Messiah 2012

I fear that writing about singing the Messiah - especially for the fourth time - will never convey how wonderful it is to be part of this group, this experience.  My friend, Emily Gibson, wrote much more eloquently, and let me use her words - here - the first year I joined the choir.

We've been rehearsing since the beginning of October.  This may be a small town, but - quality-wise - it's no small town production.  We have a wonderful conductor, a fabulous organist/pianist/harpsichordist, a chamber orchestra, and seventy-five voices this year!  And one of them was Wyatt's :D  (Pics from Kerry's video cam, so excuse the quality...)

Don't be fooled by the females around him; he's a bass.  We sing in "scramble formation", the better to hear how your part fits into the whole.

Our conductor, thrilled to have so many voices to work with, got ambitious this year and decided to do the whole Messiah.  Okay, not all fifty-three pieces. we omitted several of the solos to keep the performance to about two hours, out of mercy to our audience.  Some of whom (Gunnar!) obviously found even that to be long, and took full advantage of the intermission.

I got to stand right next to the big bass (!) the better to be able to slip to the front, because...

I stepped waaaaay out of my comfort zone and auditioned for a solo this year, and was given two.  Thankfully, mine were at the front end of the performance (nerves!) and I could relax and enjoy the rest of the singing once I got through them.  I sang the recitative Behold A Virgin Shall Conceive and the aria O Thou That Tellest Good Tidings to Zion.  I love the way the aria flows right into the choir singing O Thou That Tellest - so joyful and mighty.

I was talking with a choir friend last night about how every year we sing it we have more favorite pieces.  This is becoming one of my favorite Christmas traditions - even more so, now that Wyatt has joined in :D

Talk about exhausting, though!  Though the choir does get breaks when the soloists sing, we sang eighteen songs, two days in a row.  That's a lot of singing.  And on top of that, we Grasshoppers also had Tuba Christmas, King Tut, and our five-month-old niece for the weekend.  (Thankfully, her other grandparents took her Friday evening, so my whole family could attend the concert together.)  By the time we got through the weekend, and a flat tire Sunday morning just as we were leaving for church, I felt like I'd run a marathon!  It's all been good, but a bit of a blur.  We had a break Monday evening, the CAP Dining Out last night (pics soon), and I'm hosting the church youth group for dinner, games, and singing tonight... gotta get the chili going!

Tuba Christmas 2012

As we headed home from King Tut, Thursday night, we stopped at my brother and SIL's and picked up little Naomi for the weekend.  On top of everything else we had going on, we had a five-month old to include!

Fun times ;D

Actually, she's a delight to have around.  Everyone helps and Gunnar, in particular, dotes on her.  We bundled her up Saturday morning and took her along with us to experience the low brass glory of her first Tuba Christmas.

I love watching the woman that conducts the event here.  Carla Rutschman (hope I spelled her name right!) is a hoot - she's a music professor (a doctor, to be precise) at WWU, where she specializes in low brass.  I've heard she has a all-tuba band that goes by the name Heavy Metal.  Clearly, she enjoys her work and brings a lot of fun to an already quirky event.

Seems like we get more tubas (and low brass) each year - I couldn't get them all in one picture!

And I love the mix of ages that get involved, from these middle school students, studiously tooting away...

... to the more "senior" members, many of whom also play with a local alumni band.

The traditional carols put everyone in a festive mood :D

Even my boys all wear their Santa hats :D

Although Gunnar must have gotten too warm holding Naomi with Grandpa and Grandma.  (The photo is at an odd angle - Grandpa was holding her head up, not pushing her over!)

Everyone had a fun time :D

Though one little concert-goer got a bit sleepy...

 Who knew that tubas were lullaby material?!  Love the spit bubbles...

King Tut

We launched our weekend whirlwind on Thursday as we picked Wyatt up from school mid-morning and headed for Seattle, and walked right under the monorail...

... to get to the Pacific Science Center.  We've been members, on and off, for several years, and the boys have loved the time we've spent there.  It's a wonderful kid-friendly place, with lots of hands-on exhibits, that have enriched our homeschooling... and it's FUN.

I have pictures (not digital, though) of each boy lying down in this replica duckbill dinosaur footprint, though Gunnar was not very cooperative this time!  (Charming, isn't he?)

He was much more interested in an entomologist, who piled (dead) monarch butterflies in his hands.  Apparently (they're poisonous, but you knew that, right?) that's how many you'd have to eat for them to kill you.  Just in case you wanted to know.  He also showed us how to tell males from females, by a pheromone packet on the males' wings.

We visited the touch tank, saw a lot of very creepy animals (giant hissing cockroaches, pythons, naked mole rats. black widow spiders), and some not-so-creepy ones, like these diving beetles.  We are intrigued at the way they pull a bubble of air down with them, like a little scuba tank.  Cool, yah?

Wyatt played a guitar... from inside.

And all three boys tried several of the physical challenges, like this endurance challenge.  How long could you hold the chin-up position?  I think Wyatt went 37 seconds.

That was all fun and good, but the real reason we came was for the King Tut Exhibit.  But, news flash: He's not here.  King Tut, himself, has never left Egypt.  We did see lots of ancient Egyptian artifacts, though, and several pieces from his tomb.

To be honest, though, the exhibit took some getting used to.  Back in 1978, the exhibit that came to Seattle included Tut's gold sarcophagus and a funeral mask.  Though there were some beautiful pieces, this wasn't nearly as breath-taking as I had expected.  And it was dark.  Literally.  What museums call "strategic lighting" should be read as "seriously under-lit".  Really?  Are a few incandescent light bulbs going to cause the abrupt deterioration of stone statues that have lasted 3000 years or more?

The other major downside was that absolutely no photography was allowed.  Not even without flash.  Why?  My slightly cynical side says, MONEY.  I've heard that the host museums are sending over $2 million back to Egypt to build a museum in Giza.  Fortunately, due to the exhibit being in its last few weeks and gift shop apparently having been a bit overly optimistic, the $45 hard-bound exhibit book now goes for twelve bucks ;D

On the good side, no crowds.  I'd heard about people standing in line for hours to see the 1978 exhibit, but not so this time.  PSCI sold timed tickets.  Kerry bought ours for 4pm, hoping all the school groups on field trips would have cleared out (yes!  Why does their IQ and behavior drop so drastically when they're in herds?) and we were able to enjoy wandering through the exhibit at our leisure.

And in spite of my initial disappointment (and the I-can't-pay-the-power-bill mood lighting) we did find the exhibit fascinating.  Since we couldn't take photos of our own, I snagged some from the Puget Sound Business Journal to show you ;D

This statue depicts Rameses II, known as the Pharaoh of the Exodus.

Several of the pieces were carved from calcite, which is translucent when it's thin enough, as you can see with this unguent vessel.

Amenhotep took the name Akhenaten when he tried to change Egypt from polytheism to monotheism.  The statues show his face and body being very elongated, and some people believe he had Marfan's Syndrome.

It's beautiful.  It's gold.  But it's not Tut.  That is the golden mask of Psusennes I.

And we did see one of King Tut's coffins.  The miniature one that held his....

... stomach.  

Actually, it's called a canopic jar, and there were four of them holding various internal organs.  Except the heart, which they believed held the person's essence.  And the brain, which they believed to be worthless and threw away, if I remember right.

Even the inside was detailed with an image of a goddess and a spell from the Book of the Dead.

Besides these things pictured, we saw the gold finger and toe protectors that were found on King Tut himself, a lot of amazingly beautiful and detailed jewelry (with amazingly expensive replicas for sale in the gift shop), and a small coffin in which a royal cat was buried.

Just outside the exhibit we got pictures of this exact replica of King Tut's mummy, made after a detailed CT scan.  Very cool, in a gory sort of way.

And then the oh-so-classy face in the cardboard sarcophagus ;D

 And a beautiful farewell to Seattle...

Grasshopper Days

Grasshopper Days

For today, December 10, 2012

Outside my window...  no, it's not snowy (the picture is wishful thinking!), but the rain has let up for awhile, and there is snow in the hills around the lake.

Hearing...  the furnace blowing, the dryer tumbling, and the boys working quietly on their science.

Pondering...  WHEW!  We've had a whirlwind of a weekend... I feel like I've run a marathon.

Praying...  for a neighbor whose husband just died of cancer.

Thankful...  everything (well, nearly everything) went smoothly over the weekend.

Wearing...  blue jeans.  Blue t-shirt.  Blue sweater.  Wool socks.  Blue slippers.  Amazing, yah.

Creating...  well, finishing my Christmas shopping :D

Going...  to stay home, if I can get away with it!

Reading...  checking my list, checking it twice...

Looking forward to...  a Christmas Tea in a treehouse this Saturday!

In the kitchen...  something easy, Sloppy Joes for dinner - now that I'm home again Monday nights :D

In the learning rooms...  we really let the schedule slide last week (by necessity) and plan to push hard this week, so we can really take a break over Christmas.  I have no idea what Wyatt's doing in his Biology, but he's been reading through Medieval times in his World History, and is reading about assumptions in his Logic study.  Tate and Gunnar are studying Japan this week and next.  Gunnar is learning about rodents and rodent-like animals (and things that don't fit easily into categories, like the platypus and the echidna), converting percents to reduced fractions, and identifying verbs (action and linking).  Tate is comparing uniformitarianism to catastrophism, finding percents, and working with predicate nominatives.  I'm sure there's more this week, but I'm going blank.

Around the house...  getting back to (our) normal after the explosion of baby stuff while we had Naomi for the weekend.  That was fun (!) but it's also fun to send her home :D

The Mother Load...   whew!  Getting through this last weekend lifted a large part of it.  Doing most of my Christmas shopping via Amazon lifted another large chunk.  And this weekend was all GOOD, by the way, just a bit crazy.  I'll show some pics and elaborate as I get the time...

Noticing that...  helpfulness can turn to pushiness, at least in one of my boys.  He means well...

Something to remember for later...  when we went to pick up my niece and walked into the room, she looked right at us, but it was when she saw Gunnar that she broke into a huge grin :D

Something fun to share...  I was too nervous to mention it before hand, but I had two solos in the Messiah this year, and managed to get through them without any major screw-ups.  Hallelujah!

A favorite quote for today...  my motto for busy times;

When you do stuff, stuff gets done.

Well, duh, I know.  But somehow it helps.

One of my favorite things...  clean laundry.

A Bible verse... 

O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion, 

get thee up into the high mountain;

O thou that tellest good tidings to Jerusalem, 

lift up they voice with strength;

lift it up, be not afraid;

say unto the cities of Judah, 

Behold your God!

Arise, shine;

for they light is come,

and the glory of the Lord

is risen upon thee!

Isaiah 40:9 and 60:1

A few plans for the rest of the week...  CAP Dining Out is tomorrow night (annual banquet, very formal, dress blues), then the youth group coming here for dinner and games on Wednesday, the treehouse tea, and a family gathering on Sunday...

A peek into my world...  dinner with Naomi...

She provided the evening entertainment, with "music" - repetitively kicking the cup with the rattle inside.  As long as she's right in the mix of things, she's happy as a clam :D

The Testoster-Zone... Or, The Boys' Room

I know, I know.  This is trivia, in the big scheme of life.  If you're not one of the extremely small segment of the population who likes this stuff, just pass on by and I'll see you later.  Okay?

But you know what?  I love to see into other people's homes... see how they arrange things, how they decorate, how they live.

And on the off chance that you have the same kind of curiosity, I give you before-and-afters of the boys' room. Clearly, Sunset magazine isn't going to come calling anytime soon... this is just real life.  And don't assume that they cleaned it.  Not so much.  They rearranged it.  (Moving furniture is almost as near and dear to my heart as cleaning and purging ;D )

Here's how it was before...

You enter the room through the door on the left, and the boys' dressers were lined up against the wall.

Very efficient and uniform.

Turning to the right, I spy Tate at the desk studying his science.  (Good boy!)

And the bunk beds, against the south wall, tucked in under the eaves.  Very efficient, yah?
Tate is on the left, Wyatt on the right, and Gunnar in the top bunk.  They used to rotate every New Year, because they all liked being on top (and sometimes we stacked both bunks), but now that they're older the top bunk isn't quite so exciting any more, and the older boys let Gunnar have it all to himself.

And finally, their closet, and a view across the hall to the school room.  (No, we don't have door trim, window trim, or closet doors.  Someday...)

I've rearranged the furniture in almost every room of the house, but always left their room alone because it just worked.  The sloping eaves are a bit of a constraint, but - as it turns out - not as much as I thought.  Gunnar came up with a plan.  They all still share the room, but each boy has his own space, his own corner.

The door is on the left, and Gunnar's bunk has moved over where the dressers were...

... with his dresser tucked into a cozy corner.  Jack (say hi to the goldfish) has moved out of the kitchen.  Maybe just while I have Christmas decorations up, but maybe for longer (!)

Tate's bed is in the same place, but his dresser has moved over to give him a bit of a secluded corner.  Of course, the tree is temporary... it holds all of the boys' special ornaments.  (Wyatt was still putting his up.)

Here's a closer view of Tate's corner.  I had just put on everyone's flannel sheets, so it's extra cozy :D

Wyatt is in the same corner he was before, but his bed is going the other direction, and his dresser is tucked in the corner behind the closet.

They're happy and I'm happy.  And for cryin' out loud, it's only furniture.  We can move it again, if and when the mood strikes.


And, to make up for what might have been a very boring post (!), a bonus pic of Wyatt decorating the tree...

 ... and some of his unique ornament stylings ;D

Do you recognize the little elf?

Wednesday Brain Dump and Random Bits

*Sigh*

It's 7:42am and I already feel overwhelmed.  Hence, a Brain Dump is in order.  You know why I call it a Brain Dump?  Because structuring paragraphs is just too much effort, but a numbered list?  That I can manage.

1.  The calm before the storm.  That's what one of the boys said at breakfast, because today (and today only! - in best infomercial voice) the only place I have to go is to pick up Wyatt at the HS at 10:40.  Tomorrow the flurry hits.  And it's a flurry full of good things, but I still feel like I need to brace myself for the storm.

2.  My email.  I've not displayed my 'real' email on the blog because it has my last name in it.  When the kids were smaller I was a lot more concerned about our privacy, though anyone really determined could probably figure out who and where we are.  With the bazillions of blogs out there, I'm probably too paranoid.  I mean, it's not like we're in the witness protection program or anything.

But, to maintain the illusion of privacy, I opened a new email address under the oh-so-catchy name herdinggrasshoppers.  (Now where have I heard that before???)  You can email me at
herdinggrasshoppers @ yahoo . com     without the spaces.

The catch is, I'm not used to checking that on a regular basis.  I'm trying to get into the habit, but if you email me and I don't respond, you might leave me a comment (which I won't publish), prodding me to check the email.

Or I might just be swamped with daily life, and slow to devote time to email.

Because this post will eventually get buried, I put a new tab up above with the email address in it.

3.  Christmas linkys.  And speaking of tabs... if you're interested in some of the things the Grasshopper family likes to do around Christmas, I've linked to several posts under the Christmas tab, up above.

4.  Advent fail.  It's only December 5th and we're already falling behind.  Hoping to have a big round-up of catching up this evening, as I think we'll all be home (sound the trumpets and rejoice!)  I think the boys are keeping up on their candy strips, but we're a day behind in devotions, and haven't read a Christmas book since Saturday.  Oh, the humanity.

We're trying a new set of advent devotions this year - I downloaded a freebie from Ann Voskamp.  Has anyone else used these?  There are things I'm liking (hanging the ornaments each night, to jog our memories later) and things I'm not.  For one thing, her poetic language is a distraction to me and my grammatically trained boys.  I find myself editing as I read.  Also, there aren't any questions.  I like devotions with questions that draw the others in.  This feels more monologue-y.  I've added in a Christmas carol each night as well.  I want the boys to know the traditional carols :D  Nobody will ever confuse us with the von Trapp family, but I love hearing the boys sing... even tone-deaf ;D

5.  The Mother Load..... is assuming epic proportions.  I am devoting a full-size notebook page for each of the next eight days.  Know why?

Today - get as much schoolwork done as possible, because we are all HOME!
Thursday - Wyatt goes to HS and we homeschool until 10:30, then we head to Seattle to see King Tut.  On our way home we pick up my five-month-old niece, who is staying with us for the weekend.
Friday - watch Naomi, make treats to take to concert, deliver Naomi to her grandparents for the evening, and then first performance of Messiah
Saturday - pack up baby and boys and go to the shopping maul for Tuba Christmas, grab a quick lunch, and then back to neighboring town for second performance of Messiah
Sunday - get family to church, where we are responsible for the treats (oh yeah, make treats ahead of time)
Monday - breathe in and out, get schoolwork done...
Tuesday - CAP "Dining Out" - the annual, formal banquet with the cadets and senior members.  A Really Big Deal.
Wednesday - host the church youthgroup for dinner and activities (must come up with some fun, Christmas-themed games, like Christmas Carol Pictionary, etc. and with food for 10-12 growing teenage bodies.)

See what I mean?  It's all good.  But it's all a lot.

Maybe not to some of you.  Some of you bustle along at a much more vigorous pace than I do!  But we'll get through it :D

I keep casting longing glances at the verse in the sidebar...  My people will live in peaceful dwelling places, in secure homes, in undisturbed places of rest... and wondering if I'll see that, this side of heaven.  Wish me luck!

Grasshopper Days

Grasshopper Days

For today, December 3, 2012.

Outside my window... cloudy, but not as rainy today.  It's felt like monsoon season the last few days!

Hearing...  silence.  Tate and Gunnar have finished their schoolwork and gone to play at the neighbors', and Wyatt is finishing a history test.

Thinking (giggling) ...  at church yesterday I found a birthday card in my mailbox.  Isn't that sweet?  But my birthday is in June.  Even sweeter?  It said  Happy 40th!

Praying...  for lots of grace this week.

Thankful...  we have so many books... (they're piled everywhere).

Creating...  confusion?  So much to get done!

Going...  to dress rehearsal for Messiah tonight.

Reading...  about Japan, with Tate and Gunnar.

Looking forward to...  Christmas break!

In the kitchen...  I made brown rice and baked turkey taquitos for lunch - yum!

In the learning rooms...  Commodore Perry, converting fractions to decimals to percents, reading about rodents, the Battle of Hastings,  bunraku puppet theater, the Magna Carta, the quadratic equation, and the Crusades.

Around the house...  mostly decorated for Christmas :D

The Mother Load...  off the charts right now.  I won't burden you with the details, except...

I'll be making my third trip (in a week) to Wally World on my way to rehearsal tonight.  Time and tide may wait for no man, and a house with three boys can't wait for a new vacuum cleaner.  (Does that make any sense?  I'm a bit tired...)  I was vacuuming yesterday when I saw a bright flash.  For a brief instant I thought it was lightning, but the hot smell and the strange sound convinced me otherwise.  I let myself hope that the vacuum was just clogged and I could sort it out, but the way all the lights in the house dimmed when I turned it on again convinced me otherwise.  That was a bit... scary.

Noticing that...  boys in their early teens give new meaning to the phrase,

A bull in a china shop.  

*sigh*

Something to remember for later...  trees always look smaller in the field than they do once you get them into the house.

Something fun to share...  here's a hint... more pics later:

One of my favorite things...  coming next summer, three chapel babies - Good News! :D

A Bible verse...  Be strong and courageous and do the work...  1 Chronicles 28:20

A few plans for the rest of the week... shopping and rehearsal tonight,
Recruiting Day at the HS tomorrow (helping Wyatt and Tate with this) and then CAP,
Wednesday (normal???),
Thursday - King Tut and maybe pick up my niece for the weekend,
Friday - watch Naomi for the weekend, Friday evening - Messiah,
Saturday - Tuba Christmas and Messiah,
Sunday - church, and breeeaaathe.

A peek into my world...