It’s a quiz! Can you spot the dancing Brian? We counted eleven appearances, but you have to be quick! Although there are shots of the band, there are no shots of the sound crew, so you’ll have to trust me that Mark is the A1 sound guy for the group. 🙂
Brian
Broadway Revue 2014
On Friday night we attended BYU’s Broadway Revue, presented by students of the BFA Music Dance Theatre Program. This is Brian’s major and he was one of the performers in the show. In addition, he arranged a mash-up of three Jason Robert Brown songs that were performed by him and four other students. One of them was Jack and he wrote a nice part for him. The mash-up was totally awesome! We love this show every year, as it showcases the students in different numbers which are choreographed and directed by students. Brian was also featured in the closing number, “Steal Your Rock and Roll”, from Memphis.
Mark and Sarah are behind Brian.
This little girl was holding her program in one hand and her mom’s hand in the other and staring at Brian while he was talking to friends after the show. I asked her if she wanted to talk to him and she shyly nodded her head, so I grabbed Brian and told him someone wanted to talk to him. He turned and saw the little girl I was indicating and immediately dropped to one knee and focused on her and spoke right to her for a few minutes. I got my phone out and got a picture just as he was getting up, but before that he was totally focused on this cute girl. Heart sigh!
Young Ambassadors 2013
It was a fun night the last two nights. Mark has been
on the sound crew for BYU’s Young Ambassadors for the past two years and returned for a third year. In addition, Brian was selected as one of the performers, so we are lucky enough to have two members of our family in the Young Ambassadors this year.
Last Friday and Saturday was the opening show for this season’s Young Ambassador’s show. It was fun to see Brian perform and to hear Mark’s sound. Mark is the lead sound guy for the group this year. Brian had two solo numbers and some fun dance pieces as well. They both did awesome. We look forward to seeing the show several more times this year. If you are in the area, I hope you’ll make a date to see the show. It’s fun, energetic, and has some great numbers in it.
The group will be taking the show on the road to Vietnam and Thailand after school gets out in April. They also have a several weekend tours and shows around the Salt Lake/Provo area as well. A link to their show schedule can be found on this page (click on tour schedule).
Fall is here
It’s been raining here for a couple days and yesterday I woke up to find that the mountains right outside my living room window have snow on them. One of the peaks was snow-free for only about 9 weeks this year. It hasn’t gotten quite cold enough at night yet to freeze so my annuals are still hanging on, although some of them are looking tired. A few perennials are still blooming and I have some lovely roses blooming late this year. Hurrah for Liquid Fence! I’m a believer, as the deer have mostly stopped nibbling now that I’m fanatically spraying our property. They pass through but don’t stay to eat. So for the first year ever, I have fall-blooming roses because the dang deer didn’t eat off the buds.
I’ve gotten some reading in and finished another challenge: the goodreads.com 2013 Challenge. I set mine for 104 books and reached it in September. Still three months left!
A friend and I have scheduled some quilting time together so that we can encourage each other and make sure some work gets done, so this week I started the quilt I’m making for our family Festival of Trees space this year. I have until Thanksgiving to get it done, but really before then as I’m having this one machine-quilted for the first time instead of hand-quilting it like I do my others. I’m shooting for finishing the top by Halloween. It’s chocolate and lime with some turquoise and has a fun rectangular repeating block in a scrappy fashion.
Except for the week when I was laid up with a sprained foot, I’ve been walking pretty regularly around the neighborhood and listening to audio books. I really like being out and walking. With the weather turning cooler, I’ve been going later to enjoy the warmth, but this week it hasn’t helped much because it doesn’t warm up. I might need to get one of those ninja masks people wear in the cold for fall walking.
We went to see our niece, Nika Fazulyanov, in “Shrek, the Musical” at the SCERA theatre where she played Young Princess Fiona. She was great and looked cute as a redhead.
Brian’s car was broken into and had the passenger window smashed in. Trust me, that makes an unholy mess inside the car. He was shaken up but not hurt and nothing really valuable was stolen, but I sat for 3 1/2 hours yesterday at the dealer while they replaced the window. Things like that make it easy to get lots of reading done.
That’s about all the news. Hope we have an Indian Summer on the way because I’m not quite ready for winter.
Bertha Falls & Annie
Day 9-Canada
We went to Waterton for an early lunch and decided on the Taco Bar, but discovered that it only took cash and we had no Canadian money as we had been using cards everywhere. Scott went to an ATM and got some cash and we had a yummy lunch with cash left over. Part of each bill was transparent plastic and I thought that was interesting and different.
Remember how I wrote in the last post about Scott and I trying to hike to Bertha Falls and not finding the trail, then finding it and getting rained out? Well, today we went directly to Start, did not pass Go, and got to the parking lot with Brian and Jack in tow. We got all ready with water bottles but no insect repellent. Are we stupid or what? Bugs galore on this trail and many bites. Grrr. Anyway, the trail is narrow with high vegetation and we were just stepping on to it when a beautiful red fox stopped on the trail in front of us. There were other hikers coming down so the fox was getting boxed in and nervous. We watched it for a bit then got out of the way and let it come out of the maze and run off through the yard of the home right by the trailhead and parking lot.
The first part of the Lakeshore Trail goes high along the ridge above the lake shore and there were some wonderful views of the lake from up there.
We took the cut off to Bertha Falls and it was not a difficult hike with many lovely vistas. We got up to the falls and they were beautiful with slanted rocks that allowed the water to careen off and funnel down into a channel. We mountain-goated it around the overlook to get a better view and I wanted to stay there for a long time. The guys got bored and headed downstream to get in the water. The freezing cold water. We joined them and watched for a while then headed down, slashing at bugs all the way. A very nice hike with a lovely falls.
We got cleaned up and went to the dinner theatre where the summer cast performed in a cabaret-style atmosphere while we had some yummy food. Here the guys are performing “Walk Like a Man from “Jersey Boys”. 
Then we moved over to the main theatre to see “Annie”. Brian had features in the Bert Healey scene and the cabinet scene and was so funny, he had people rolling on the floor. He played the ventriloquist’s dummy in the radio show segment so his head was above a stuffed dummy body that sat on the table while he stood behind. Jack was the ventriloquist controlling him. Brian was so good at moving his head like a wooden dummy and delivering his lines, it was hilarious. He was Harold Ickes in the cabinet scene so he was the grumpy one that doesn’t think the sun will come out and then changes his mind. He went down on one knee crying at the hopefulness of it all and it was hilarious. He also had a dance break in NYC. The theatre had put on the show earlier in the year and the cast was mostly the same with the summer full-time cast filling out the ensemble and taking small roles. It was fun to see them doing lots of stage business in the background.
After the show we had to try Canadian slurpees because we had been told by multiple people how much better they are than in the States. There are all sorts of flavors and they are “ice, not foam” according to the connoisseurs. I’m not really a good judge since I haven’t had one in approximately 25 years, but I’ll take their word on the comparison. I did think it was tasty, however. And that was our last night in Canada.