Sarah Goes GOLD!

Thursday night we attended an awards ceremony at the Pacific Northwest College of the Arts for the Scholastic Art Awards.



Sarah was among the local student artists being honored. Her art teachers urged her to submit some of her art pieces to this annual competition. She sent three entries in, and one of them was awarded a Gold Key - the top award. We are really proud of her for putting herself out there and for working so hard to achieve this honor. Congratulations, Sarah!



Her piece is a chalk pastel drawing of a bowl of fruit - a classic still life, right?



Maybe not... Is that mold on that orange? Is that pear rotting? The apple has worms in it! And, are those fruit flies circling overhead?!



The assignment was to draw something ugly in a beautiful manner, and Sarah stuck her tongue firmly in her cheek with this concept of a typical still life that isn't. Pretty clever, I think...

Several of her friends were award winners, as well, some Gold, some Silver, some Honorable Mention (a status Sarah achieved last year). She's in with a talented group of friends who support each other. That's always a healthy environment for budding artists.



If you're local and want to see some of the amazing art at this exhibit, it's on display through Saturday, January 23rd at PNCA.

The Conchords Chorale gets "festive"

I guess I know how to pick 'em. My community choir, The Conchords Chorale, is getting quite a name for itself, and, in fact, will be an official Rose Festival event this year. In addition to our usual performances around town at Retirement Centers and such, we will also do two shows at the Hollywood Theater in June during the Portland Rose Festival. Last year, we were a "sponsored" event, paying our dues and proving ourselves capable of putting on a quality performance. Guess it worked, as we've moved up the ladder this year! Tickets are already being sold as bus tour packages, so the pressure is on!



Surprisingly, the Rose Festival, in its 103-year history, has never been declared the "official" festival of the City of Portland. So yesterday, there was a proclamation brought before the City Council to do just that. We were there to perform, and sang Everything's Coming Up Roses. The One More Time Around Again Marching Band (supposedly the largest marching band in the world) performed, too, and the Royal Rosarians , the Clown Corps, and last year's court were in attendance, along with various dignitaries and historians. It was quite impressive, and we felt honored to be a part of it. We were even on the local news last night!



Our show's theme is "Let's Go to the Movies", and we'll be singing songs from various films spanning from the '30's to the '80's. Our format will be an Oscars-style program, with "celebrities" presenting awards for Best Song from various years. Should be fun and entertaining for our audiences. It will be an exciting season, to be sure!

Emily is cast in her first play!

I am so proud of Emily. She's a seventh grader in a 6th-12th grade school, and she had the confidence to audition for a musical. I would say "like mother, like daughter," but I was an adult before I got up the nerve to do such a thing. She had to prepare a monologue and a song, and performed well enough that she got called back. She wasn't cast as one of the five lead roles (no surprise), but she is in the chorus. She starts rehearsals next week, and, if you've ever been in a play, you know that our lives are about to become a lot more complicated - and extremely busy! It's a big commitment...

The play is called Celebration, and is timed to be the inaugural show in the school's new Performing Arts facility, currently under construction. We're really excited about this new space, and look forward to seeing Emily onstage to help inaugurate its use in March.

Good job, Emily! Have fun!

So, just what is a charrette?

Sarah came home one day and announced that her Urban Design class at school was going on a field trip. They were participating in a charrette with the Beaverton City Planners. This class, new to the curriculum this year, was offered as an alternative to a traditional Government class, and certainly seems well-suited to an arts school. Their focus this semester has been to come up with a design plan for a parcel of unused land near downtown Beaverton - and within walking distance of ACMA - that has stymied city planners for years. The class was divided into groups and each group developed a design for the property based on principles of urban design and land use studied in class. The field trip - the charrette - gave them an opportunity to meet with the city planners themselves and receive hands-on suggestions, advice, and feedback from the pros. What an opportunity! These seasoned professionals walked around and offered ideas for improving different aspects of the students' plans, and discussed what would work and what might need more thought. The press was there to witness this once-in-a-lifetime event, and the accompanying article gives more detail - along with pictures. We feel so fortunate that our daughters attend a school that's not afraid to be innovative!

Click here for article

Christmas 2009

Jeff chided me for not posting anything about Thanksgiving, so I promised I would post something about our Christmas this year.

It really was rather quiet. We invited a couple of families over, but got no takers, so we had a very low-key, largely pajama-clad day. Emily suggested that we have pull-aparts for breakfast, so she and I started the morning by making the dough. While the breadmaker did its thing, we opened a few gifts. Once the dough was ready, the whole family (even Larry!) convened in the kitchen and rolled balls of dough, coated them in butter, and covered them in a brown sugar-cinnamon mixture. While that was rising and then baking, we opened more gifts. After a break to eat, we finished up the gift madness, and relaxed a bit.

Both Emily and Larry got new digital cameras:



Sarah enjoyed some Dr. Who related gifts...



a marshmallow shooter (courtesy of Emily)...



and some new rain boots! (She hates rain boots, but loves Converse sneakers. I'm hoping maybe she'll wear these high-tops as a lark...)



Emily received some new games for her Nintendo DS, along with a cool gaming chair for her room. Complete with new earbuds, she's set!



A couple of gifts involved no technology at all. Here, Emily sports her new jacket from Nana and Papa and knit cap from Mom. Who knew we'd chosen the same color? Couldn't be more perfect!



Among other things, Larry got a new sweater (we picked it out on our Canada trip over the summer)...



and a radiometer - just for fun!



The big gift for the whole family was a Wii. We decided it was time we caught up with the rest of the world before this technology is obsolete. Now Sarah can play the Harry Potter game she won at Azkatraz, and I'm hoping the Wii Fit we got to go with it will help me lose some weight in the new year!



Sarah and Emily decided to figure out on their own how to hook it up. They came petty close, and, with minimal help from Larry to finish things up, were playing tennis and bowling in no time at all. I have to admit, it is pretty fun.

Since we had no company, I kept our Christmas dinner simple. We had garlic pork roast, cranberry wild rice, green beans with bacon and brown sugar, and red (apple) and green (grapes) fruit salad. For dessert: a plum torte I made and froze back in October, with whipped cream.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. I watched some more Christmas movies, we all tried out the Wii, and enjoyed having a chance to just relax and spend some time together as a family.

More Christmas Decorations

I suppose since I showed pictures of my mantles, I ought to publish some of my other decorations from this year's Christmas season.

Our Christmas tree did not rain needles on us as we decorated it, and is holding up quite nicely. It really does have a pretty shape, and may be one of the nicest trees we've had in a number of years. I still love how every one of our ornaments - most one of a kind, and many handmade - tells its own story.



The banister sports its usual array of pine cones and berries.



I love assembling 3-D puzzles. Problem is, once I get them put together, I don't want to tear them apart again! I've had this Victorian house for 12+ years and still love it. Some years ago, when we were still living in Arizona, my mother decided to make Christmas greenery to decorate the outside of the Victorian house. We've saved those mini garlands and wreaths, and use them every year to ready our miniature puzzle house for the season.



Here's our house. Wonder what its inspiration was?



By the way, here's the neighbor's pyracantha bush that yielded its berries for our mantle decor. Didn't I read somewhere once that heavy berry growth foretells a colder-than-usual winter? If so, we're in for a doozy, because there are lots of berries everywhere this year!

Well, the weather outside is frightful...

It truly has been frightful lately. Once the arctic snap ended, we got our classic Portland winter rain and standard low 40's temperatures. Pretty manageable. But then the rain stopped, the thermometer eased its way down a bit, and the winds picked up. Just so you know, we get some wicked winds here in December and January. Gusts can reach the 50 mph mark easily. So, the thermometer might say it's 32, but the wind chill brings it down into the 20's. And it sounds like a banshee is wailing outside the house. That's what we've had going on here for the past week or so. It's funny, but even after living here for 10+ years, I still can't get used to seeing fir tree detritus in the yard and gutters after a wind storm. I grew up with leaves, so it still takes me aback a little.



Today, I got up and noted that the wind had stopped, and the weather seemed to be changing. I think my observations jinxed us. The girls and I left the house to get our H1N1 vaccinations and to run errands. Famished after waiting two hours for our shots, we decided to get some lunch. In the middle of our meal, Emily suddenly said, "Oh, my gosh, it's snowing!" And was it ever. Not forecasted, it caught us completely off guard. It was coming down hard and fast, and that meant we needed to forego our errands and make our way home quickly. If you've ever visited us, you know that you have to climb a rather impressive hill to get to our neighborhood. And, when it snows and the streets get covered, we can get snowed in - or need to chain up the tires to go anywhere. The fear is that we'll get caught downhill and won't be able to make it up to our house (nearly happened to Larry once...).

We made it home just in time because we ended up getting nearly 4 inches within 3 hours. We built a fire in the fireplace and sat next to it playing games in the light of the Christmas tree with snow gently falling just outside the living room window. Very peaceful and cozy.

Darkness has come upon us quickly and the opportunity for pictures is rather limited...



Emily is out playing in it now - because it's supposed to warm up and rain tonight. Her masterpiece is a Dr. Who-inspired Weeping Angel snow sculpture. No mere snowman for her!



By morning, it may be washed away completely. I hope so, since I have two doctor's appointments, the girls are both due at the dentist for a cleaning, and I have a party to attend tomorrow night - our busiest winter break day yet!

In the meantime, Larry has to go in to work tonight, so he's putting chains on his tires in an effort to get there in one piece. Poor baby...



We'll see how it looks in the morning, and whether we can make it to any of our appointments! In the meantime, it is pretty...