Christmas Eve

For Christmas Eve we invited several friends over since none of our relatives could make it to our home.

Because we already participated in several children's reenactments of the nativity, we went for something a little bit different, having the adults to improv performances of some of the more dramatic scenes that didn't make the written records.

So we saw brilliant performances of Joseph breaking the news to Mary that she was sleeping in a stable by KC and RP, Joseph responding to the news that Mary is pregnant by JK and AK, shepherds trying to convince Joseph that they should be allowed to see Mary and the baby by JP, AM, and SD, Joseph breaking the news to Mary that they were going down to Bethlehem by ML and CL, and finally a hillarious take on the 3 wiseman meeting with king herod by Frankie, Goldie, and Murray.

Baby Quilts

Bow Tie Baby Quilt

Bright Garden Baby Quilt(The back side is for signatures and advice.)

I (AM) been busy quilting. I made a quilt for a very good Filipina friend and a baby quilt for a friend in our ward.

Biopsy

As our faithful blog readers know, AM has had kidney disease since her pregnancy with EM. At her past couple of visits, her proteinuria has finally dropped to zero (a good sign as normally your kidney's should filter protein and not allow it to pass into the urine) but the other major measure of kidney function, serum creatinine levels, were significantly higher than normal. (They had previously been normal.) So her kidney specialist has finally decided it is time to perform a kidney biopsy to determine what exactly is going on so that appropriate measures can be taken.

She is scheduled to go for the biopsy just before the end of the month. Anyone who knows AM well knows she gets nervous about even simple medical procedures like drawing blood, so you can imagine that she is extremely nervous about this. From what we are told, a kidney biopsy is less painful and invasive of a procedure than getting an epidural which she has done three times for childbirth. Nevertheless, as a precautionary measure, she will need to stay in the hospital overnight and then avoid any heavy work for two weeks. There is a very small, but not zero, risk of the biopsy causing complete kidney failure.

MidState Honor Band tryouts

JP tried out for the Middle Tennessee State Honor Band again this Saturday. As our faithful blog readers will remember, last year as a 7th grader he made the 7th and 8th grade honor band. There are two higher level band honors available to 7-9th graders, the Silver and Gold Bands. Very few 7th graders make it to the Silver or Gold level, and there are generally a lot more 9th graders on the Gold band than 8th graders.

The tryout consists of two sessions scored by different sets of judges. In both sessions, the judges are behind a screen so that they can not see who the student is and the performance scores are simply placed next to a student's entry number. The first session requires the student to play two prepared pieces, which are the same for all 167 or so students that tried out for the Bb clarinet positions. At the second session, the student is asked to play 2 scales (in this case it was the G and Eb scales)and their chromatic scale. Then they are asked to play from sight reading 1 to 3 pieces of music. Basically, if the judges consider that the student showed sufficient skill on the first piece, they ask the student to play the second piece. If they do well enough on the second piece, they ask for the third piece. For reference, during last year's tryout, JP was asked to play the 2nd piece, but not the third. This year, he knew he was doing even better because he was asked to play the third piece. He also felt that his work during his lessons had paid off in better overall performance both of his prepared piece and scales. The final ranking and seating in the bands is determined by the scores from both sessions and are posted by that night.

JP was quite anxious all afternoon to find out if he had made any of the honor bands. Based on being asked to play 3 pieces he felt his chances of making the Silver band were pretty good. Finally around 8 pm the lists were posted on the web. We went to the Bb clarinets (the main kind of clarinet used in symphonies, but there are also a small number of Eb bass, and contra clarinets) and started scrolling down the list. We didn't get too far down the list before we found his name listed for the Gold band! He was so excited!

Teddy Bear Picnic

EM wanted to celebrate her birthday with a build-a-bear party. So she invited some of her friends to join her.

O Tannenbaum!

Christmas Tree hunting

Found the right one and loaded

Decorating the Christmas tree


A Beautiful Christmas Tree

Thanksgiving and Indianapolis

Nowadays, like the New Year's Bowl season, all holidays have been extended to include Pre-holiday and post-holiday events.

So for us Thanksgiving Day festivals began with a Thanksgiving Eve pie night over at some friends of my sister RS. There were a wide selection of pies available, but surprisingly, no pumpkin pie. (Perhaps this is because at the same event last year, over half the pies were pumpkin!). Of course AMD had made my favorite, blueberry pie, but there were other excellent entries as well. Part of pie night was an impromptu concert by JP and one of my sister's friends who was also a clarinetist.



Thanksgiving Day dawned cold, but not as cold as the previous week, brightening the prospect for a good Turkey Bowl. As is well documented in one of the books I read last year, "Mayflower", the original Thanksgiving festival included a series of games. Although the details were vague, as far as I could tell the most important of these games was one where 11 native tribesman squared off against 11 settlers using a stuffed turkey as a ball. Thus in honor of this tradition, no Thanksgiving Day would be complete without a game of touch football. For the folks in Indy, this first involved a game of ultimate frisbee, where our side was roundly defeated.


However, when the game switched to our traditional game, the scoring went much more in our favor. (Here we could use complex offensive schemes to neutralize our opponents speed and quickness.) However, JP switched to the other side, and twice managed to get wide open from a defender twice his size and slightly faster (don't ask me how!) and scored two key touchdowns.

Meanwhile, AMD was back at the ranch preparing a fabulous dinner with the able assistance of my sister. So around 3 pm, we all dug in and feasted.

The evening brought opportunities to play the European version of the Train Game and to watch the Titans demolish the Lions.


The following morning/afternoon, we settled on a hike at Eagle Creek park to walk off our previous day's gluttony. We found that skipping rocks on the frozen parts of the lake made a spectacular sound, which unfortunately we were unable to record for your amusement. We had intended to do geo-caching along the hike, but RS2's GPS unit was on the fritz. We attempted to use our car's GPS for this purpose, but while we found that we could get our GPS to display coordinates in a particular information screen, it wouldn't update in real time. Additionally it took us awhile to realize that the its decimal system was different than the decimal system that the Geocache site and that most hand-held GPS use, so that we would have to do the math to convert each time. So we failed to find a single geo-cache.

Friday night brought the Pacers game, Saturday morning brought a game of Exactica, won by me! (for the first time I actually bid correctly every single round) and then a wild game of true colors, where we discovered interesting nuances in our perceptions of each other.

Finally, it was time to head back home. The trip was uneventful and we made it in time for a final post-Thanksgiving pie night to round out the festivities.

[I hope to post pictures of all this, if I can discover where they are!]