and play it all for you. Works great.

Enjoy! And thanks for publishing this, Bonnie. We listen to our CD all the time and love it. Allie sounds great as well. For the Elcock clan, Allie is Bonnie’s daughter. She sings on track 2 with her momma.

Happy Thanksgiving all. We had a really good day today. Luckily we were able to sleep in a bit, due to our late afternoon spread at my Mom’s house. Julie had to brave the store this morning because we were too tired to go last night. She got everything she needed, but was forced to navigate the (mostly) unwashed masses.

I know that I’ve spent lots of time recently talking about Lucy, but she provides so much material that it’s hard to not include her in my ramblings. I have two examples tonight:

1. Lucy got her haircut a few months or so ago up in Utah. She turned out pretty sassy, but expressed many times how her hair was all gone and that her mother wasn’t allowed to cut it anymore. Today, while Julie was doing her hair, she blurted out (as only Lucy can): “Momma, I look like a punk! Don’t make me look like a punk!” I have no idea where that came from, but it was pretty funny.

2. As mentioned in the last post, the girls spent some time in the pool last weekend, which resulted in quite the ear infection for Lucy. She woke up screaming a few nights ago, so Julie whipped up her homeopathic/witchcraft solution (oil and garlic or something similar) and put it in her ear. She calmed down almost immediately. Today after dinner, Lucy was chatting with Michael and mentioned that “Mommy put juice in my ear.” Classic.

As you can tell, I have truly much to be grateful for. Wonderful family, wonderful wife, health, strength, and (almost) prosperity:)

I know how much you love the life-size blow-up snowmans. Here are a few shots of our neighbor’s house, which was done up on November 2.

We’ve had an interesting time of it since we’ve been back. Trying to get back into some sort of routine. You can see that I’ve failed (blogging at 3pm on a Tuesday). The girls have done quite well getting back into school and a music/dance class that they really enjoy. Gwenyth just gets naughtier and naughtier.

Here are some of the things we’ve got going on around the house:

Conveniently, Dan needed to come down to Phoenix for the day, so we promptly put him to work on one of Julie’s projects that would have taken me 4 weeks to do. And I think the quality is a little better with Dan’s bit of experience.

Even Lily made it down for the fun and mess.

And, believe it or not, the kids were swimming all day Saturday. I’m not sure if they’ve thawed just yet. Luckily for them the hot tub was hot and available as well. Unluckily for me, the hot tub was hot and available for them. The water is a little, er, discolored?

I’ll try and post updates as I get more and more shots of great big blow up stuff in the yard. Just for you, Ali.