Music

The thrill of Halloween

Thank you to Laurel for providing the Thriller photos.
Her daughter Sylvia threw an awesome
zombie party a while back.

We were the lucky neighbors

who opened our door to the zombie apocalypse.

Pretty dang freaky.

It’s no wonder somebody called the cops.

The other day, I was driving to the grocery store
with my 8 year old Bella.
Thriller came on the radio.
I turned it up and rocked out.

It was dark outside and we were waiting at the red light. Next to us was a big silver truck. In the passenger seat was a young man between 18 and 20. Driving looked to be his old man. They wore hunting garb. I wouldn’t have noticed them at all if it wasn’t for a silly exchange. They must have been listening to the same radio station because as I turned my monstrous arms towards my driver’s side window in a classic Thriller dance move, the boy stared straight at me and started cracking up. He turned to his old man and said something. The old man veered over and smiled as I sheepishly put my hands back on the wheel.

Bella was instantly mortified. “Man, mom, you even got his dad looking at you!” I laughed and kept enjoying the music, with just a little less subtle dance moves. It was two weeks from Halloween. It was dark outside. The moon was almost full. I had just one of my kids in the car, and Thriller was playing on the radio. What’s not to love? I just had to dance. And sing.

As my daughter’s face was bright red and I continually fought off her attempts at turning off the radio while simultaneously putting forth my subtle Thriller moves, I thought to myself, “These are the mothering moments that I love the most.” The ones that are so easily forgotten unless I write them down.

Yes, it’s moments like these that are the thrill of being a mother. The Thriller moments happen so few and far between. The moments when as a mother I know I am just one big grown-up kid and I am cool! All it took was a mortified 8 year old daughter and two grown hunters to seal the deal.

It’s just the Thriller…..(c’mon you know you want to sing along)

Happy Halloween y’all.
I hope yours is just as thrilling
as I am sure ours will be.
We started the day
with a before dawn wake up call
for costumes, make-up, hot cocoa, and orange eggs.

Don’t forget.

Today is your last day to leave a comment

for a chance to win my copy of the book

Lunch Wars.

Please eat all your Halloween candy in honor of Amy Kafala.

She will love it.

Mormons and Music

A few weeks ago we attended

Abigail’s informal

choir performance.

I was astounded!

For just a few weeks of school,

this 7th grade choir

sounded amazing.

I love how in this song

Abigail misses the first clap.

And seriously,
this middle school has enough talented pianists
to accompany all their choirs.
Astounding.
Check out this accompanist.
She’s so young
and
wonderful
and inspiring.
Watching her accompany the choir
made me emotional and proud
and she isn’t even my kid.

I am grateful that our girls have the opportunity to go to school in Utah.
The choral music programs here are remarkable.

As evidenced by the recent Mormon ties
in the popular show Sing off.

Everyone knows that there is no better choir
in the world than
The Mo Tab.

What about The Osmonds?

The Jets are my personal favorite Mormon musicians.

I recently read about Brandon Flowers,
also a Mormon musician.

There are so many amazing Mormon musicians that I could do this for months.
I haven’t even gotten into Mormon contemporary music.
I recently shared Hilary Weeks and Michael McLean.

The Hinckley brothers are personal friends.

Here is one of my new favorite singles
by a new favorite Mormon musician, Stephanie Mabey.
LG and I had the privilege of seeing her in concert recently.
I really liked this song.
Weird but catchy.
I dare you to watch this
and try not to find yourself singing
along with the lyrics
“If I were a zombie,
I’d never eat your brain.”

Do enjoy some less known Mormon music on me.

I have a thing for the smooth harmony
that only Polynesians can produce.
These Polynesians must be Mormon
because they are singing two of our most beloved hymns.

Here are 21,000 Mormons singing together. Powerful stuff.

Last but not least,
some crazy Mormon missionaries.
Their mothers probably died when watching.
It’s a miracle that these 19 year old boys don’t all kill themselves.

From the uttermost part of the earth have we heard songs, even glory to the righteous.
Isaiah 24:16.

One really has to think for a moment about the possibility of the Mormon church truly being inspired.
How else could it motivate so many to sing such glorious praises?
And we do it so well.
In my humble opinion.

Beautiful Heartbreak

I’ve experienced heartbreak.
More than one.
I remember vividly a day years ago when my friend Lindsey
walked in my front door
to find me completely debilitated,
inconsolable, defeated, and heartbroken.
I was on my couch crying uncontrollobly
while my three small children
were running around neglected.
When I told Lindsey what was going on
she cried too.

Earlier in the day, I had tried to go to the library
to escape the pain,
my toddler was a monster,
surely responding to her mom’s emotional state.
A mean old man confronted me
and told me I was a horrible mother.
Of course, that day I was a horrible mother.
It was all I could do not to shoot myself in the head.

He didn’t see all the other days.
The good days.
The days before the crippling pain.
But the other mom did.
She was usually by my side for weekly storytime.
She rushed out to my car and prayed for me
while I bawled some more at the wheel of my car.

You may think I am just some dramafied attention mongrel,
but you will never know.
The heartbreak is one I have shared with very few.
But it was awful. It is something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.

I have worked for years to overcome that pain.
The only thing that finally gave me solace
was turning it over to the Lord.
Over and over again.
I have become
an expert at handing it over.
So much so
that I have become a new person.
A better person.
A stronger person.
A happier person.
A more peaceful person.
And a person who seeks the Lord.

I have experienced a beautiful heartbreak.
More than one actually.
I have experienced a repeated heartbreak
until I gave it to my Lord
so many times that it
became beautiful.
Just because I shared it.
And He turned it into beauty.

So, I loved this song this morning.
Even if Hilary Weeks
stole it from this life-changing blog post.

I hope we can all be Lindsey’s
or praying moms,
but really sometimes we may
be moms who neglect our kids
or ornery old men who are mean and critical.
And hopefully other people will just remember
that we might be at the bottom,
or trying to hike our way out of the
beautiful heartbreak.

But even though I don’t have a video made about me
or I am not an inspirational speaker
or a famous blogger,
I can testify
with all the honesty of my heart
that God will bring us through
our worst pain.
He may even take us through it on purpose
so that we can have a new and beautiful vista
when we reach the top
where we have learned to
stay right by His side.

P.S. Help DeAnne not to experience the heartbreak of coming so close to first place as HeroMom of the year and not winning. Please go vote now. If you get someone else to vote, besides you, leave me a message and tell me who you got to vote and I will add you into a real special post coming up very soon.

Lyrics with Lessons

I recently really enjoyed this post by Cameron Smithson. Cameron used a great song to prove his point that if you want to be loved, you need to give love. You can love without being loved, but it sure does work better when it goes both ways.

Cameron was a Mormon missionary in Knoxville when we lived there and he came from my parts of California, so of course we fed him often. I’ve loved getting to know Elder Smithson as a person instead of just a missionary through his facebook and blog.

If you happen to cross paths with a Mormon missionary, I encourage you to ask them about their love for the Savior Jesus Christ. It may surprise you how close 19 year old kids can be to the Master himself.

In the LDS culture, we often play the do you know game. Well guess what I recently discovered about Cameron? His uncle is the wave at the bus guy I told you about a while back. Cameron’s aunt and mom left me some sweet comments after making the connection on facebook. Thanks guys.

When I told LG about Cameron’s kin all he said was, “Why is it no surprise that Smithson is related?” That was said in the highest complimentary way, of course. What cool people!!! It’s the California connection.

Anyhow, Cameron got me thinking about, how, I, like him, love songs with good lessons.

Lately this has been one of my fav’s.

I would like to dedicate this song to my husband
who is learning the other important life lesson about love.
You don’t have to earn love.
You don’t even have to be perfect to be loved.
In fact I think love is
almost received to a greater depth
when people are at their worst
because that’s when they need it the most.

LG, you are perfect to me.
Even at your worst.

Another one of my favorite lyrics is:

All you need is love.

I was really bummed yesterday
when President Monson
alluded to the fact
that it isn’t true
when talking about the
60’s hippy movement.
Bummer.

We love music around here.
Remember how I used Sarah McLaughlin’s lyrics
to make these adorable framed photographs in my dining room?

What are your favorite lyrics with lessons?

Your love is better than ice-cream

I am so excited to present my original idea.

It’s gonna put me in a higher realm

with my oh so crafty friends.

Trust me when I say you don’t want

to miss out on hitting the read more button.

My mom brought me these great frames from the thriftstore.

They are black with red matting.

They match my kitchen-aid.

Remember this post about me and red.

There was one problem with the frames,

they had safari animal prints.

They hung with the original prints

for the past 4 months

until I got sick of explaining my

fake love for Africa.

I took some photos a while back,

that I intended to use.

And I finally found the time

to edit them and put them to good use.

I present the best dining area framed photos

of all time.

I know you are all going to copy me.

Can’t wait to see what you come up with.

Lay off the ice-cream shots.

They are mine.

All mine.

As is LG’s favorite song.

Your love is better than ice-cream.

I love how the added text

combines the love LG and I have for each other

with the love we also have for and from our kids.

I would show you the photo of how cute they are on the wall,

but I am too lazy to get my camera back out.

I guess you’ll just have to come over and see it for yourself.

Definitely do come over.

It’s just too bad you weren’t here the first time Caroline

discovered the photos on the my wall

and bubbily exclaimed,

“Look mom, it’s my Caroline.”

Sometimes two year olds are too cute.

I am pretty sure God intended it to be that way,

so we don’t kill them when they go and sling dog poop

And LG, your love is better than ice-cream,

and chocolate molten cakes,

and Olive garden,

and Cafe Rio,

and rootbeer floats,

and chocolate covered strawberries

combined.

Waiting

I am waiting on a phone call

that will change my life.

I don’t know what it will be like to be a working mom

and I am nervous about it,

but I am also assured from mighty prayer

that God is watching over me

and will strengthen me.

I was just thinking about how much I hate waiting.

I’ve never been too good at waiting.

Give me my future NOW dangit.

Don’t make me wait.

And then instead of worrying about

whether or not the phone call is going to come,

I giggled some with Caroline,

and made her favorite treat.

A bottle of milk.

Yes, she is two and still gets a bottle.

Then I sat down to read some scripture online.

I need to do my dailies.

And what pops up?

LG’s pandora radio.

I guess he made it happen automatically.

And waiting became an all new experience,

as I listened intently to LG’s favorites.

I wondered how I can sing more like

Sarah McLachlan or Natalie Merchant.

And a broad smile conquers all

when I hear

Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

It is such a beautiful song.

And it played three times

while I was getting my root canal.

I imagined I was on the beach,

and made sure the dentist knew

that my husband hates that glitch in pandora.

Sometimes it plays the same songs over and over again.

The older I get, the better I get at waiting.

In fact, if you think about it,

all of the good things in my life

have happened while I was waiting on what’s next.

Waiting is the best place to be.

Be Still, My Soul

Be Still My Soul is one of my favorite hymns.

Ever since the day I got home from my mission.
I went to the temple because I didn’t know
what else to do with myself.
I threw up all over the lawn.
Leaving my missionary service behind,
made me sad, empty, scared, and confused
about my future.
I had given 18 months of my life to the Lord
and I had found myself by losing myself
and I found greater purpose in serving others.
I didn’t want to have to live my life for me.

I got inside the temple and sat down in the chapel.
On the organ played
Be Still My Soul.

Something told me to open up the hymn book
and read the lyrics.
Pretty sure it was The Spirit.

Be Still, my soul,
The Lord is on thy side;
with patience bear thy cross of grief or pain.

Leave to thy God to order and provide;
In every change He faithful will remain.

Be still, my soul:
Thy God doth undertake
To guide the future
as he has the past.

Wow. It was just what I needed to hear.
And beautifully communicated through music.

It was the first time I learned the lesson of commanding my spirit to be still.

Since then I have had much more practice.
One of my favorite verses of scripture is

Be Still, and know that I am God. -Psalms 46:10

I think of it often when I have to work at being still.

Go and listen to the history of the hymn.

Pretty cool.

History of Hymns: Episode 15 – “Be Still, My Soul”

My man is the master.

Besides his amazing patience with my blogging,
(somebody at his work was privvy to all the boob drama
and said how sorry he was – sorry LG – so sorry)
one thing I love about my husband is his love for music.

Not only can he quote every lyric written by any Beatle,
he can also tell you just about any artist
when asked to Name That Tune.
He’s amazing.

He plays the piano.
He plays the saxophone.
And he can play the harmonica.

Compared to this guy, LG doesn’t play at all,
but I don’t think he has any plans of going to Carnegie.

My hubby also plays a little google.

Check it out.

Come Come Ye Saints Part 1
Come Come Ye Saints Part 2

The ditties are totally compelling evidence
to support my claim that
LG is the master of random instruments.

He has a hollowed out gourd on the shelf that he can play.
In his first year of law school,
he tweeked up the Adam Sandler song
on a broken guitar with three strings.
It was called Property Law.
It was pretty entertaining.
Even for us legal dummies.
It’s recorded somewhere but
I think I humiliated the man enough for now.
Man, if you bloggers would have
just been a little nicer to the guy
you could have been the recipients of a great youtube video.
Sucks for you.

I don’t remember the song very well, but there were lines in there
about Mormons dividing up their stuff between all their wives
and who would get Sigfreid and Roy’s tigers.

Put something in front of him
and he turns it into a symphony.

Take me for instance.
back in ’95,
I was Mary Had a Little Lamb.

Because of my man,
I think by now
I have upgraded to
at least
Heart and Soul .

Can’t wait to see
what he will be playing on me
by the time we die.

I hope it’s his acclaimed
The Entertainer.

It’s my fav.

I love you LeGrand.
I know you know that.
I just want everyone else in the blogosphere to know it too.
Especially if they thought I was serious with the breastfeeding post.

Harry Potter can dance

I love surnames for boys’ names.
I once told my husband, “Awww, wouldn’t Potter be such a cute name for a boy?”
“Sure, Alice, if our last name wasn’t Gold.”

Potter Gold. Imagine it. If I wasn’t totally cruel, I think my sense of humor would have gone for it.
It wouldn’t have mattered anyway, everyone knows we only do girls around here.
And Mary was never on the Top 10 list.

I know, I know. My husband says I am going Potter crazy.
But just because he said that, I thought it would be a great time for one last Potter post.
It’s a Potter Gold at the moment.

Thanks to Kate, a dancer, in Washington for this amazing share with this great clip.
[Warning: she throws out a f bomb at the bottom of the post]

Even though I shared some other videos from the Tony’s,
I somehow missed this one.

I don’t know about you, but watching this made me emotional.

I think I am emotional for two reasons:

One – Harry Potter lives on. He will be alive in all of Danielle Radcliffe’s work. Probably not cool for Daniel, but so cool for those of us that love Harry.

Two – Not to steal Harry’s go to word magic, but there is something that is magical about combining the art forms of singing and dancing. I think that people who don’t like musicals don’t like the emotion on any level. There is nothing like a good musical number to bring out the best and worst inside of me.

Please LG, take me to Broadway before I die.

How is that for emotion?

Oh, and does anyone else think that the lady in red isn’t very good?
I am sure that I committing some kind of novice mistake by calling some Broadway great awful?
But really I thought she was awful.
Surely they can find better singers than this in NYC.

And a joke to make the post somewhat funny.

An older woman was sitting alone at a matinee of A CHORUS LINE, a The man next to her asked, “Is that seat empty” “Oh yes”, she answered, “my husband and I got these tickets months ago and he passed away.” “Oh”, said the man, “Couldn’t you find a friend or relative to come with you?” “Oh no”, said the woman, “they are all at the funeral”.

The Abbey Road Show

We had the great privilege of witnessing

the Abbey Road Show

in Provo

last Friday, July 1st.

Local Provo artists

covered the songs from

The Beatles’

Abbey Road.

And they were

A-MAZ-ING!!

I think it was on my facebook

on our way home from the concert

that I said that they were better than

the original.

And I meant it.

You know how we are

true Beatles fans

around here.

I would never say that

The Provosts

were better than the original

lightly.

Ryan Innes was my favorite.

Go and check him out.

It was the most amazing concert

I’ve ever attended.

And if the whole concert wasn’t good enough,

guess how it ended?

Me snuggled up to LG

watching 3 of our 4 kids

rock out

to our favorite

Hey Jude.

The song was awesome.

And then as if God was

putting his own stamp of approval

on the experience

(as it was an experience,

not just a concert)

fireworks started going off all around us.

I won’t lie.

I teared up.

Quite possibly,

this concert made my

life’s

Top 10

moments.

Seriously.

And guess what?

At the beginning of the concert,

before very many people had arrived.

I walked right past

that CJane

and I didn’t even say Hi.

Because she is too good for me.

And I am not giving her the time of day.

And I didn’t want to

sound desperate like the other girl

who was saying,

“I know you don’t know me,

but I have a blog,

and I follow yours religiously.”

CJane’s response:

“Oh, don’t we all know each other?”

Oh really then?

Why don’t you return my e-mails,

if you know me?

Huh? Huh?

Not all bloggers are created equal.

And LG says my best revenge

will be to get a greater

readership.

Which I will do.

And when her 5 minutes of fame are over

and mine are happening,

I will show her how to be nice,

and I will return her e-mail.

Oh yeah,

back to the

most amazing concert.

I will give it to CJane

about her rooftop series.

Best concert of all time.

Really.

Even if I am pretty sure that the

people who set up for the concert,

set up chairs and blankets in

any good viewing spot of the stage

early in the day

I won’t hold a grudge.

As we could hear the music,

and that is all that matters really.

We were maybe number 50-55 to arrive

and there was not a single place to

lay out our blankets

where we could actually see the stage.

boo hiss!

But really –

Mountains.

Rooftop.

Paper lanterns.

The NuSkin towers’ reflection

of the mountains.

Hoards of music lovers.

The Beatles.

Amazing musicians.

Perfect weather.

Families

dancing together

and

Fireworks.

What else could a girl

ever ask for?

Not much.

Except a returned e-mail.

Or five?

Enjoy the photos.

And if you have never listened

to Judicial LG’s version

of Hey Jude.

You must head over now.

So bad

and hilarious.

(You can forgo CJane’s write-up and just go here for the video of the Hey Jude experience)

Artist Cherie Call.

She was

the opening act.

There she is.
It’s the best picture I could get with my little camera.
Like I said,
even though we arrived plenty early,
the only spots left
were in the back.
Waaaaay back.

The kids loved the street vendors.

Caroline wanted a doll really bad.

Caroline can’t wait for the music to start.

She’s got her dance on.

Oh, and do you remember the people watching we did last time?
And I told you that LG and I have a hard time understanding up to date fashion?
Check out this guy’s butt.
I have no idea why he thinks that skinny jeans can be worn like a gangster.
We got shot after shot of his underwear throughout the night.
I wonder if he would even care
if he knew we were checking him out.