HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Happy birthday Grandma! I called Uncle Tim's house but Melissa said you were already sleeping. Hope you had a great day!

Xoxo

Spring is here

The weather has been very nice.  All of our back yard flowers are blooming and the fruit is ripening on the trees.  Our house looks great from the back yard.

We also got our annual allotment of Avacados (seems like a lot of watering for 12 avacados)

And flowers all over.

MUSICAL(?) WEEKEND

 

I had my first recital on Saturday night. I was incredibly nervous, and my bow arm kept shaking making for a very strange vibrato sound. I also had a complete fiasco while tuning my instrument before the recital started. Generally my violin stays tuned for weeks with only minor adjustments, but I got to the recital hall, and for some reason my violin seemed way out of tune, so then I tightened (or loosened, it's all just a blur) the strings around, and judging from the sound, never quite got it back to the right notes.

Some people perform better under stress, I seem to self-destruct!

On Sunday we went to a mind blowing concert produced by this over achieving doctor who is a first violinist in my orchestra. She assigned the task to 7 Northwest composers of writing symphony pieces featuring a solo instrument that he/she did NOT play. So, the solo instruments included bagpipes, drums, the didgeri-doo, cembalo, tar, and even a flamenco dancer (that was the piece composed by the doctor herself!) It was really fun. My favorite piece was the bagpipe one. It started with some other sort of Scottish pipes (Uilleann) playing with the symphony a very pastoral sounding piece, and then in the third movement a soloist playing the Scottish bagpipes marched on stage in full regalia with his pipes playing at fortissimo. I started crying at the pure awesomeness of it.

Here's my second attempt to download....

Happy Birthday Nathan

Nathan was 17 yesterday

School Auction

We went to the boys' school's fund raising auction this week-end.

The theme was TV hits. I'll give you 5 guesses who we went as.

Hawaii in March

Tui and I took a short vacation to Oahu to celebrate our 20th anniversery.  We went with many of her family friends.  The trip was surprisingly reasonable at $750 per person for 5days and airfare +rental car.  The beach life very similar to our Mexico vacations.  The difference being there is a mall 20 feet from the beach.  Lots of other outdoor things to do there.  We went to several botanical gardens, China town, and hiked to a nice waterfall.  On one of the lookouts, the wind was so strong that you could lean into it.