Birthday Lunch

We celebrated my mom's birthday on Monday afternoon. . .




Of course, I took lots of pictures . . .

It was the perfect way to recover from all of the house and yard work we did last week to get ready for our re-fi appraisal. Which went really well, by the way. . .

Valentine's Day ? ? ?

On Friday night we received a desperate call from someone who needed lights on Saturday night for a concert. Just lights. No speakers, no stage, not even a tech to run the lights. Just lights. Even though Kurt was busy with two more Saturday comedy shows at the Civic Center, Rob decided to take it on. It was a piece of cake. There are very few shows that go off without a hitch but this was one of them. Early on I handed Zach the camera and these pictures are all from his point of view:

It wasn't until early evening that Gloria even realized it was Valentine's Day. She asked if I would take her to Winco on the way home to buy her a box of Valentine candy and, like any good, thrifty mother, I told her we would wait until Saturday and then she could have two boxes out of the clearance basket. . .

It's OK, I lost my mother-of-the-year award a long time ago. . .

Kurt Screams Like A Girl. . .

This weekend at the Civic Center, Kurt ran sound for a very funny comedy show titled, McManus In Love. It was hilarious! Laura was able to join us as well and we all had a good time. The best part of the whole show was Kurt's 5 minutes of fame. OK, it was more like 5 seconds and no one actually knew it was him except those of us in the booth but, fortunately, I was able to capture it on video. A little explanation of the play leading up to Kurt's big moment: McManus is describing a time when, as a teenager, he took a girl to a movie for the first time. He had been given some (questionable) advice about how to treat a girl at the movies including a little nibble on the ear. Without his glasses, he couldn't see what was going on on the big screen and, having never heard of the movie Dracula before, he didn't realize that nibbling might not be a great idea. . . Wait for the scream. . . That would be Kurt. . . :)

Sorry, Kurt. . .

Toys. . .

The last couple of years in this business, give or take a few months, have been pretty good to us. We've been able to unload a load of debt and now find ourselves with a small window of opportunity to reward ourselves, just a little bit, for all of our hard work. Rob had a pretty nice 4-wheeler many, many years ago that had to be sold in order to meet adult responsibilities so it seems reasonable that our first "fun" purchase should be another 4-wheeler. Or two. Or three.

Rob's been doing a lot of research and seems to have found exactly what he wants and, while we haven't made the final committment yet, it's definitely in the works . . .

I think I could get used to this. . .

This is just a small sample of what this bike is capable of:

I can't really see me spinning out and doing wheelies, but then I couldn't imagine being able to walk comfortably around a horse a few months ago either. . . . . I guess anything's possible. . .

The Farm (I'm running out of horse titles!)

I realized today at horseback riding lessons that we only have a few more weeks to enjoy being out on the farm. It's almost over! Even though it's been cold and muddy more often than not, I can honestly say I've enjoyed (almost) every minute of it. The students are all doing amazingly well. They're very comfortable on the ponies and are learning new things every week. . .


Today they learned a game called The Mug Shuffle. There are four poles in a diagonal line across the center of the arena and two of them have overturned cups on them. The exercise requires the rider to control the horse with one hand (walking him in a straight line) while moving one cup at a time to the next pole. The next horse and rider are waiting at the other end to move the cups back to their original position and so on and so forth:

Gloria managed Buttons really well. . .



I'm going to miss hanging out on the farm. . .

Who knows, maybe I'll sign myself up for lessons next time. . .

Focused. . .

My quiz team was a little more focused on Wednesday night. . .

It may look as if they were just doodling on the whiteboard. . .

But if you look closely, you'll see that they are actually drawing scenes from the book of Luke. . .

Hey, whatever works. . .

Right???

The Gourds

We were back in The Egyptian on Friday for a Gourds concert. I hadn't heard of them before but after doing a google search I found out they're pretty famous in Texas and even have a large following across the US. After hearing them play and entertain the crowd Friday night, I can understand why! Our set up was a little rough but we survived it and were ready when the band arrived and had a nice, smooth sound check. They were easy guys to work with.
The Gourds brought their own front-of-house guy but Rob ran sound for the opening band. . .

With the equipment of 2 five-piece bands set up on the stage, there just wasn't a lot of room to move around. . .

It looked pretty cool though. . .

The opening band, Jeremiah James, is a local group that I have heard of but not actually heard. They were really good and I have a feeling we'll be working with them again soon. I found one video of them on YouTube just to give an idea of what they sound like. . .


They were very entertaining. . .

Kurt was back in his corner again doing a great job on monitors. . . both bands were very happy.

When The Gourds came on, the crowd immediately reacted and started dancing in the aisles!

They put on a great show. . .

I'm definitely a new fan of The Gourds. . .