Sam asked me recently,”What’s your most favorite thing to do?” Without even really thinking it over I responded, “Sing…in the car.” Yes, I’m one of those people you see at intersections belting out songs. That, of course, looks hysterical ’cause you can see the mouth moving, but you can’t hear the music! Oh the humiliation 🙂
Anyways, my latest pick for driving sing-a-longs is the Strict Joy CDs from The Swell Season. Who, you say? Have you seen the movie, Once? Did you hear Kris Allen sing “Falling Slowly” on American Idol last year? Hopefully, one of those is helping you out. The two leads for The Swell Season are Glen Hansard (also front man for the Irish band The Frames), and Marketa Irglova, (a classically trained Czech pianist and vocalist). Â They came out with the AWESOME Â musical movie, Once, a couple of years ago and got on so well, that they just keep writing songs together.
The songs blend great acoustic guitar, great piano, great harmonies and can be both folky, rocking and just really pretty. I have the 2 CD collection that includes the new material and a great live-performance set with the “Falling Slowly” song backed up by an 8th grade choir. Very fun. The collection also came with the live-performance DVD (Glen really does play that guitar he wore a hole in). Brian and I both enjoyed watching it. The DVD includes some interviews and some footage of them working on new material.
So, watch the movie, listen to the CD, and sing, sing, sing!
We’ve been going to White River on Mt. Hood for years. It’s a great place to take our sleds and get some really good rides. There’s plenty of room to spread out and many choices of hills for the brave and not-so-brave. You do have to watch out for the occasional goof ball with an inner tube that flies down the hill, out of control and at crazy speeds. Luckily, those people usually wipe out gloriously and leave early in the day!
The boys had a blast on this most recent trip with their new sleds. We also tried out our new snow shoes. Boy, those make the hike up to the slopes so much easier. Brian and I can’t wait to use them again on a more scenic day hike. We’ll probably try Trillium Lake next or maybe a bigger adventure near Bachelor.
As usual, White River made for amazing pictures. Enjoy!
For days after Christmas, the Windheim’s build Legos. This is the first year that mom hasn’t had to help at all…kinda makes me sad. Â Thank goodness Santa gave me my own little race car set so I could join in the fun.
Now to the point…
Brian experimented with my camera and some time-lapsed photography software to create a video of this year’s Lego projects. Take a look.
I can’t believe that the Bunco Babes are going into our 4th year of getting together. We have such a good time. So good of a time that we hardly actually play the game anymore.
Got one more Christmas “to do” checked off my list. The Christmas candy is done, done, done. I made candied pretzels, dark chocolate-mint fudge, chocolate peanut butter balls and bourbon balls. Yum! The kids and Brian were awfully excited when they saw all of it. I had to start slapping hands ’cause they just couldn’t stop munching 🙂
This was a fun little project. Pretty easy, and not as messy as the old peanut butter methods…which I found out is actually not good for the birds. They can get it stuck in their beaks! Â My instructions are now on eHow.
Joe and Ben kicked off  their league basketball season today despite the threat of freezing rain and snow…can we fire those meteorologists already?!  Anyways, both boys gave a good show for their first games. Unfortunately, we came out on the losing side at the end. Oh well, we’ll get ’em next week 🙂
And, with a new sport season comes a new photo op. I’ll be taking the team photos as usual…I’ll have to say I’m getting pretty good at the allusive basketball photo. Take a look at what I got from  Joe’s game…
Facebook always seemed unnecessary to me. I’ve got a blog, email, etc. But, after about the hundred zillionith time that I’ve been asked or prompted to add my content to Facebook, I folded. I’m now a member and I’m loading up my content.
I have to admit, it is pretty fun to sit down and think, “now who haven’t I heard from in a long, long time?” So far, I’ve been able to find just about anybody I’ve chosen to look up. It’s definitely not replacing my blog or photo site or even my book club site. But, it’s interesting to play with.
The annual food drives are a significant part of my family’s charitable contributions. Much to my dismay, the kids new elementary school is not collecting this year. This kicked my 5th grader’s teacher and myself in gear to coordinate our own classroom food drive. The kids are very excited. So, my job is to figure out who to donate the food, too. My first stop was the Sherwood Helping Hands. Well, it turns out that they are well-stocked.  This was a bit shocking to me.  Evidently, what they really need is a food drive in the spring. That’s when donations start running low.  We’re looking into a school-wide effort for that, too 🙂  But, for now, we need a home for our donations and it looks like it will be the Newberg F.I.S.H (Friends in Service of Humanity)  The food pantry provides for 363 families (over 1,300 people) in the Newberg area.  F.I.S.H. prides itself on providing the necessary basic food items to last a family for 8 to 10 days.  Each family can make one trip per month. It’s nice that they base the quantity of food on the number of mouths to feed in the household. Some groups do not adjust the amount of food to the size of the family.  F.I.S.H. is very enthusiastic about our donation and even offered to give the kids a tour of the food bank…that could be a very cool teaching opportunity.
