Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Lil Brother

Josh and Katy
Josh and Katy - July 2010

Champ and I drove up to TN to see the lil brother (who, obviously, is not so little and could actually pass for my twin) perform in the last concert of the music festival that he was interning/studying at this summer.

I think this is the part where I add in some back story.

Josh-man has been playing oboe since 5th grade. The band director in his elementary school band (who, by the way, is still, to this date and about 10 band directors later, still the best I've ever had) picked his ability to hear if an instrument is in tune or not from the start and told my parents that she wanted to do something unorthodox. She wanted to start him on an instrument that most kids only started playing because a band director in high school coaxed a flute player into changing their instrument. Instead Ms. Baker started Josh off on oboe.

Over 190 years later he's still playing. In about a month he starts graduate school at the University of Hartford's conservatory, The Hartt School. This summer he was at the Sewanee Music Festival. The big part of the concert was his English Horn (which..is like a larger oboe...he's going to yell at me for that, but that's the best frame of reference for someone who doesn't study it) in the Largo movement of New World (Dvorak Symphony No 9).

It was incredible.

I've been listening to him play for a looong time, but this was easily my favorite. When it was over and he stood up, the whole place cheered. Not just my family. And the orchestra itself broke into resounding applause.

The little man has reached the bigs.


(also for those you paying attention I cut my hair short! which you can see in the photo)

Friday, June 18, 2010

Never Too Old

It's been a while in posting, we've been doing way too much traveling it seems. We're finally stationary for a few days though, which is good. As much as I desperately love to travel, sometimes it can be a little too much.

I can't help but share some photos from our family trip to Disney World though. We went with my parents and I have to say that no matter how old we get, the lot of us still love this place. Even lil bro who has worked there as part of the college internship program still thinks there's magic.

Walt and Mickey

At times the trip was exhausting, but I think that was mostly old age setting in. Not that we're entirely that old, but between the 'rents and champ and I no longer being spring chickens? We got worn out pretty easy. That didn't deteriorate from fun of course, but it was interesting.

Wishes 1

There are probably plenty of stories to share, as there were lots of laughs and giggles to be had over the course of the trip. We did a lot of our favorite activities, which included things like eating at our favorite restaurants (don't judge, but the Pizza Planet in Holywood Studios is easily my favorite place) and riding our favorite rides.

The weather did seemed entirely against us here and there. It was Orlando in June, so the afternoon/evening rainstorm that felt like the gods crashing their anger down at the city were expected, but they still seemed to come out of nowhere. The first really bad one was at night in EPCOT, just before the evening Illuminations show started. We were on lake, in prime watching location and about fifteen minutes before it was supposed to start the rain started. It wasn't too bad, just simply falling at first. Then it started to come down more and we wound up under an umbrella near the water at a beer cart (good call right?). As we stood there the wind started and eventually it just started blowing water sideways. Finally when it was horrible we made a run for it, piling soaked with a bunch of English people into an all-day-chilled-in-air-conditioning store, which left us freezing. When the rain finally let up we waded home. (The only complaint I've ever had with EPCOT is the overwhelming ability for that place to flood. I've experienced it more than once.)

the boys
(champ in blue with the hat on the left, lil bro in gray on the right)

Of course there was the inevitable "really really bad moment." This year's for me I think was on the Tower of Terror. I've ridden this ride twice before, once with lil bro when we came just the two of us while he was working in the parks. I hated it then. I swore I'd never get on it again.

The next time I go is with Champ and it's the first time he's been to Disney since high school. Being the great girlfriend I was at the time, I went with him. I was terrified, but I went because, I was just remembering it worse than it was right?

No. Totally wrong.

Flash forward to this trip. The boys had been bugging me about going for weeks prior to leaving. I was against it, but the day of I sucked it up and didn't complain. Right up until the ride started. By the time we started falling I was crying (with lil bro and champ on either side of me hooting and hollering). They realized when I got off and were instantly very understanding. And they promised to never make me ride it again. I assume this will hold up for about another month.

The chief and The Chief

My favorite story though comes from our last night. We were having dinner at another favorite spot, the 50's Prime Time Cafe. It's fun because it's done up like 50's style kitchens, and all the staff acts like parents, lecturing moms and dads for not eating vegetables or wearing hats at the table and etc.

The waitress at the table next to ours looked really, really familiar. Like eerie familiar. I was asking Josh if he knew her, one of his friends, which she wasn't but he thought she looked familiar as well. After a few moments we realized that she'd been our waitress before. Years before. We stopped her and asked and she was like "oh yes probably." It took a little more discussion before we figured out why she stood out so. Her first night at work? Her last table on her first night? Was our table. She was still training back then. Talk about nuts. We told her and she sat with us for a bit, talking about it, and she did remember us. Though when she commented that she didn't recognize champ we pointed out that he was new to the family.

In honor of that she grabbed my dessert (an ooey gooey s'mores dish) and scooped up two helpful chunks handing each of us a spoon. Then in front of the restaurant she re-did our marriage vow of sorts, and had us feed each other. I normally hate these sort of public displays, but it was actually really fun. Maybe because champ was there.

Dad and Mom
Really love this one of mom and dad.

Thursday, October 9, 2008

LOs: October C2P

Here's my first batch of LOs with the October Commit2Paper kit. This was a pretty fall-esque kit, so a lot of my photos ended up being older shots of family and friends. I did have issues with all the orange, as it's not a favorite color, but it's good for you to push your boundries.

This, obviously, is mom and dad. The picture is a few years old (mom's hair is longer and more brown now, Dad looks the same). I think I'm going to give this one to them for their house (because otherwise she's going to want it).This one was just me playing around with the patterned papers and seeing what came out. Honestly I really like the way it came together.
This page was fun. The photo is the last first day of school photo mom took of us together. The small squares of patterned paper are covered in glossy accents to give them that epoxy feel.
Yes. I was a band nerd. That's my band in high school. And that's only half the band; it was a huge band. I really like the way it came out with the flashy glittery thickers.

Sunday, October 7, 2007

ScrapPink = lots of work done

I got a spot for one day at ScrapPink at the local store (actually about 20 min away) which was sweet because i actually got some good stuff done. Apologies for the pictures not being cropped perfectly. I was having issues with my computer running out of space and photoshop wouldn't save properly as a result.


This mosaic piece took an eon to actually do. I cut the 8x10 picture into little 1"x1" squares and pasted the whole thing together by hand. There are aparently like templates and such for this sort of thing, but I really wanted to try it out by hand. It doesn't help that i can't cut in a straight line (even with my cutter) or draw a straight line (even with my ruler). The notes along the side are the date and location. I've found that I like putting the dates and such in more obvious spaces.


This one I made for my cousin's kid Jake. He's the ardrenaline junkie in the family and spent most of the afternoon at the park jumping off swings and trying his best to go as fast as possible down the slides. The pictures are really sun drenched and as a result somewhat hard to see, but i love them anyway. To me they are more realistic. I loved these chipboard letters I got from HSN (seriously), the brand is 3Birds. I didn't want to take away from them by using a colored cardstock. I was pretty pleased with how the circle of embelishments and stamps came out. it gives it a pretty good feel overall.

When we got to Keagan's house, her mom told me about how excited she was about wearing her purple pants so i knew these pictures had to go on purple. I'm not much of a gold person so I literally had to scrounge to find some good gold things. The letters came from the store I was at for the crop (ChipChatter is the brand i believe). They come in squares and you can punch the letters out. They are super sparkely but don't get glitter all over you (which is nice).

I lifted a lot of the aspects of this LO from another one i saw (especially the edges of the patterned paper in the middle and the flowers). I love the way the flowers came out and just thought they def needed stems. The different ribbon and fibers make each one unique. I like the way the picture pops with the colors of everything. These blues and greens with brown are some of my new favorite colors to scrap with. Go figure right?

This page actually was really important to me because of what it means. I hadn't seen Scott in 20 years and it was possibly one of the most terrifying moments of my life to re-meet him. Thankfully we got along just fine and it turns out that we are more alike that i would have imagined. I've always felt somewhat out of place in my family in some regards (I've always had different talents and dreams). I'm simliar enough to my mom and dad, but I had yet to find someone as interested in mechanics and such. Scott though, is also an engineer and it would seem that it just doesn't come from nowhere. I really like this page even if the embellishments seem a little mismatched. To me they kind of represent us. Although I wasn't thinking that when i added them. I was just thinking that i liked them. The metal plate was great for a title block and the letter stickers i had been waititng to use for ages (i also have them in b&w--Sticko i think).

I've got a few more left to post. In particular my entry for the OLW word of this week (month? i dunno, bi weekly period), GONE. It came out tons better than I expected, but it is terribly simple. Oh well :)

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