All About Strings

Mark has many and varied hobbies. We were talking the other day about how many of them were based on or dealt with strings. Here are a few:

1. Mark has been playing summer tennis through Lehi City for several years. He really has enjoyed it and has gotten pretty good. He is all about the form. He loves to see how much topspin or backspin he can put on the ball. He loves to serve with the proper form as well. He refuses to dink second serves over even if they have a higher likelyhood of going in. Last week were tryouts for the highschool team. Even though he is still in Junior High he qualifies as a highschooler since he is in 9th grade. Mark wasn't sure he wanted to try out because he has a lot going on already. He decided to do it though and ended up making the team. A few months ago he broke the strings on Marsha's racquet. During tryouts he broke the strings on his racquet one day and then on my racquet the next. His last day of tryouts he had to use an older racquet of his that had a broken handle, but the strings were still in tact. Luckily we know someone close by who restrings racquets. We are proud of Mark for making the team and hope has a good experience this year.

2. Mark has been playing the piano since he was eight years old. He loves it. It has been a great emotional outlet for him. He doesn't express much emotion verbally, but the emotion really comes out in his playing. One of the funniest indications of this was a few years ago when we told him he had to do something that he didn't want to do. He disappeared into the piano room and started playing the funeral march. Marsha and I just had to laugh. He has gotten really good and has progressed extremely rapidly lately. We went to a recital where he played a Nocturne by Chopin. We had heard him practicing it, but never heard the whole thing performed. It was absolutely beautiful. Several people commented on how much emotion they felt from the piece. Mark's piano teacher wants him to start playing some concertos. They require a lot better action from the keys than our piano has. We are in the process of upgrading our piano. We found a nice used grand piano that we should own this week. Mark and Marsha have been having a good time trying out all types of pianos. We will keep the piano from Grandpa and Grandma Lindsey's house for the time being. If anyone is interested in it, however, we would be willing to let you have it (if we can figure out how to get it to you.) Note: Since I wrote this, we actually purchased a grand piano. Here is a picture of Mark playing it.

3. When mark was in sixth grade he had to decide if he wanted to play an instrument in the school orchestra, sing in the choir or be in drama. Not a hard decision for him to make and he decided that he wanted to play the violin. We were able to borrow a violin from the Ogborns. He started learning how to play through school. He also wanted to take private lessons. This year he has been playing in the Junior High advanced orchestra. He made first chair right at the beginning of the year. He says he doesn't like it because he is a section leader and has to tell people what to do. He also said that he would only be first chair for a month and then they would rotate. Every time tryouts for first chair come up, he retains the chair. He tried out for Chamber Orchestra at the high school for next year and made it. When his friends come over, they don't just come to hang out. They actually break into a string ensemble. The picture is of Mark and his friends Davis (also on the violin) and Sam (on the bass.) Mark's violin teacher says that he is progressing quite rapidly on the violin too. She says that he has about outgrown his current violin - not the size, but the quality. After we recover from the piano, I guess a violin is next on the list of things to buy.

4. The first three items above are pretty obvious in their string connection. This one may be a little less so. Another thing Mark likes to do in his spare time is write computer programs. He has been taking programming classes at school. I have also been teaching him C#. He is always bugging me to write some requirements for him to program up. He has written some pretty useful things. He wrote a program that lets me keep track of prayers and talks for sacrament meeting. I can sort on who gave the prayer the greatest amount of time ago so that I don't call on the same people too often. You may wonder what this has to do with strings. There is a string data type that is very common in computer programming.

5. This one has nothing to do with strings, but Mark is also on the Knowledge Bowl team for Junior High. Knowledge Bowl is similar to accademic decathalon where a team of people from one school compete against teams from other schools. They are asked questions worth a certain amount of points. The first person to buzz in gets to answer the question. If they get it right, their team gets the points. If they get it wrong, the other team gets a chance to answer to get the points. The competition takes place on March 14th. Mark has been going to practices for that a couple of times a week. Two other member of the team are Sam and Davis pictured in the ensemble picture. (The competition actually happened yesterday. Mark's team took first place after two come from behind victories on the last question. Pretty exciting.)

6. Mark has also been learning Chinese. He took it for two years at the charter school. He has picked up on it fairly quickly and was one of the better speakers in his class. Some of you may have seen the news segment related to speaking Chinese that he was in last year. He wasn't able to take it this year since they don't offer it at the Junior High School. They do offer it at the High School, however, so he is signed up to take it again next year. He has been anticipating going to Chinese camp at BYU this summer. It is a three week immersion course where they have classroom instruction, activities and cultural experiences to help with language proficiency. The only obstacle we might have is that it might conflict with the family reunion. The dates aren't set yet, but the tentative dates are July 20 through August 12.

7. In his spare time, Mark is working on his Eagle Scout project, attending his YM/Aaronic Priesthood meetings and maintaining good grades.

We love Mark and are glad he is part of our family.

Call Me Frank

Many of you know that I have lipoma (not cancerous even though it sounds like it.) A lipoma is a benign tumor composed of fatty tissue. We refer to them as my fat blobs. I probably have about 20 of them, but three of them were especially visible on my left arm. Most lipomas can be removed in the doctor's office or outpatient surgery center. The doctor injects a local anesthetic around the lipoma, makes an incision in the skin, removes the growth, and closes the incision with stitches. I had one removed on my forearm just above my wrist. I had another removed just below my elbow. On Wednesday of last week I had the third (and largest) one removed from my tricep. It was big enough that it took 18 stitches to close. You can count them for yourself in the picture. It isn't painful, but I look like Dr. Frankenstein's monster. After the doctor (Dr. Berry for those who know him.) removed it, he apologized for the size of the incision. He also told me that it was big enough that he removed my gall bladder while he was at it. (The reason for the bruising is because the blob was so big that it left a cavity that allowed the blood to pool.)


Sorry if this is TMI, but there you have it.

New Furniture

Our couches that we bought when we moved into our house were getting pretty thrashed. We have been casually looking around for a while, but nothing too serious. We finally decided to look on ksl.com (local classifieds) and found some really good deals. We found a leather couch and loveseat right here in Lehi that we decided to buy. They are maroon. We moved our other couches to the basement. The only furniture we have had down there up to this point was the Foof Chair (a giant bean-bag type chiar.) Here are some pictures of the new furniture. You are all welcome to come visit us so you can see them in person.

Couch

Loveseat

Funny Pictures

We have taken a couple of funny pictures of the kids recently and thought we would share them with you. Not much more to this post than that.

I made cookies one night. Joseph wanted to lick the mixer blade. This is a picture of him licking it with his mouth wide open.

After he got done with the blade he still wanted more cookie dough (takes after his dad.) I gave him a scoop. He stuffed the whole thing in his mouth (except for the stuff left on his hands.) This picture is the result.

Mark found a little pair of kid sunglasses that he put on. They were pretty funny, but the smile makes the picture.

Ryan fell asleep in our bed one night with the big dinosaur that he got for his birthday.

Ryan's First Time Skiing

While the kids were out of school and I was off of work for Christmas, Mark wanted to go skiing. Ryan had fun sledding just after Christmas and was pretty excited at the prospect of going skiing. Mark invited a friend to ski with him and the four of us headed up to Alta Ski Resort. (Alta lets you ski for free after three o'clock on some of the easier runs. After renting skis, Mark and Michael (his friend) headed for the lifts and Ryan and I headed for the rope tows. (Editorial note: I'm not sure why they have rope tows for the beginners since they are harder to use than chair lifts.) Ryan and I worked on putting our skis on and then started skiing. At first I was trying to give him some confidence by holding him up, but quickly realized that he was relying on me too much (leaning on me rather than trusting his equipment.) I decided to turn him loose and see how he did. To my surprise he was able to ski very well on his own. He wasn't very good at stopping, but as far as the skiing went he was great! This picture was of him after one of the few times he fell. Most of the times he fell it was because I was stepping on his skiis. Notice the large ski goggles he has on. They are Mark's, but Ryan wanted to wear them. Mark wore mine and I wore sunglasses.


Ryan's First Time Skiing from Derek Lindsey on Vimeo.

The video clip is his second run on his own. He was navigating pretty well, but when he came up on a second group of people, he wasn't sure what to do. My audio commentary is pretty funny in the clip as was my filming the nearer he got to the group of people. As always, if you don't see the video on the blog, follow the link to vimeo and watch it there.

We are Thankful for Ryan

We had a nice Thanksgiving weekend. The highlight was that it was Ryan’s birthday on Thanksgiving Day. Wow, he is five years old. It was five years ago that he was born on Thanksgiving Day. What a great kid! He had a fun birthday. He got some art supplies, hot wheels, puzzles and books. His favorite presents have been Construx set that he can build a crane, dump truck and front loader out of. I have spent several hours building with him over the last few days.

He also got a huge stuffed dinosaur. It is probably about three feet tall. It’s a lot of fun. He carries it around and makes it talk and pretend to eat stuff.

Ryan likes to get into really small spaces. Here he is in the bag his dinosaur came in.

Ryan loves pumpkin pie. It’s a good thing since his birthday falls on Thanksgiving Day every five years. He had pumpkin pie for his birthday cake this year.

Lauren's Room

One of Lauren's favorite things to do is to decorate her room. If she isn't actively decorating her room, she is planning new decorations for her room. She has been dying to paint her room since the last time she painted it last year. One of her least favorite things to do was to practice the piano. To combine the two, Marsha institute a new program called "Positive Patient Piano Practicing for Paint." If Lauren would have a positive attitued about practing the piano and put the time into doing it, she would get a star for that day. If she stuck with it for two months, Marsha would help her paint her room.

She stuck with it, so last Saturday was painting day. She decided that she wanted to move into the room upstairs (she had been in the basement), so we moved Joseph into Ryan's room (The picture is of the first night in the same room for Joe and Ryan.) and set to work on painting Joseph's former room.

Lauren originally wanted to do stripes, but we talked her into doing multiple bright colors per wall.

Her friend Annie Estes came over to help her paint. They had a great time.

She was almost giddy while she was painting she was so happy.

She bought a new comforter, sheets and curtains to go with her room.

The room turned out great.

After finishing the painting and going to a BYU football game, we decided to get dinner at a little burger place called Chadder's. It is a knock off of In-N-Out berger.

Ryan and Joseph had a great time taking big bites of their burgers. You may notice that Ryan discovered that scissors will cut more than paper. He's a little mangey, but it will grow back.

And for those that are curious, Lauren is doing great on her piano. She now plays just for the fun of playing. She has been improving quickly and actually admits to liking to play. The following is a video of Lauren playing in a recital in October. If you can't see the video, click the Part of Your World link and watch the video on Vimeo.

Part of Your World from Derek Lindsey on Vimeo.