Dear Family,
I can't turn that calendar page until I document our happenings in July. As usual, I am in awe at how fast a month can pass by. And July is always one of my favorites so I hate to see it fly so fast. Here are some highlights.
The month started with the glorious 4th! Nick and Stef were in town and we headed over to see our stake float in the Murray Parade. I think little Bret loves parades as much as his grandma and we had a great time sitting on the curb gathering candy. We loved seeing Max in the parade, too. More about the float later.
The big event in July (especially as far as expenses are concerned!!) was the Bassett Reunion. I'm so glad we went a few days early with Janey, Rosey and Max to explore Washington DC and New York. I kept thinking how glad I was to know that Blaine and Nick got to see most of those sites with Curt after their graduations, because this was a great place to be. It made me wish we would have taken a big family trip there while you were all younger (maybe we should have done that instead of Disneyworld) Anyway, we loved everything about it. We could have spent two weeks in DC instead of two days. We also loved seeing the home Sid and Steph lived in in New Jersey and then having Sid take us on a whirlwind tour of NYC. And the 6 days at the reunion on Seneca Lake we great. We went to church history sites and even hit Niagra Falls one day.
A couple days after we came home from the reunion I was in charge of a Primary Activity. I called it a neighborhood parade and I was delighted how many kids came out. All the cute little girls on my circle (none of whom come to primary!) came and that made me happy. The fulltime missionaries even joined in the fun.
Rosey went to Bryce Canyon that weekend and ran a 1/2 marathon with Amber and other Turleys. Maybe she can give us the full report on that.
On July 21 we took our new neighbors, the Bowlings, to the Oquirrh Temple Openhouse. Their mother was in town from Georgia so the timing was good. They seemed to enjoy it and had some good questions. They didn't seem to feel pressure and we were just happy they were willing to learn about our beliefs.
On the 22nd I turned 51! It was great to turn 50 and 51 is even better. There happened to be a Winder cousins luncheon at the pool so that was fun. Then Rosey came for dinner and the 5 of us made yummy steak-k-bobs complete with zuchinni from the garden. Then we invited Yorg, Lindseys, Rog and Karen, g/mas (only g/ma Winder came) over for homemade ice cream. It was just vanilla but it was very tasty. I got some practical gifts and I appreciate them all but I have to mention how much I love my new weeding tool from Janey. It works great.
Close after my birthday is Pioneer Day. Ever since grandpa Winder died I can't call it my favorite holiday because I miss him soooo much on that day, but I surely do enjoy the 24th. Nick and Stef were in town again so that made the day fun. Rosey spent the night at the parade. Nancy and I went downtown with Gwen and Caroline the day before to find a spot and we found a great one between 5th and 6th South. During the parade we were in shade most of the time. The highlight of the parade was entry #34 - "Catch the Vision of Dance" by the Jordan North Stake. So many of the floats are fancy and beautiful and have won awards, but they don't have live people on them. This one had music and people smiling and dancing and it was a wonder that it didn't win all the awards. Max and Katherine looked great, so energetic. They danced along side of the float. The kids on the float looked great. Max has put so many hours of practice into this. He and Katherine were partners and spent 4-6 hours each day earlier in the week at the South Town Expo Center dancing on the float at the parade preview. After all the practice you know he is an expert at Swing Dancing. This float has been a big deal for all of us. The rest of the 24th was fun with swimming at the pool and a b-b-q at the pool. Pioneer Day is always a highlight for me.
Speaking of highlights, for the first time in my 51 years of life I have colored my hair. Just yesterday I had a "beauty consultation" with my lovely hairdresser Gwen, and her lovely mother, Nancy, and after giving my all the options to cover the gray, we went for it! She mixed up a brown cup and a blue cup. Blue is for blond. Brown is for brown. She started putting little foil wraps in my head, mostly on top. Probably many of you are saying "duh" because you have done this all your life. But it was new to me. Then she trimmed it, styled it and sent me home. Max gave it a big thumbs up, so did Janey. Dad kindly said he liked it but it is one of those times when I wish he had a word bubble over his head so I knew what he was thinking. It is actually very suble so you could see me and not even notice.
I have to go. Perhaps the biggest highlight is knowing that Blaine and Kristi and family are coming soon. We can't wait!!! Gwen just called me (they got on the road at noon today) and said "grandma, we are coming to Utah!!!!" I can't believe it.
I love you all, really got to go.
Love, Mom
Friday, July 31, 2009
Saturday, July 25, 2009
That was Awesome! (Janey)
Kris (at least that is who I am guessing posted the snapshots) that was so cute! I am so excited to get to see all your kids grow up and not just have to hear about it! I am guessing that lunch date with dad will happen...I got a huge kick out of that one! Thanks for sharing. I'll try to write a post soon.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Life Snapshot: Gwen
Age: 4 years 9 monthsWeight: good night, I can barely carry her...I bet about 40 lbs
Hair color: brown (though she still thinks it is yellow)
Eye color: pretty honey brown
What I'm in to: playing pretend be it ponies or princesses or anything, art projects! She loves to pull out tape, scissors, pens, anything and make creative stuff, dress ups, listening to music and dancing, being with dad, swimming with no floaties! playing with friends, watching shows, playing chase and tickling
What I am not in to: playing with boys, giving kisses to mom, playing with Bentley ( she plays with him but he is always the monster, the bad guy, the tiger, all things bad!), washing hair
Skills: the best helper, reading and writing and drawing, addition and some subtraction and multiplication
What's on her mind? Moving to Utah and going to lunch with Grandpa Bassett (hope that can happen some time because boy is she ever excited about it!)
Growing up way way too fast.
Life Snapshot: Bentley
Age: 22 monthsWeight: a ton. Well, not exactly sure, but probably 30 lbs
Eyes: greenish brown
hair: thin and wispy and sticks straight up in the back, light brown
hobbies: chasing Gwen, giving Ivy loves, pulling all the videos off the shelf and out of their cases, swimming (totally not afraid to put his face in the water!), dancing, playing cars
skills: naming body parts, naming animal sounds, feeding himself, throwing things away or putting them away when asked, helping Ivy with pacifiers, getting his own diapers and wipes when asked.
vocab: "Don't want to" "let go a me" "NOTE" (translation: DON'T), "hullllllllllllllllp me" "er' go" (translation: here you go), "thank you" (people always say he is the most polite little guy though he absolutely refuses to say please!), he calls Gwen "sister" or "nen" and Ivy "sissy" or " why"and lots of other things. He'll copy almost anything you say now.
What I'm in to: eating snacks (apparently after all the other kids in nursery go back to playing he eats their leftover snacks), CARS!, pretending to be animals, ripping books, playing with Gwen
Life Snapshot: Ivy
Age: 6 monthsWeight: 12 lbs 4 oz (that's like the 1st percentile!)
Hobbies: smiling, squealing in an unnaturally high pitch, cat napping, practicing sitting up
Skills: can pull blanket off of face, sleeps through the night, reaching out and grabbing things
Things I am in to: sleeping on my side, pacifiers, being thrown in the air, watching Ben and Gwen, getting tickled, rice cereal, wearing big bows and flowers on her head.
Eye color: very blue
Hair color: none, well some and it's debatable whether it is red or just strawberry blonde
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Last Day In Texas
Well, since I haven't written in awhile (for that matter--has anyone written in awhile??), and since I'm trying to kill time waiting for the sprinklers to finish their rounds, and since I already told Max about this and figured it's time to share with the rest of the family, and since I wanted to follow up with Max about something but didn't have his email address handy...I figured I'd take a moment and write.
First of all--how was the reunion? Awesome I'm sure. I talked to Mom and Max both on the phone today and didn't hear many details yet. Hopefully all of you will have posts full of memories up soon and we can enjoy vicariously through you... but actually that is not the main topic I wanted to write about.
Most of you know I've been working on my songwriting again and recording music since Christmas when I got some new software and other equipment shortly after. But what you may not know is that I now have REAL FANS all over the United States and all over the world--from Beverly Hills to New Berlin (WI), from Canada to Japan to the Phillipines--people are loving my music!
Okay, I pretty much just listed the location where every single one of my fans live--I only have 8 so far--but still, it's pretty cool that they're out there, huh? And with Max adding himself today and hopefully some of the rest of you soon--I'll soon be charging into those double digits! :)
Where do these fans come from, you ask? Well, there's this cool sight called Jango. It's free Internet radio a lot like Pandora, for those of you who use that, except it's much more social. You can see other people who are listening to similar music as you and talk to them and listen to their homemade stations as you work on programming yours how you like it, etc. etc. Very cool site actually, but that's not how I got into it. The coolest thing about Jango is that they will play music for new up-and-coming artists. As an artist, there are several reasonably priced packages that you can buy yourself airplay to real people alongside similar bands. They then can give you feedback--either saying they like the song and maybe adding a comment or--if you're lucky--adding themselves as a fan. Perhaps the best thing is that there's only positive feedback (unlike that garageband.com that Nick and Clay and I got into that shot my confidence from age 17 to age 25. Remember that, Nick?)--they can't give a thumbs down and they can't even comment until after they've said they like it. So I saw it as a very cool way to dip my toe in and see if any real people out there actually like my music. Granted--I don't really consider myself an artist. I'm learning and getting better but I recognize that the production of my recordings is less than full-grade master quality. I'm certainly not the best singer (or the best piano player, although I can fake that in software...). But I am proud of my songs. So I thought I'd put a few out there to see if anyone would dig them. For $30 I bought a thousand plays and believe it or not, I actually found a handful of "fans" and an even bigger group of people (almost 50 so far) who at least marked that they "like" the song and a few nice comments. Sure, it's a very small percentage of the people who heard it, but on the other hand, to get real feedback like this for only 30 bucks? Well, the Internet is awesome! Not only do I see who likes the music but I can see where they are from what sex and age they are, what other music they like, etc. etc. (It turns out I'm very popular with girls under 18 in Japan...who'd have thought? :)
Anyway, it's been a fun thing I've been playing with a bit over the last couple weeks. I wanted to give a little time to just having strangers on there so that I could see what people really thought who had no reason to try to boost my confidence, but now that I've told Max I figured it would be fun to let the whole family know. Hopefully I'll get a flood of new likes and fans in the next few days! (Or at least one or two :)
jango.com
Search for the artist "Last Day In Texas"
Have fun and let me know what you think!
P.S. Max discovered that all of your favorite song "Play With You" was somehow uploaded wrong and is actually "Last Day". I can't take a song down from my control panel but I figured out who to email to help me get this fixed so look for that song to get fixed in the next day or two hopefully. Also I'm putting up a new picture soon that should look at little more stylish and artistic I hope. At least four of my other songs are up there now...enjoy!
First of all--how was the reunion? Awesome I'm sure. I talked to Mom and Max both on the phone today and didn't hear many details yet. Hopefully all of you will have posts full of memories up soon and we can enjoy vicariously through you... but actually that is not the main topic I wanted to write about.
Most of you know I've been working on my songwriting again and recording music since Christmas when I got some new software and other equipment shortly after. But what you may not know is that I now have REAL FANS all over the United States and all over the world--from Beverly Hills to New Berlin (WI), from Canada to Japan to the Phillipines--people are loving my music!
Okay, I pretty much just listed the location where every single one of my fans live--I only have 8 so far--but still, it's pretty cool that they're out there, huh? And with Max adding himself today and hopefully some of the rest of you soon--I'll soon be charging into those double digits! :)
Where do these fans come from, you ask? Well, there's this cool sight called Jango. It's free Internet radio a lot like Pandora, for those of you who use that, except it's much more social. You can see other people who are listening to similar music as you and talk to them and listen to their homemade stations as you work on programming yours how you like it, etc. etc. Very cool site actually, but that's not how I got into it. The coolest thing about Jango is that they will play music for new up-and-coming artists. As an artist, there are several reasonably priced packages that you can buy yourself airplay to real people alongside similar bands. They then can give you feedback--either saying they like the song and maybe adding a comment or--if you're lucky--adding themselves as a fan. Perhaps the best thing is that there's only positive feedback (unlike that garageband.com that Nick and Clay and I got into that shot my confidence from age 17 to age 25. Remember that, Nick?)--they can't give a thumbs down and they can't even comment until after they've said they like it. So I saw it as a very cool way to dip my toe in and see if any real people out there actually like my music. Granted--I don't really consider myself an artist. I'm learning and getting better but I recognize that the production of my recordings is less than full-grade master quality. I'm certainly not the best singer (or the best piano player, although I can fake that in software...). But I am proud of my songs. So I thought I'd put a few out there to see if anyone would dig them. For $30 I bought a thousand plays and believe it or not, I actually found a handful of "fans" and an even bigger group of people (almost 50 so far) who at least marked that they "like" the song and a few nice comments. Sure, it's a very small percentage of the people who heard it, but on the other hand, to get real feedback like this for only 30 bucks? Well, the Internet is awesome! Not only do I see who likes the music but I can see where they are from what sex and age they are, what other music they like, etc. etc. (It turns out I'm very popular with girls under 18 in Japan...who'd have thought? :)
Anyway, it's been a fun thing I've been playing with a bit over the last couple weeks. I wanted to give a little time to just having strangers on there so that I could see what people really thought who had no reason to try to boost my confidence, but now that I've told Max I figured it would be fun to let the whole family know. Hopefully I'll get a flood of new likes and fans in the next few days! (Or at least one or two :)
jango.com
Search for the artist "Last Day In Texas"
Have fun and let me know what you think!
P.S. Max discovered that all of your favorite song "Play With You" was somehow uploaded wrong and is actually "Last Day". I can't take a song down from my control panel but I figured out who to email to help me get this fixed so look for that song to get fixed in the next day or two hopefully. Also I'm putting up a new picture soon that should look at little more stylish and artistic I hope. At least four of my other songs are up there now...enjoy!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)