blatant irresponsibility...

Once in a while, when I don't feel like cracking the proverbial whip, I'll do something totally irresponsible on a school night.  After shuttling Olivia to her soccer pictures, grabbing a few pizzas and visiting Andrew at the farm (Potato harvest is not something to be missed!  Granted, we only go for an hour and he eats, sleeps and breathes it for three weeks straight, 14-16 hours per day, so the novelty wears thin as far as he is concerned.), we headed home and planted ourselves on the couch to watch a 2+ hour movie.



I'd been talking this one up to the kids for at least a year, although I hadn't seen it myself for at least ten.  I'm talking 1995's Mr. Holland's Opus! Have you seen it? You should! (SPOILER ALERT!)  It chronicles the life of Mr. Holland, a young married musician whose life aspiration includes composing a symphony that rivals those of Bach and Mozart.  Unfortunately (or fortunately!), real life gets in the way, and he's forced to take a job teaching music and John F. Kennedy High School in 1960.  He's only supposed to teach for four years, until they have enough money scraped together so he can go back to his music full-time.  He winds up having a long and esteemed career there, until he's forced to retire due to the elimination of the music department. Damn those budget constraints!



I'm not often a crier during movies, and according to my brother, we watched that movie tons growing up and I don't remember ever shedding tears over it.  But seriously, the scenes with Mr. Holland's son, who was born with a 90% hearing loss, were heart-wrenching!  It was like reliving some scenes from my own past, and made me feel so, so lucky to have had Adelaide in a time and place where she has benefited so much from general knowledge and technology.  Not that I don't feel lucky every single day, because I do, but things like that always hit it home extra hard.



I think the kids enjoyed the movie, although Olivia seemed at times more interested in whether I was bawling again, than the movie. Then again, I remember doing the same thing when watching movies with my mom, so I guess that's normal?  No one got any homework or reading done, and there are still a pile of dishes in the sink, and I'm really hoping everyone has socks and underwear for tomorrow.



One more quick tangent and then I'll sign off.  The movie touches on John Lennon a bit and features a song at the end by his son, Julian.  My siblings and I had an obsession with The Beatles and each of the band members, stemming from an old record my dad played for us, as well as the ABC special, "The Beatles Anthology" from 1995.  I couldn't help myself from listening to 45 minutes straight of old Beatles and Lennon hits.  I have always had such an appreciation of the beauty of music, and gearing up for the BF concert next week (Kales, you know what I'm talking about!!), I'm reminded of how varied of my tastes are.  I love the new stuff, but damn....I love the old stuff too.

And for kicks:

happy new year...

Ask me what I did for New Year's and I will reply with one thing, and one thing only: FOOTBALL.  Growing up, the only football I knew was the kind where you couldn't use your hands. Since meeting Andrew, I've become acquainted with the other kind, and I've become a fan.  Not the fantasy-football-addict, know-the-name-of-the-players, can't-miss-a-game fan, but the yeah-I'll-take-football-over-anything-else-on-TV fan.  And the last two days of football did not disappoint.  We closed the office at 1:00 PM so we could be home in time to watch BSU's third appearance at the Fiesta Bowl at 2:00 PM. It seemed like a blow-out after the first quarter, but by the fourth, we were all biting our nails.

Boise State did NOT disappoint, and we won 38-30.  A bunch of seriously happy campers.  The game was followed by Andrew trying to teach Adelaide and Marlie how to do head-stands. The tutorial was unsuccessful. 

 We were super lame and in bed and asleep before midnight.   Which totally reminded me of this:

New Year's Day was followed by a solid 12 hours of intense football action -- every game was better than the next, it was so much fun to watch! We always rooted for the underdog, and the underdog won, every single time (I'm sure our cheering made the difference).

It looks like Adelaide sprouted a beauty mark in this photo, but it's just a lingering scab from a little scratch from Aunt Barb's dog last weekend.  Andrew's brother and sister-in-law and three kids were over for both days of football, and you might wonder how we kept six kids entertained all that time.  We honestly didn't have to - they entertained themselves (win/win for all involved). The girls played with Marlie, and Christian played with Jake and Wyatt and we hardly saw any of them. The boys would surface for air once in a while to watch a little football, and the girls would come entertain us with gymnastics routines they'd choreographed, but other than that, they kept themselves happy and that made us happy.   

It was a new and fun way to spend New Year's.  Normally, I set at least a few goals and resolutions for the New Year, but I feel like that would requiring analyzing 2014 and my life at this point, and that seems like too much work. That sounds like a good task for Monday.  Until that Monday happens, Happy New Year to you and yours!