Christmas Harp Music

I had a lot of fun recording some Christmas harp music today. Some of these songs are arranged by Janet Lanier, and some I arranged myself. All of these, plus some others not included here, will be part of the harp prelude I'm playing before church services on Christmas morning.

I particularly had a lot of fun arranging Silent Night. The first verse has lots of time signature changes, going back and forth between 3/4 and 4/4 time.  Then the song transitions into 6/8 time for the second verse. 

I realize I should have stopped to change shirts between recording each song, just to vary the look of each video. I had every intention of doing that, but just got on a roll with recording, and totally forgot!  :)

Lexie's 9th Birthday!

Lexie just turned 9 years old! She had a fun day celebrating with friends with a pizza and movie party.

 

 

Omaha Harp Circle's Christmas Performance

Our Omaha Harp Circle played our annual Christmas concert at the Children's Hospital today.  It's always fun to perform there and hopefully bring some holiday cheer to patients and families.

Storage Room Home Gym Transformation

I've kept my elliptical and weight bench in the storage room since we moved into this house, and that's where I've been exercising.  But a few weeks ago, I was feeling like the storage room is such a dark and dreary place to exercise, surrounded by shelves of lots of junk.  I threw the idea out to Justin that I could just paint a couple walls in my little exercise area to help cheer it up, and he took the idea and ran.  He said if we're going to do a transformation, we're going to do it right!

So we moved my elliptical into a different nook of the storage room that would be easier to transform and then we got to work.  In the meantime, we found a killer deal on a treadmill on craigslist, so we snatched that up to make our room even more complete, and more appealing to Justin, who hates my elliptical.

My goal was to create a room that was bright and sunshiny, and that would invigorate me each morning when I exercise.  Here's a quick before and after, then you can keep scrolling to see the process.

BEFORE and AFTER

BEFORE and AFTER

This is the TRUE "before" picture.  You can see the handle of my elliptical on the right where I used to keep it.  All the storage in the back (mostly baby clothes and gear) has been moved to where my elliptical is in the picture or has been discarded, sold, or donated.

Moved Christmas decorations on those shelves to where the elliptical used to be.  I have tons of open shelves after getting rid of lots of junk!  Feels so great!

What a dungeon of a workout space!

That's our sump pit and sump pump, along with our water meter and water lines to the house and the yard. Gotta cover that ugly stuff up!

Got the primer and concrete sealant on the walls.

Justin built a box to cover the sump pit and water meter.

The finished, but unpainted, box.

Justin installed an outlet back in the space to power the elliptical and treadmill.  He spliced it in from an outlet on the other side of the wall in Lexie's room.  This way it's also on a different breaker from the rest of the storage room.  Justin discovered earlier that the storage room breaker trips if the treadmill is running when our storage room freezer kicks on.  So now we won't be overloading any breakers.

I was planning to do a cheaper and easier remodel of the ceiling, but Justin thought we ought to make it all look really nice.  So we bought ceiling tiles to cover the ceiling.  This was by far the hardest part of the entire project, and the part that cost the most, but the finished ceiling looks great!  Here, Justin is hanging the framework that the tiles rest in.

Getting the ceiling framework up.

I wanted more light back in this area, instead of just one exposed bulb, so we put in two can lights with LED bulbs.

Getting a can light situated in the ceiling tile.

Both can lights are installed and ceiling is coming along.  I painted the yellow and white walls to bring a cheerful, sunshiny feel to the room.

I painted the floor with a heavy duty floor paint.  It made the concrete floor look so much nicer and cleaner!

I didn't want to be staring out at my storage shelves while exercising, so I sewed these drapes to create a doorway into the workout area.

I sewed matching drapes to cover the water pipes and sump pump pipes.  this makes it easy to just pull aside the drape when we need to turn the water off to the house or drain our sprinkler system each winter.  And the lid of the white box is easily removable so we can access the sump pit or water meter if we need to.  

All finished!

A much lighter and brighter place to exercise!

We plan to eventually install a small TV on the wall above the weight bench.  Just watching for a deal on Craigslist!

We put a piece of plexiglass over the top of the box to protect the surface from the weights.

Halloween 2016

This was the first year that I didn't take Molly and Lexie trick-or-treating myself.  Molly is getting old enough now that she went to a party with friends, and dressed up as Twitter.  Lexie dressed up as Princess Leia, and invited two friends to join us trick-or-treating.  Kids from all over town come to our subdivision to trick-or-treat, so it was quite the party, with unusually warm weather.

Deck Staining

After living here nearly 8 years, we finally decided to stain/seal our deck, mostly to help protect the wood.  Fortunately, the floor of the deck is a composite material that doesn't require any staining or sealing.  So we thought we could quickly tackle the project ourselves.  It took us 12 hours to just do the staining/sealing, plus countless additional hours prepping it by removing the spindles, sanding, and cleaning.  We had a hard time getting a long enough stretch of dry weather for us to do the staining before the next storm, so once we started, we had to finish.  We started at 11am and finished at 11pm by the light of flashlights and our patio lights.

Before staining, but after having sanded it

Before staining, after sanding

Bleaching and power washing--already looking so much better!

After

After

Summer 2016 Mega-Trip

We went on a three week vacation this summer to attend our Aicardi Syndrome Family Conference in Colorado Springs.  It was my last year (of six) to serve on the planning committee.  It went smoothly but I was so busy taking care of things and having fun that I actually don't have many pictures from it.

After the conference, we traveled to some National Parks in Colorado and Utah and then attended my niece's wedding in Provo.  It was a long trip, but we had so much fun seeing our Aicardi family, going new places as a family, and being able to celebrate with my niece on her happy day.

Aicardi girls group photo

The conference planning committee.

The 14 year old friends

Aicardi Siblings

The Founders with their gift from the group--this year's conference theme. The logo for the Foundation (and on this sign) is the profile of their Aicardi daughter who passed away several years ago.

Having fun at the dance!

Justin leading the Q&A session with the researchers.

Annie with her best friends

I owe Cindy so much thanks! She and I spent the last two years planning the entire agenda for this conference. She's the best!

Two of my favorite Aicardi mom friends

Justin was in charge of organizing child care for the conference this year, so what's better than a video game trailer!...

...and Nerf laser tag!  Child care was a hit this year.

While in Colorado Springs for the conference, we went to see Garden of the Gods which was pretty neat.

We stopped for a short break to see the Great Sand Dunes National Park.  We all had so much fun that we wish we had planned to have more time there.

You can rent sandboards and sleds to ride down the sand dunes behind us.  We didn't have time for that, plus walking across the super hot sand to be out there in the sun wasn't too appealing, but it would have been a lot of fun earlier in the day.

So we just played in the water and sand close by.

Annie had a really great time in Mesa Verde and was able to see a lot there.

I took Molly and Lexie on a hike to one dwelling.

We were able to see almost all the others from just small walks to overlooks.

And lots of surface dwellings were fully accessible.

The Monticello, Utah LDS temple

Natural Bridges National Monument had lots of accessible trails to overlooks to see the bridges...

...but some trails got rather steep for Annie.

We stopped for a short while at Capitol Reef and had a nice picnic.

In Salt Lake we were able to meet Justin's brother's new dogs.  The girls ate them up...

...and they ate up Lexie too.

Then we got to see all of my side of the family at my niece's wedding. She was a beautiful bride and it was a happy day.

The cousins all had fun together.

My parents and siblings

Ryan's family

Kami's family

Eric's family

My parents