Music and Lyrics

Dear Readers, What is your favorite time of year? Well, you can probably guess what mine is: Winter! I love snow fall and the cold. Snowball fights and building snowmen highlight a wonderful landscape turned white. Unfurtunately, the snow does inhibit such activities as going to see a movie or driving to visit family. Regardless, enjoy the weather and cuddle up with a nice book in front of the fire as so many people do on days like today when the snow falls moderately but consistently, blanketing the world in stillness.

Dear Readers, Have you any great Christmas Eve traditions? Our house is full of them. Every year Bryce gets on the computer to start tracking Santa where ever he is while the girls usually work in the kitchen on either goodies or dinner. As usually, Mom has been using each kid to wrap other kids' presents but not there own. They might wrap a couple of their own, but they'll be blank boxes that show no sign of having anything interesting. The boys usually talk about sports or music, whatever we're feeling that particular day. Maddie has added a couple of traditions unintentionally, such as unwrapping gifts early or stealing cookies earlier than necessary. Following all these activities we act out the Nativity Scene from Luke 2 of the King James Bible. We then open one gift, which always turns out to be new pajamas...go figure. Tradition. After that it's really whatever we feel like: watching a movie til all hours of the night, having a slumber party in the family room do

Dear Readers, Think of a really hard decision you've had to make. Now, what was hard about that decision? The pros and cons of it? No, the hardest part of it is sticking to what you've decided. If you flip-flop on the idea, people will begin to think you're a moocher or have no spine or whatever it is they call you. No, the hardest decisions are those you can't change, no matter how much you want to change them. Just for example's sake, take cake and carrots. Now, you can decide on one and one only to eat for the rest of your life. Thinking in the long term, I assume most would choose carrots to stay healthy. No matter which you choose, though, you will eventually long for the other one, despite the fact that you can never have it. The inevitable question: stay safe and live long or take some risk and enjoy for a shortwhile?

Dear Readers, As is customary with our Lundstrom Family Christmas Party, we had a white elephant gift exchange. For the second year in a row, I somehow ended up with something that I'll actually use more than twice. What is greater than that fact is seeing my all utah-state extended family open up a box with a University of Utah Blanket in it. Haha, there were so many comments of, "Hey, we can start a fire tonight!" or "Who brought that filth?" amongst our great family. It was a great time to share with cousins as we laughed at what people had brought. Some of the other great traditions of this party include the annual sneaking into another room to watch TV. Every year, there's about 6 or 7 of my cousins and I that slip away to watch what ever is on while the party is just starting or while eating dinner. This year it was football: panthers vs Vikings. Don't get me wrong, we still have great conversation. It's just talking about what ever has been ha

Dear Readers, It's that time of year again. Refs frustrating, players panting and coaches confused. Totally kidding, the first game of the season was a great experience to bring the boys closer together. Two people fouled out on our team and there was a ref who decided to call three seconds in the key at the end of the game. You know how long I had been standing in the key? About 15 minutes. The entire game. You think he would have called it earlier. On a happier note, My sister and Brother-in-law survived a near fatal aviation disaster. Actually, they were about 150 yards away, but they still didn't know about it until the next day. Yipee...

Dear Readers, Happiness is great, don't you agree? Just the other night, it was a very frustrating and confusing night out with the Ensemble yet again, but I came back to my friend's house to hang out and just decided that being happy was more important than giving in to my gossiping desires. The rest of the night was just brilliant after I decided that. This morning was another example: I woke up late and was again frustrated. What did I do? I went to school and decided to be happy. The rest of the day went great! Be Happy! :D

Dear Readers, Tis another year full of Christmas Spirit and what better way to start it off than with a traveling holiday show performed by Teenagers who receive direction from a talented administrator. I'll tell ya, the best part isn't even the performances. Car pooling down to the show is lots of fun with a couple of phones and a jerk who gets texts from them. But that's another story. The point of this blog deals with a touchy subject: Music Directors. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's definitely not a good idea to give a choir a new song about an hour before a performance. That's what Ms. Belnap did with our traveling show today. To be fair, it was only half a song and we already knew the other half, but it was still dumb. Needless to say, we failed miserably on that particular song. The men totally forgot the words on one part and the women started on the wrong part. Despite that, we had a wonderful show to start out the season. Go Ensemble!