We have a different term for him - the quiet extrovert. He is involved in so many activities it makes my head spin some times. He keeps surprising us with other things that he has signed up to do. He likes to be involved in groups, but likes to stay on the fringes of the groups - as little talking as possible.
Many people are aware of Mark's great skills on the piano. He rivals that on the violin. He is first chair violin in his chamber orchestra at school. The following clip is from a concert the orchestra put on last week. Close your eyes and pretend you are driving a sports car through the Swiss Alps or in a diamond commercial. The piece is called Paladio.
Paladio from Derek Lindsey on Vimeo.
He has early morning orchestra starting at 6 AM every other day. With that and his heavy class load this year, you might think that he would have enough on his plate. He's just getting started.
- Weekly piano lesson
- Weekly violin lesson
- Marching band in the fall - someone talked him into playing the synthesizer for the band. It was a time committment similar to playing a sport.
- Technology club - someone asked him to help program a game for a programming competition. (It appears that he is no longer doing that.)
- Chinese club
- Jazz Christmas ensemble - He was going to play the piano for them. It didn't work out, but he was ready if it went ahead.
- Piano festival - played a Bach Prelude and Fugue and a Rachmaninoff piece for a judge. We call them his Bach and Rach pieces.
- Prepared pieces for orchestra solo and ensemble competition and is going to state for his solo piece.
- Accompanied three people on the piano for their solo pieces for the same competition.
- Is on the tennis team. (The piano and violin lessons stop while tennis is going on because he has no time.)
- Took the American College Test (ACT) for the second time.
- Is studying for three AP exams.
- During summer "vacation" he plans on attending as many of the following as he can: Summer Music Festival at BYU (week long music camp), Priest Quorum High Adventure Camp, Disneyland, Family Reunion, Especially For Youth (EFY), state technology camp.
In addition, and much to his dismay, Lehi High School has large number of girls choice dances. He usually manages to get asked to them. (He hasn't actually managed to ask any one out yet. See comment about the telephone above.) This picture is of him just before going to the valentines dance. His date's name is Jessa Bates.
Kind of a funny story about one of the invitations. We were sitting at the dinner table when there was a knock at the door. Joseph loves to answer the door so he thundered in there to answer it. He came back and said, "Mark there is a fairy at the door for you." The girl had her younger sister dress up like a fairy and deliver a pumpkin to Mark with the invitation inside. Mark knew what it was for and did NOT want to talk about it. Lauren and Ryan could not figure out why there was a little girl delivering a pumpkin to Mark and could not leave it alone. Finally we had to tell them to cool it and we would tell them what it was about later.
Another girl (Jessa) asked him by creating a code and then creating some matricies that Mark had to solve in order to get the right number combination to find out what the message said. The way to a man's heart is through his mathmatical equations.
We are glad Mark is part of our family.
