One Dad's Life

Influenced by Her Big Sister

My oldest daughter, Rebecca, is a talented artist (click here for a published example) and is always drawing.  She throws away drawings that I think should be framed!

Well naturally, Rachel, the 2nd grader has followed suite and now ALSO draws all the time.  We go through a ton of drawing paper pads, colored pencils, and all other art supplies.  It's funny, I used to think that I drew a lot, but I still have some of my original packs of pencils and pads!  Clearly, my daughters are working on a whole different level.

Last night, my wife brought me the following drawing which when quizzed, Rebecca told us RACHEL had done all by herself.  There is obvious portions of Rebecca's style in the drawing, but not too bad for someone entering 2nd grade!  I can't wait to see what kind of style Rachel develops as she continues to draw.

Wordless Wednesday - I Can Still Make Her Laugh...

...on very rare occasions!

Photo info:

Subject: My daughter Rebecca after my niece's birthday party.  I kept taking pictures of her and making snide remarks on her expression!  Actually, ALL of her pictures turn out great. She's very photogenic.

Camera: Nikon D60, SB600 flash bounced off the ceiling and probably turned down a stop or so.  18-55mm, f3.5-5.6 kit lens.

Critique: Should have used a flash softbox instead of the bounce. I was too close and it resulted in shadows under her face! Learn from my mistakes!

Happy Birthday, Emily!

This past weekend we, and apparently the whole country, celebrated the 5th birthday of my niece, Emily.  You probably saw the fireworks.  On Sunday, she had not one, but TWO birthday parties back-to-back.  The first was with her friends, and then the second was with the family.

While my daughter, Rachel, attended both festivals, the rest of my clan just attended the second.

Let me tell you, I have NEVER seen a pile of gifts like the gifts that were showered on this kid in my life.  It was quite amazing.  Emily, however, took all of this in with an unusual sense of calmness and peace about her.  NOT.  There were nearly hysterical outbursts of delight for EACH AND EVERY GIFT.  

Did I mention there were a lot of gifts?  There were a lot of outbursts.

In reality, instead of taking photos, someone should have been taking video of the event. Emily is quite the character and had us all in stitches.

 

Here she is giving her big sister Hannah the "thumbs up" signal on Hannah's gift to her.  Success!

 

This shot captures the tail end of one of her squeals of delight.  "Squeal" is definitely the correct word to use in this situation.

 

This, in many ways, was the grand finale gift.  This doll house was a collaboration between my dad, who cut out and assembled the house (from scrap lumber, amazingly), my wife, who did the painting, decorating and most of the furniture building, and my youngest daughter Rachel, who did all the furniture and decorating on the third floor, plus made a front porch.  

The interesting thing about this dollhouse is that it is scaled to match Emily's treasured Poly Pocket collection!  That meant that everything had to be custom made, as Poly Pockets do NOT match one of the standard dollhouse scales.

I was totally expecting huge, ear-splitting screams when she pulled the wrapping off the house, judging from the reaction to the rest of her gifts and the fact that about 2 weeks ago she mentioned to her mom how she'd REALLY REALLY like a dollhouse.

Instead, there was silence.  I think it might have been STUNNED silence, but their was silence non-the-less.  In short order, though, she made the trip upstairs to fetch those Poly Pockets and returned to play with the house.

 

Here's Emily feeding her very realistic baby doll, that responds to your touch.  You'll notice that in the background, full-grown adults are now playing with the dollhouse!

Happy Birthday, Emily!  I hope it was a great one!

Shipoopi! One Last Time.

If I've been lucky enough to have you reading here for a while, you know that my family works on a lot of musicals.  This all started when our church did a "One Time Only" production of "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat"  as a way to get the community into our new location - an old Target store on South Lindbergh.

Well, much to our surprise, the production was a HUGE hit, as night after night we looked at the lines of people, reaching out into the parking lot, streaming in to see the show.  Well, we were hooked.  We've been producing both sacred and secular production ever since.

In 2008, we produced our 4th fall musical (the time of year we have settled on doing a Broadway show).  In 2008, we did "Music Man."

Again, it was a huge success by any measure, and best of all, we were all really proud of the work we had done, which involved somewhere around 150 people, both from our church and the community.  This year, we learned that we received 12 "Arts for Life" nominations for the show, including the big one "Best Large Ensemble Musical."  No matter what else happened, our show was selected as one of the five best of the year!  We also tied one other theater company in most award nominations.  The "Arts for Life" awards are basically a St. Louis version of the "Tony's" for amateur theater.  It's thrilling to receive the recognition these nominations provide from the theater community!

Finally, last weekend (the weekend after Father's Day), the award show was upon us.

 

The awards show was held at the beautiful "Sheldon Concert Hall" smack in the middle of the theater district in Mid-town St. Louis.

 

Interestingly, this year I had decided not to rent a tux to save a bit of money (these formal events can be costly!) and go with my suit, instead.  However, at the last minute I learned that my suit was in no condition to be used and was in a bit of a bind!  Believe it or not, I ended up BUYING a Clavin Klein tux.  This now expands my mostly t-shirt wardrobe to include t-shirts AND A TUX.  Well, over time, this will save me some money, right?  The rest of the family is smashing as always.  This picture was taken just before going in for the awards show, in a reception area.  That's Rebecca, Rachel, and Dianne in the front, and me in the back.  You didn't actually think I looked like Micky Mouse, did you?

 

Since my wife, Dianne, won an award last year.  She was a presenter this year.   Here is a fuzzy, low-light picture of her opening the envelope to reveal the winner from her category this year!

 

Since we were nominated as best musical, we got to do a production number during the awards show.  We did a combination of "76 Trombones", "Sincere" (the barbershop quartet), and then "Shipoopi."  In the actual show, the "Shipoopi" dance had over 80 people in it!  Fortunately, not everyone could come, because they would not have fit on the small Sheldon stage.  We DID have around 30 performers though, and they BROUGHT THE HOUSE DOWN.  It was incredible.  We looked like "best musical" contenders!  My wife is in the middle of this shot, back row, just under the video of our program cover.  My daughter, Rebecca, is actually on the floor in front of the stage, but you can't see her very well in this exposure.

This shot is the BIG FINISH of the dance.  They had just yelled "Shipoopi!" for the last time. <sniff>

Eventually, we got down to the final award presentation for "Best Large Ensemble Musical."  As it turned out, we did not win.  "Big - The Musical" won, and it looked like it was also an incredible show.  They were also the OTHER show that had 12 nominations.  They ended up walking away with three awards, and we received two.

Our award winners were Bethany Poppitz for "Best Actress in a non-singing role" and Kristi Eberley for "Best Lighting Design." Congrats to everyone!

Afterward, there was a nice reception where we mingled with the rest of the St. Louis Theater Community, including a number of Muny performers that were in "Annie" at The Muny.  The shot above is "Mint Julep" on the left (you've read about her here before! Click the link!) and my daughter Rebecca on the right.

Obviously, you want to be part the excitement this year, right? Well we will be doing "Annie" ourselves for two weeks in September.  Tickets go on sale August 8th.  For more information, click through to the Christ Memorial Productions website!

Happy 4th of July!

Happy 4th of July to all the United States citizens out there!

Special thanks to all our veterans and current military personnel as well as the leaders in Washington that have defended and provided our freedom, and the freedom of those in distant lands, over the years.

Photo taken at Jefferson Barracks Park, St. Louis, MO., July 3rd, 2009.  Nikon D60.

The Neighbor's House is on Fire!

It's no secret that I'm just a bit of a Nintendo fan.  In fact, if you are a regular reader (thanks to both of you!) then you know that if I had MY way, my life would revolve around music, Nintendo, and photography.  Please note, I'm not excluding my family, pesky as they may be, just as I'm not excluding eating and sleeping!  No nasty emails, please.

So, last night, as with many nights, I wanted to spend a bit of time playing Animal Crossing.  I have to collect all the available fish, bugs, clothes and furniture after all!

Animal Crossing is a pleasant, slow moving simulation game where you are a human, living among interesting talking animals.  It's such a pleasant "life" that many a day I've wished REAL life were more like Animal Crossing.

The game is so relaxing and slow moving that I often drift off to sleep for brief moments while I'm waiting for a fish to bite, or similar event.  This may also have to do with me being really tired by the time I get around to Nintendo!

It's not that uncommon for me to drift off to sleep on the couch and wake up later in the night, with the game patiently waiting for me to do something.  Last night was one of those nights.  I would momentarily nod off, then wake up, find some bugs or fish, and nod off again.  On one of the moments when I woke up from a brief nodding off, I was panic struck by the glow coming through our colored glass living room window. It would seem that perhaps the neighbor's house was on fire!  I jumped up, amazed I hadn't heard the sirens and commotion.  It was at this moment that I realized the house next door was NOT actually on fire.  The glow I was seeing came from another source - THE SUN.

I had somehow managed to repeatedly doze off and wake up, playing the game ALL NIGHT LONG!

This CAN'T be a good influence on my kids. 

Tomorrow, I get a day off for the 4th of July holiday, so tonight we will be having a BONUS Mario Kart Session!  On that game, there will be no sleeping.

Wordless Wednesday - Annie: Day 1

Although "behind the scenes" work has been going on for some time, last night was the first cast rehearsal for this fall's musical from our production company, Christ Memorial Productions. We're doing "Annie" this September (for two weeks - 18th, 19th, 20th, 25th, 26th, 27th!) and boy did the Muny set the bar high this past week! Their production of "Annie" this year was the best I've seen.  Still, I promise that you will not be disappointed with our production.  Anyone who has ever seen one of ours will tell you the same!

Here are a couple of shots I took at the initial cast rehearsal.  You know the drill, all shots available light, Nikon D60, 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 kit lens.

FDR's wheelchair.  How awesome is that?  As far as you know, this really could BE his wheelchair!

...and here's the cast!  Doing their first read-through.

We got kids!  You wouldn't believe how many talented kids are right here in St. Louis!

A part of the world's greatest tech crew. Someday, they will invent awards just to give them to this group.  How many tech crews show up at the first read through?  OURS! They rock.  Seriously.

Believe it or not, this really is our lighting director, Kristi.  She HAS won an award!  If you look closely at this picture, you can see why she is so awesome at lighting.  She's pretty much a colorful blur!

What's Up?

Well, things have been crazy busy in the "One Dad's Life" household.  So much so that normal things haven't been getting done.  Ahem.

It seems that since school has been out, the "summer vacation" thing just hasn't taken hold, yet.

For the past two months, I've had employees from Asia (both China and India) in town.  I like taking them places and showing off our great town, which has an impact on our weekends, of course.  On top of that, we have the usual weekend rehearsals, church services, dance classes, etc.

During the week, my normal work schedule has been thrown off kilter by wanting to take maximum advantage of the Asians' time in St. Louis - but this ended up pushing things that HAD to be done to my evenings.  Say goodbye to anything getting done around the house!

We had Father's day at our house this year, which was fun, but had a LOT of prep work to do during a time we weren't actually at home much.  I ended up taking a couple of days off work to prepare...because the weekends are crazy.   Additionally, with all the other activities on top of this, we ended up not being able to go to the Muny that week.  We gave our tickets to friends of ours.

My daughter has had softball games several times a week, not all of which she is able to make, and we are finding ourselves deciding  between commitments on an almost daily basis.

This weekend, we had a "Family Fun Night" at our church, and as part of this, we climbed up on the roof of the building, hung a giant white drop cloth on the wall as a screen, and watched Toy Story 2 outside!   This was fun, too, but if you are a regular reader, you know that Friday is my grass cutting night.  If I don't get it done then, I go crazy.   So, I ended up going crazy by mowing it on Thursday night.  Thursday night is our weekly big rehearsal for the weekend's contemporary service.  This gets over between 8-8:30.   I cut the grass after that.  In the dark.  TOTAL dark.  Amazingly, when I got up on Friday, it looked really pretty good!

Sunday was the annual "Arts for Life" awards event, for which our church's production company was nominated for 12 awards for our fall production of "Music Man."   I had decided not to rent a tux this year, instead saving a bit of cash and wearing something I had.

Well, as it turns out, I discovered this weekend that I didn't actually have anything. DUH!!!

So, to save money IN THE LONG RUN, I actually went out and spent a great deal of money on a Calvin Klein Tux and ALL the fixings.  It's classic, and very comfortable.  I'll post a picture here as soon as I get a chance!  (and talk about the awards)  We'd better have a lot of award shows in the future!  Also, if you are for any reason looking for a guy in a tux, I'm available for a reasonable rental fee.

Then, on Monday, after being derailed from the normal schedule of things, I took the day off work and spent around 12 hours going through 10,000 photos, selecting ones to be used for our church's new directory.  There is a lot to do on this project, still.  For example, I've yet to do ANY post-processing on these pictures.  Many were taken indoors, in available light, so I intentionally under-expose and then crank them up a couple of stops in post-processing. This helps keep the shutter speed higher, and reduces the blur from movement.

All of these activities (and more) are piled on top of the "normal" activities and commitments.  Also, I ONLY mentioned activities that have impacted me directly.  My wife has been spending a ton of time on our church's VBS week (also last week), where she was responsible for all the music and drama portions of the week, and she is putting together a drama camp that runs for two weeks and I THINK starts next week!

Are we the only people who only ADD things to the schedule?  We need an activity reduction plan!

Found Poetry

While cleaning out the dark hidden corners of our coat closet floor, we came across a crunched up piece of notebook paper.  Generally, the instinct is to just throw this in the recycling bin, but for some reason my wife opened this one up and took a look at it.

It's a good thing she did!  It turned out to be some poetry, obviously written by my first grader earlier in the year.   She is ALWAYS making up songs and poems, and can do it on the fly, but this is one that she took the time to write down.  It obviously wasn't for school or anything, since her name wasn't on it and there was no grade.

Here is the poem:

The sun is shining.
The world is happy.
All because of Spring.
The flowers are growing,
The clouds are white.
The grass is growing,
How do I feel this way?
I don't know.
How about you?
Maybe because Spring is here
Hip hip hooray!

Below is a scan of the original paper, complete with first grade spelling issues!

Not bad! 

Have a great weekend!

13-year Old Quote of the Day

This past Sunday, on Father's Day, I was picking up some of my employees that are visiting the United States from India.  They were going to celebrate Father's Day at my house. My youngest daughter, who we'll call "Rachel" since that's her name, was with me.  My wife and older daughter, Rebecca, were building a set for this week's VBS program and were not in the car.

Rachel LOVES it when people come to the United States from Asia.  Loves it.  So she is in rare form, showing off, singing, and generally making a loud nuisance of herself.  The Asians love it.  They love it because on first glance it is adorable.  Too much, though - like the dose you get if you live with her - and it becomes increasingly less adorable. 

Since pleading with her to "turn the volume down" and other similar supplications failed to control the mayhem, I turned to texting to blow off some steam.  Yeah, I said texting.  DO YOU WANT TO MAKE SOMETHING OF IT!?

So I sent a message to my older daughter, Rebecca, as I knew she would see it in about 12 nanoseconds.

Gregg: (texting) I'd like to trade Rachel in for another kitten.

See, we already have two geriatric cats and a dog that wants to eat them, and that is about all our house can contain.  You see, they don't get along and are frequently very annoying.  My oldest cat doesn't remember that she's been fed and CONSTANTLY wants food - even if she is currently eating. She indicates this want by following you around and HOWLING AT THE TOP OF HER LITTLE CAT LUNGS.  The youngest attacks the oldest for sport.  Fortunately for us, the cats are aging and arthritis is starting to slow them down, a bit.  Yep, with my cats, I'm spinning arthritis as a positive. The point is, me indicating I'd want to add an additional cat to the circus that is our house is an indication that the annoyance meter is registering pretty high!

Being sisters, and knowing how sisters love each other through thick and thin, famine and feast, and Beavis and Butthead, I knew that Rebecca would text something appropriately endearing and supportive back to me.  Something like, "she'll only be seven once, enjoy her while she's like that and not a sullen teen like me!"  Well, I did get a message from Rebecca rather promptly.  The message was simple, yet thoroughly conveyed the emotion that I knew my oldest daughter was feeling at that moment towards her precious, cute little sister:

Rebecca:(texting back)  Awwww, kittens!