George's Mustache

Meet George, one of my many nephews out here in Branson. He is 3 years old and so adorable. This was filmed after our night show tonight. He was telling us about his mustache and shaving. When he refers to James...that is our new brother-in-law. Ya gotta love kids. =)

Oh...I had about 5 little kids behind me making comments throughout the entire thing. His Mom, Mara, is the other voice you hear. She's the one that asks him to show us his push-ups.

Finally starting our 2011 Garden

We have finally started working on our garden. YAY! This year we are changing a few things around....again. It's always fun to try a few new things. If you look closely at the picture at the top, you can see some wire arches. We used cattle panels for that. We decided to hold them in place by using stakes as opposed to concreting them in place, just in case we change our minds later. The plan is to plant Sugar Snap Peas and Snow peas next to the trellis until things heat up in the summer. When those start to die back I am going to replace them with the Chinese Red Long Beans that I planted last year, and a green Asparagus Bean that is also a long bean. I'm hoping that the arched trellis will work because it will look better than the trellis that we had leaning against the house.

As for the 3 beds next to the trellis, I will number them starting from right to left...the first being the structure.

1. Tomatoes
The plan is to remove the chicken wire from the structure. We initially put that on there to keep out any animals. Well, the only critters that seem to steal the tomatoes are the birds and the squirrels. Seeing as they can still get in through the top....no need for the chicken wire. We are also going to remove the structure itself, except for the vertical posts; those are concreted in.
We purchased some flexible wire to make cages. The cages will be 5' tall and around 2.5' in diameter. I am hoping to start the seedlings soon. As for the types of tomatoes, I finally narrowed it down to 8 varieties: Aunt Ruby's German Green, Kellogg's Breakfast, Ozark Pink, Black Cherry, Old Italian, Riesentraube, White Tomesol and Yellow Mortgage Lifter.

2. Spinach, Leeks, Celery and Daikon Radish
Because our beds are all 8' x 12' we are splitting this one in half. It's always better to not stomp on the soil so....we are going to prevent that this year. We still need to go to Home Depot to pick out a simple stone to make a path down the middle of the box, lengthwise. Half of the bed will have Spinach: Giant Noble and Bloomsdale Longstanding. The other half will have the Leeks, Celery and Daikon. Of course, after I had already ordered the celery, I read about the planting instructions. The first article that I read stated that homegrown celery doesn't taste much different from store-bought and it is really hard to grow. They also said that most gardeners just plant it as a challenge. Looovely. JUST what I wanted. Arggg

3. Squash
We are going to plant Butternut Rogosa and Blue Hubbard Squash. I'm hoping that we can keep them nice and healthy and that the vines and fruit will take over the box. The other hope it that we won't have any problem with borers as per usual.

On our deck we have 2 big planters. I will be planting Carbon Tomatoes in one and the other will have herbs again.

Our watermelon crop will be limited to 3 types this year. We planted quite a few last year but there were definite favorites as far as flavor. I have so many types of watermelon seeds in my collection so only doing 3 is killing me. We both love the Crimson Sweet and the Missouri Heirloom Yellow Flesh. This Year we will be trying the Cream of Saskatchewan. It has a cream colored flesh! How cool is that? Hopefully it will taste yummy!

Normally we try planting cantaloupes or cucumbers next to the melons. This year we will be doing a Long of Naples Squash plant.

There are 2 other types of squash that I want to plant: Lebanese White Bush Marrow and Benning's Green Tint Scallop. I am trying to decide between 2 locations. One is where we planted the radishes last year and the other is the planter that is below the watermelons. I'll let you know what we decide.

I realize I keep interchanging "we" and "I" as I type this. It's a little hard to keep track of. Adam is the manual labor for the most part. I try to help when I can but hey, I'm not as strong and can't last as long. I do love planting the seeds though so I usually do that. =)

Here are a few pictures of our nephews helping us clean out the garden. My allergies started attacking me that night.

Getting rid of the tomato vines that I removed from the structure.

The Netbook Story comes to an end

Well, it's finally over. The Netbook is gone. Here is what has transpired as of January.

A few weeks later my Netbook, once again, had to be brought in. All of a sudden it would not power up. I believe it was my 5th time using it since I had gotten it back from Best Buy.

When I got to the Geek Squad desk I was greeted and asked how things were going with the Netbook. By this point most of the Geek Squad recognized me from my previous trips. They said that they thought it was the motherboard and had to send it in to be fixed.

A week or so later I got a call saying that they would do a "junk-out"....very telling phrase, "junk-out". Yes, you did sell me a piece of junk. They told me that I could get another Netbook that was the same cost. Of course, they don't normally carry that model so....I was told I could trade it for something comparable. I asked if I would have to pay anything additional since I had only used it a whopping 5 times since Black Friday because it has been in their possession most of the time. I was assured that I wouldn't have to pay as long as it was basically the same model. I was told to wait for the salesman so I did....for literally 35 minutes. Apparently the only guy in the computer department was also working the customer service desk. Thank goodness for Netflix on my iPhone. Woot! He showed me three models that I could choose from and helped me decide. We got to the paperwork part and then I was told that I owed $109. Ummm, huh? I thought I wouldn't have to pay anything additional. Sorry, not paying around $300 for a Netbook when I already have a laptop, desktop and iPhone. I was ok spending $170 + tax but not another $109 for something that I really didn't need. It was more of a convenience so...I got store credit instead.

With that credit I decided to get a Kindle to add to my eBook reader collection. I still have credit left to spend but I think I'll just hang on to it for now.

Pictures of our frozen/defrosting pond

Here are a few pictures that we took of our pond while it was frozen and also when it was slowly defrosting. Some of the pictures were taken with our phones so please excuse the quality.
It was kind of neat watching the pond defrost because the icy layer would remain intact, almost suspended in air, while the water level lowered beneath.
If you look closely you can see one of our fish.

My latest eReader Dilemna

Before I you proceed, if you haven't read my blogs about my eReader experience, please read Part 1 and Part 2.

OK, so now that you are all caught up, you know that I now own a Nook. For the most part I have loved it. I have even re-purchased books, for the 3rd time, for my Nook. I have a few books that I like to read repeatedly and I HAD to have them at my disposal. I definitely like the Nook the best out of the readers that I have owned. I like the fact that I can purchase things via wi-fi and I also like the physical look of the reader. I wasn't too keen on all of the dials and buttons on the Sony, or the weight and shine of the metal. It is a tad heavier than the Bookeen but not by much. It is very easy to use and I do like the touch screen on the bottom. I will admit that I haven't really played around with the web or games feature that much because I have my iPhone for that.

I am running across one major issue at the moment. At the time of my purchase, the books that I knew that I wanted to purchase were available through Barnes & Noble. Since then I have tried to purchase a few random books or new releases and I can only find them on Amazon. *sigh Perhaps I should have gotten a Kindle. The main thing that held me back from the Kindle was the look of it and the fact that the Nook enabled me to borrow and loan books to other Nook owners. Apparently the new Kindle is now implementing the Loaning feature. Hmmmmm
I just looked at the details of the loaning and I guess you can only lend a book out one time. That's kind of stupid in my opinion.

The questions that I have now are:
1. Can I get past the buttons on the Kindle? I don't really like the look of them.
2. Can I change the format of all the books I have purchased on my Nook so that they will be available on the Kindle? Will I need to re-purchase these books yet again?
3. Should I just keep the Nook because of its ability to borrow eBooks from public libraries and still purchase a Kindle? or should I sell my Nook and use that money to buy a Kindle?

The only other option would be to purchase the books from Amazon and somehow find a way to change the format so that I can read it on my Nook.

Any opinions or wards of advice are welcome.

The Amazing Dudu Fisher

We got a great surprise tonight at our show.....Dudu Fisher was in our audience! For those of you who aren't familiar with his name, he is an AMAZING singer and performer. He is most known for playing Jean Valjean ( Les Miserables) on Broadway. You can read about him on Wikipedia or visit his website to learn more about him. He also has albums on iTunes...I love the Broadway one.

I didn't know that he was in our audience until intermission, when Sarah came back to our dressing room and told us. As soon as I heard the news I have to admit that I was thrilled and then immediately nervous and suddenly dreading our Broadway section of our show. I have a short solo in one of the Broadway Medleys. The song that I sing? On My Own. ACK! Of course it has to be a song that he has heard a gazillion times while on stage in Israel, New York and London...sung by amazingly talented women. I'm using the word "amazing" a lot aren't I?
Thankfully I didn't mess up on the lyrics or trip on the stage. Yay!

After the show I was coming off the stage and walking towards where he was sitting so that I could meet him. Some of the brothers had already met him during intermission. Before I reached him he smiled and asked,"Why didn't you sing more of the song?" To which I answered,"Yeah right! I was nervous enough as it was!" I told him how I was kinda going,"No....no no no no no no" when I realized I was going to be singing that song in front of him. In case you haven't picked up on it yet...I still get nervous on stage at times.

He was fun to talk with. He commented on the show, the kids' talents, and asked about the sound and monitors because he noticed we didn't have in-ear monitors. Man, would we love to have those! We told him about the rehearsals and yes, the kids are all homeschooled. Yep, we have incredibly talented kids in our family. =)

Then he told us about how he started as a cantor in Israel, singing liturgical songs and went from there to doing Les Miserables. He said that the performance was in Hebrew. How cool is that? I would love to hear a recording of that. A producer ( I think it was a producer) from New York caught one of his shows and asked him to perform on Broadway and the rest is history. I believe he said he was in London in 1996. I missed it by 5 years. I saw it there in 1991 when I was on a trip with my mom.

If you haven't heard him sing, I encourage you to listen to some of his music. I love how expressive he is when singing the part of Jean Valjean.

Look what I won

A few weeks ago I entered to win Season 1 of the Vampire Diaries on DVD and actually won! WAHOOO

The contest was put on by TuningIntoSciFiTv.com. If you like watching Sci-Fi genre shows and/or movies, they have a great podcast. They discuss current shows that are on the air, Syfy channel's Saturday night B movies, and much much more. Right now they are also doing a countdown of the Top 100 Genre shows of all time. I've found a few new shows to watch by listening to the podcast, as well as the countdown. They also have a Discussion Forum that covers shows from the past and present that's also fun to participate it.

My first official sled ride

I finally went sledding for the first time in my life. Yes, we attempted to sled last year but really....that didn't count because: 1) It wasn't on an actual sled and 2) We didn't really get that far down the hill. Apparently homemade sleds don't work as well.

We have had a lot of snow in the past month this year. Adam and a few members of our family members went out of town and were supposed to get back on Wednesday of last week...they didn't get back until Friday. They were stuck for two nights on the road because the Tour Bus was basically snowed in. Apparently the bus doesn't like the cold weather either....at least the battery and the brake system on the bus don't. It took a little while for someone to come out and help them because of the weather and the numerous calls that they were getting.

The Midwest got pummeled with two storms in a row. In Branson, we got a nice few inches of icy rain before the snow came in. The two storms accumulated to 18" in a few parts of our yard. Needless to say, I didn't leave my house for about a week. I wanted to go sledding but wanted to wait for Adam to get into town so that we could take pictures.

The sleds that I ordered from Amazon arrived the day before this last storm. We got another 6 inches this time and we still had snow on the ground from the previous storms so.....plenty of snow to sled. YAY!



Oh, sidenote: There's nothing like climbing a hill several times in the snow, to show you how out of shape you are. When I fall on my face at the end while trying to get up....there was a big ol' rock that was hidden by the snow. DOH!

This is what it looked like the day that we went sledding. Adam had the snow thrower out and was doing our driveway, as well as a few neighbors. It was FUH-REEZING outside.
Our kitties decided to use the sleds as beds until we used them. The green one is mine and the blue one is Adam's. The red one is the extra one for friends to use. I'm thinking about somehow decorating it and making it a Liquigas Sled...seeing as it's already got the Green on it. =)