The Zoo

What A Weekend!

Wow, this weekend was a whirlwind of activity! All good stuff, but I'm exhausted. Here's the summary...

My sister from St. Louis, Kathy, and her daughter Maggie came up for the weekend. Traditionally, many of the women in my family go to a holiday concert together, typically a choir concert at a local Christian college. This year, we decided to step it up a bit and went to the Celtic Thunder Christmas Concert. But, before all that, we decided that a sleepover was in order.

So, on Friday night we all converged on Mom & Dad's house (which we decided to "borrow" for the event). Lots of laughs, food, and fun!

Next day, we did cookie baking at my parents' house...always a fun, sugar-filled time!

I have a hard time sticking to the traditional type decorations...Where some saw a mitten and a stocking, I saw a goldfish and a seal...

Then it was time to get ready for the concert. Deb and I did our nails in Christmas-y colors (I'm red, Deb's green for those who care)

Soon, we were all dolled up and ready to go...

and only slightly crazy....

An exhausting, but fun weekend! I love the holiday season :-D

Marcus is 8!!!

Happy birthday, Marcus! Hard to believe you've been here almost four years. You have grown so much and learned so much! We love seeing more and more of your personality come out as time goes by.

You are a wonderful son and brother, and we are so glad that you are part of our family!!

Happy birthday!!!

Theater Review

So, inquiring minds (Tami) want to know how the show was last night. Well, as always, Les Miserable was a great show! It was my fourth or fifth time seeing it (I lost track, as it hasn't been touring for many years). They made a few changes since it last traveled, and the set has changed as well. Obviously, there were new actors, also.

The songs/story is all the same - thank goodness! It would be really hard to improve upon it! Gone is the revolving set. It was playing at the Orpheum Theater in Minneapolis which has a much smaller stage than the Ordway (in St. Paul) where it used to play. This caused it to seem somewhat cramped on stage at times. Now, for my personal opinions: I did not care for the actress who played Fantine or the actor they chose for Javert (although he had a fine voice). On the flip side, Jean Valjean was great and sang all of the songs to perfection, little Cossette was amazing (and for our show, played by the actual daughter of the actor who played Valjean), but the one to steal the show was Eponine. She was phenomenal! What a voice! Not to mention she could sing great while in the throes of death, lying prostrate on the stage. How do they do that, anyway??? I can't sing decent while standing up, and hereshe is flailing about and hitting every note perfectly...it was really impressive!

Anyway, if you've never gone to see Les Miserables, I can't urge you strongly enough to go! I promise, you won't regret it.

And now, here we are, all dolled up and ready to go out :-)

Off To The Theater

Getting ready to go to the theater is almost as fun as actually going. Okay, maybe not quite, but I'm having fun nonetheless.

First Nina did my nails :-) It's so nice having my own beautician in the home!

Then I got to pick out my bling. That's always fun, since I don't usually wear sparkly stuff.

The make-up is on, the clothes are picked out...

this is going to be a fun night!

Christmas Arrives Early

For our family, Christmas officially begins the first Saturday of December. That is when we trek to Wisconsin to celebrate the holiday with Chris' side of the family. It was a thoroughly fun weekend, but over too quickly. The only downside was that Evan had to work, and so he was unable to come up for the weekend :-(

Here are some photos of the fun....

Molly & Nina being goofy, as usual