The Music Man

This post is somewhat belated, but I wanted to show a few pictures of Sam and Savannah in our High School production of The Music Man. Sam and Savannah were both invited to participate through their chorus classes at school. There were 8 kids chosen between grades 5-6 and 8 from grades 7-8. From those 16, they held tryouts for the parts of Amaryllis and Winthrop. Savannah was cast as Amaryllis and did a great job. She and Sam both enjoyed being part of the production. It was a lot of work, especially at the end when they had to be at rehearsal or performances from 6:00-10:00pm for almost 2 weeks straight! But it was well worth it and they both cried when it was through. We’ve always been so impressed with productions put on at the High School each Spring and it was so fun to have the kids be a part of it this year.

Picture one: Savannah in the piano lesson scene as Amaryllis. Picture two: Savannah as a Wa Tan Ye Girl (Savannah is the second on the right). Picture three: Sam in the boy’s band (Sam is the first one in the front row). Picture four: Sam and Savannah (center) in a chorus number.

My meager contribution consisted of donating the vinyl lettering for the salesmen’s suitcases. You can see the main one in this photo:

One fun thing for the kids was that they were 2 of 6 LDS kids in the production. That’s pretty good considering Sam is the only 6th grader in his school who is a member of the church and there’s only one other member in the 5th grade with Savannah!

Wish you could have been here!

Barn Raising

We’ve been saying for 8 years that someday we would build a new garage. The garage we had was built ca. 1920. It wasn’t even deep enough for our car, let alone our huge van. While it did a good job of keeping bikes, tools, and yard equipment dry, it had a dirt floor and leaned into one corner of the house.

I talk about this garage in past tense because it’s now history. It was demolished and hauled away earlier this Spring. After having the concrete poured for the floor, Jeff started building our new garage last week. WIthin a week he built 2 walls and several men from church generously volunteered to help him put them upright. Then over the following 3 days he built the next 2 walls. This is what the garage looked like (through a screened window) at 8:00 this morning:

By 9:00, with more help from our friends, the walls were all standing and secure:

It really helps when one of your friends brings a 40 foot lift that he just happened to be using on another job. So by 10:45, the trusses were up:

And by 2:15, the OSB and tar paper were secure and the shingles were lifted to the roof to make the finish job much easier this week:

Not bad for a day’s work! Sadie told me that Daddy was building a house. I asked her who was going to live in it. After thinking about that for a bit, she said, “The car and van!”

Meanwhile, Sterling and Spencer found a lifeless baby bird in the yard.

The bird is on the white slab they are looking at. They named it “Tweet Tweet” and surrounded it with grass for a little nest. Then Sterling made a headstone for the burial plot:

Rest in peace Tweet Tweet!

Special Delivery

I used to have a blog called Our Little Corner of the World. It ran from May 11, 2008 through June 4, 2010. You can find it at stowell.fami.ly, but it doesn't look like it used to. Because it's so old, the theme I was using became obsolete, so I couldn't even open it anymore. My techy brother was able to convert it to a generic theme which restored access. Whew! It's a record of many moments in our family that I don't want to forget. To make sure I don't lose these posts again, I've decided to transfer each post to this blog. The date for each post is the date it originally appeared on my other blog. Here we go! :)

The other day the doorbell rang. I went to answer it and saw a delivery man standing on the porch.

Do you like his beard? This delivery man told me he had a package for Sterling. I thanked him and brought the package in the house. I called to Sterling and told him he had a package. This was his reaction:

Sterling LOVES mail and is always hoping there is something for him so he was so excited to get a package. He opened it and there was a little Lego set inside. Sterling quickly put it together and was just beaming at his good fortune. What a kid!