Piano Recital

Hiyo, guest blogger is back.  Tai tai Tracey (that means "wife" in Chinese, literally it means "too, too" or "excessive, excessive"-- you can tell Chinese was invented by men) had a long, busy day helping 4 children and their friends make sugar cookies all afternoon, so she started this post, couldn't get the pictures to upload, told me to make it work and went to bed.  So there you go.   For today's entry, titled "Piano Recital," we'll play a new game-- "Old fashioned slide show in the living room, narrated by Dad."

OK, imagine the whirr of the fan, the lights darken and the bulb comes on... the corded remote control button is pressed, and:

KA-KLICK!

"Now here's Heidi sitting at the piano bench.  We had a piano bench like that when I was a kid.  It broke when Aunt Wanda tripped over it one year and Uncle Vernon tried to fix it but he could never fix a dang thing.  Anyway, as I recall Heidi played some Christmas songs like "Joy to the World."  She did pretty good.  Hmmm... yeah, this must have been at Christmastime because you can clearly see a decorated Christmas tree next to the piano.  Moving on..."

KA-KLICK!

"OK, now, here's Meagan at the piano.  I'm pretty sure she played a Christmas song too.  I think it was that one that does dum-da-da-dum, dum-da-da-dum, dum-da-da-dum, dum-da-da-dum... can't think of the name..."

(everyone else) "CAROL OF THE BELLS!"

"...right, Carol of the Bells.  That's a pretty good song.  I like it when they play it on the radio... with bells and all... reminds me of the church bells they had in the tabernacle downtown when I was a kid.  Aunt Wanda probably broke those too..."

"MOVING ON..."

KA-KLICK!

"OK, here's Emma.  I think she was 8 when we took this picture.  It may even have been the same day she got baptized.  Oh yeah, it's definitely Christmas time.  You can see the little Santa decoration on the left side of the picture.  Anyway, Emma must have played a duet with the teacher.  Can't think why else she'd be sitting next to her at a recital.  I think it was the "Up on the Rooftop.."

"HOUSETOP"

"..Housetop click click click song.  She did a good job.  Hmm, let's see... not much else to say about this one..."

KA-KLICK!

"OK, now here she is doing a song without the teacher.  That's good, you can see her better now .  I don't think this one was a Christmas song.  Oh look, you get a much better view of the little Santa decoration in this shot.  I think it's sitting on aspeaker.  There's a TV further left there but I didn't really get it in this shot.  I remember Uncle Vernon's old black and white that only picked up Channel 4 if Aunt Wanda grabbed the antenna with one hand and raised her other arm in the air.  Now you have to remember this was before the days of "Secret" and "Dry Idea."  We didn't watch Channel 4 too much as I recall..."

KA-KLICK!

"Hmm... I guess that was the last slide.  Wow, that was a short roll..."

LIGHTS UP.  TIME FOR CAKE.  GUEST BLOGGER SIGNING OFF.