After Thanksgiving, Roseann flew out to Springfield, MO and went to stay at a house we bought in Reeds Spring, just outside of Branson. She spent a couple weeks there fixing up the place to sell, and it worked out well, because she found a buyer while she was there, and the sale should hopefully go through soon... Here's where Roseann slept in luxury during her stay... Back at home, the girls and I managed the best we could while Roseann was away, and we did alright, but we did miss her an awful lot! We worked and played as usual... I hosted a game night with some friends and went to preschool with Evee as the parent helper, which is always fun.
When Roseann got back we worked a lot on the "Tale of the Sun and the Moon" video. Here it is again, in case you haven't seen it yet:
We went to the Christmas party at church, which Grandma Jean was in charge of the program for, so she roped me into performing "The Elephant Song" (with Evee leading the kids in the responses) and had Becca as one of a group of dolls singing "Are My Ears on Straight?" It was a nice night, and of course the girls were excited to meet up with Santa.
Performing at the Christmas party...
Becca as one of the dolls, with Gramma Jean directing to the left...
We got dumped on with snow and cold for quite a while here, which is unusual for this particular area. Well, when I say "dumped on", I mean about a foot or so... I must admit that since moving here from Buffalo (where we regularly got several feet of snow... one year we had eight feet of snow in one day!), I've become kind of a weather wimp.
We had a very enjoyable Christmas. Though we missed being away from so much of our family, we're always happy to be together. I particularly appreciated the music of Christmas this year... I only just realized that we had Sirius available the whole time through our Dish Network, so we put on a holiday music channel to listen to a lot, and I always felt joy to hear great songs like "Oh Holy Night", "Silent Night" and "Santa Baby". Evee was happy that Santa remembered to get her Thomas Train set, and he also provided Becca with a variety of nice stuff that she liked a lot.
Reindeer tracks?
The girls in some new costumes...
A paint-your-own clock that the girls made with Roseann...
and paint-your-own plates...
We celebrated Evee's fourth birthday a day early on December 30, and went out to a pizza place. She opened her presents and we played some arcade games together and ate some yummy pizza and cake. Gramma Jean came with us, and of course we wished her "happy birthday", too. Evee's middle name is "Jean", and we had picked the name "Evelyn Jean" for our next daughter back when Becca was born, so it was neat that the two of them share a birthday together on New Year's Eve.
There was a problem with the tire on our minivan, so I went to rent a car for us to drive up for First Night Spokane, but the "midsize" car was smaller than it seemed like it should be, and we couldn't all fit in there with my equipment, so I ended up going alone. I did four sets, the first two in a nice theater at the Convention Center and the second two at Mobius, which is a fun children's museum kind of place. The audiences were very receptive and it was a great event, as it has been the last four years, but it was also quite exhausting (as it has been the last four years), so I was relieved to get back to the hotel and hit the sack... though I was glad that I stayed up just past midnight, otherwise the fireworks would have woken me up.
At one of the Mobius shows...
So we've started 2009 with me working hard on finishing my next album, which we hope to have finished by the end of the month and released this spring. This album has been two years in the making (with a lot of long breaks and interruptions in between), so I'm really excited to finally get it out there and it's coming together very nicely.
Becca and Evee started taking swimming lessons twice a week and are doing well with that. Here's Evee showing off her new goggles...
We're actually scaling back a bit on the traveling and performing this year (we're planning a more significant tour for 2010), but we'll still be hitting a lot of the usual places and also some new places. Regardless, I'll keep up best I can with what we've got going on and where we are...
Backtracking a bit... While we were at LeAnn's, we dressed up a little and LeAnn took some pictures (below). On the way home, we stopped at Albany, Oregon, where I had a really fun show with a very enthusiastic group of kids. We were home for a few days, and then took a drive in the minivan with Larry and Jean over to Rexburg, where we celebrated an early Thanksgiving with Roseann's sister, Mary Jo, and her family. 9 of Mary Jo's 10 kids were there, so it was a pretty busy bunch, and we had a lot of fun. We went to see Jordi starring as Kim in her high school's production of Bye Bye Birdie, we played some games and watched Wall-E on DVD, and mostly had a lot of conversation on a wide variety of subjects.
I'm so incredibly thankful for my family, immediate and extended, and am very grateful for the love and the life that we share together. Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours from me and mine!
At a Playland in California...
Robot dancing in Albany...
All of the girls playing dress up: Becca, Emily, Lindsay, Evee and Ashlyn...
Playing a tight game of Go Fish with Evee, Sam and Josie...
Below is a picture Becca took of our second millipede, Butterfly, after she had been returned to her terrarium after a long adventure. I won't elaborate on that, but to say that we're glad she's back in her home.
On Tuesday morning I had an assembly program at Slonaker Elementary in San Jose. After that, we did some shopping and had naps and then met up with Steve, April (she was back in town, after all) and Amy for dinner at a Chinese restaurant. I had never had a walnut prawn dish before but it is now a favorite of mine. We talked for quite a while over dinner and then went back to their house for a bit so the kids could play together, and then we headed back to the RV park in Patterson.
On Wednesday, we drove down to Moreno Valley where we are staying with Roseann's sister, LeAnn, and her family. LeAnn's 4 year-old daughter, Catarina, was very excited to see the girls, and the feeling was mutual. When we first came in the door, Catarina said to the girls, "So let me look at you!" On Thursday night we met LeAnn and Catarina at Cat's karate class. Catarina is doing really well with that, and our girls tried their best to keep up on the side, but it was a little tricky for them. They are interested in taking karate classes of their own now, which is something we had been thinking about for a while.
Yesterday, I had two assemblies at Lincoln Elementary in San Bernardino. It was a huge group of kids in a small space, so it got a little crazy at times, but went very well in general.
From the assembly in San Jose...
Evee, Amy and Becca...
Becca and Evee playing a game of Tier auf Tier...
At the karate class...
Evee showing her "wilted flower" sign...
The first assembly in San Bernardino...
The second assembly in San Bernardino...
Evee showing off her signature and ghost picture...
So we're at an RV park in Patterson, California, on a three week trip for some school shows, and I figured I oughta catch up with what we've been doing lately...
Back on the 22nd of October I went out to Tigard, Oregon (suburb of Portland) and did two shows at the Pottery Barn Kids. It was an early Halloween celebration and there were some great costumes in attendance, my favorite being a group of triplets dressed as the three major superheroes (see picture below).
We went to a pumpkin patch place with Evee's preschool and that was a lot of fun... We picked out pumpkins, took a hayride, went through a hay maze and climbed on a hay bale pyramid. Unfortunately, we forgot the camera, so we didn't get any pictures of that. Some other people took pictures, so I'll add some eventually when we get back.
On the Friday before we left town we went to see our good friends, Becky and Ross, and their family. They had moved back to the Tri-Cities earlier this year and we hadn't seen them since before our spring and summer trip, so we enjoyed catching up with them. Their kids call Roseann and me "Aunt Roseann" and "Uncle Eric", which is cute.
I should mention that we got a second millipede. Roseann had felt bad that the other millipede in the pet store was left there when she got Sticky. This one is a girl, so we went with Evee's original name of Butterfly. We don't know if they're capable of breeding, but just in case, we're keeping them in separate tanks, as we don't really want dozens of millipedes, just two. I'll post some pictures of Butterfly when we're back in town.
We left for California after church last Sunday and it was pretty cold the first two nights that we stayed in Oregon, but we cranked up the heat and bundled up pretty well. It got a lot warmer once we hit California. The first school I visited was on Wednesday in San Ramon, California, and on the suggestion of Tim Noah's son, Jude, I brought along my electric guitar and did some jamming for the kids, which definitely impressed the legions of Guitar Hero fans out in the audience. My assembly yesterday was in Dos Palos at an outdoor courtyard for a group of 500 K-2 kids and thankfully the weather held out just enough for the show to go on.
The girls dressed up as Violet and Dash from The Incredibles and did a great job sticking to their characters. We went to a Halloween dinner and "trunk or treat" at an area church and the girls collected a good bounty of candy.
Today, we're hanging around at the RV park and doing laundry and such, and then this coming week we're looking forward to seeing Steve and Amy (April is out of town) and LeAnn and her family.
The girls sporting their new nightshirts...
Playing a game of Hey! That's My Fish (with their own rules)...
One of the Pottery Barn Kids shows...
Villains, beware!
Becky and Ross' son, William, showing off his awesome Lego spaceship...
Becca and Evee playing with Becky and Ross' girls, Hilani and Suki...
Evee loves to show how well she can dress herself...
K-2 assembly in San Ramon...
3-5 assembly in Sam Ramon...
Violet and Dash... once again, villains beware!
The assembly in Dos Palos... I'm either demonstrating marching techniques or running from some hot sand...
I'd like to introduce you to our new pet, Sticky, a giant African millipede. Initially, Evee had named him "Butterfly" when we thought he was a girl, and that seemed like a nice name for a millipede, but then we checked and found out that he was a "he", after all, so "Butterfly" didn't seem like the best name. I suggested we call him "Velcro" because he sometimes attaches himself to you like velcro, but Becca invoked her right to name him (as Evee had named Tiggy). Becca preferred "Sticky", so officially, for all court records and bank accounts, he will be known as Stick E. Velcro, but we'll just call him "Sticky" for short.
So how did we end up with a pet millipede? Well, Roseann and the girls went out to a pet store today and when the owner noticed Roseann taking an interest in the millipede she offered him to her for half off (only $5) because nobody had bought him after several months. Roseann felt bad for him and apparently she had always thought it might be interesting to have a millipede for a pet (you know, the whole "a girl and her millipede" thing). She did some research on them and they are very low maintenance and docile, so she talked me into getting him. He is very cool looking and it's amazing to watch all of his legs working together. It's also quite a chore when he decides he wants to back up and has to shift gears to start all of the legs going the other direction. Our best attempt at counting his legs added up to about 260, but he'll still grow some more segments and legs, so it might get up to about 300. At first, Tiggy didn't seem to have any interest when Sticky was in his cage, but then Roseann had him out on her shoulder and Tiggy was suddenly very eager to check him out and pet him. We made sure he kept his paws (and claws) away, though. Sticky will stay over at the clubhouse, where he can curl up safely in his cage.
I drove out to Bellevue today for a school show at Somerset Elementary. It was an evening "welcome back to school" event (they had a teacher's strike for a few weeks, so school didn't start until later in September), and boy, were the kids fired up. They were a really wild crowd, and it was a lot of fun except for when someone threw half of a hamburger up on stage. It looked like a perfectly good hamburger, so I was sorry to see it go to waste.
I'd been to Bellevue many times, but never up the hills on the south side, which is where the school was. I had to pull over twice to take in the view, which looks out over all of Seattle and Bellevue. The pictures below don't do it justice at all...
Stage? Who needs a stage? This chair will be just fine...
