Happenings

Here's a little update on what's been hap'nin' over at the Yen house.

Saturday was the annual church softball game. We took over 100 pictures but here are a few:

The men praying before the game

Dawn filming the game

The race against time...

Camille - Cutest thing alive!

Collision!

Tessa keeping score

Grill time!

We had gorgeous weather for Labor Day and celebrated by heading out to Ravinia with the Chidlows for the "Labor Day Spectacular" - music by Tchaikovsky ending with the 1812 Overture with real cannons.

One of the "Shushers" as we call them - they walk around with big "quiet please" signs and if you are being rowdy, they will "shhhh" you. :-)

Sorry, Em, I couldn't resist!

Let's redo that...

Tara, the keeper of the flashlight

Tara & Sokea

Thanks for coming with us, Chids, we had a ball!

Tomorrow morning Dad, Tara & I head out East to visit Nini & Yeh Yeh and attend Dad's cousin's wedding! Will update again A.S.A.P.!

Winged Visitors

Hallelujah! The Piano is Tuned!

Perhaps it seems like a strange thing to post, but this is really good news for us!! The piano was WAY out of tune and the higher register notes would clunk after they were played - very annoying. The piano tuner told us that the piano really needs a lot of stuff done to it, and it was never like this before. To fix the "clunking", he had to take the entire keyboard out and raise the hammer on each key. Once that was finished, he tried to put it back in, but the sides of the pin board (I think that's what he called it) were sagging (the sides, not the middle...weird, huh?) so it wouldn't go back in! He had to use this tool to push the pin board up and shove the keyboard into the piano. We were all a little nervous watching him pry and push our "baby". Aside from all that, we are really glad that it is tuned, and it really is much more enjoyable to play and listen to, especially since the notes actually play not thunk!

Below are some pictures that Kathryn took while the keyboard was out.

Grilled... BANANAS???

Yep, that's right. Dad was in Brazil on business this past week and while he was there he had some informal cooking lessons at the home of one of the ladies on his team. If you don't know Brazilian food, let me tell you that it is good food... believe me. One of our favorite restaurants is a Brazilian steakhouse - these folks know how to make steak! Unfortunately it is also one of the most expensive restaurants we've ever been to... so it's reserved for birthdays only!
Anyway, back to the cooking lessons. They instructed Dad on how to grill bananas for dessert. You grill them right in the peel until they are nice and brown and... well, kind of mushy.



Then you slit the peel and open it up, lift out the banana, put it in cinnamon and sprinkle more cinnamon on top - and enjoy!




Not your typical dessert but we enjoyed it!

Mmmmm

Girls in White Dresses With(out) Blue Satin Sashes...

My blog conscience wanted an update, and here she's getting 2 in one day! :-) That's only because I had 2 posts in my head and now I am actually sitting here doing it.

A month or two ago Tara and I decided we wanted to try to make some white dresses based on the movie "Wives & Daughters." Tara started on hers and did a lot of fancy embroidery, etc. She finished hers in good time and it turned out lovely. Hers is based on Molly's white ball gown (click here for a couple of pictures of the gown). Somewhere along the line our friend Emily decided to make a white dress too, and then we thought it would be fun to all wear them for our "end of the season" program at the retirement home we all visit every week. Well, I didn't have time to make mine till the week before and amazingly I finished it in record time of almost exactly one week! Mine is based off of Molly's white dinner gown. We changed the pattern to suit our tastes, so they don't look just like the movie dresses - but we like them!
We also wore them to a tea for Emily's Bible study where we sang for the ladies in between courses.



After the tea we had a "white dress photo op."





After posing for "pretty pictures" we decided to get silly and jump on the trampoline - definitely not period correct but who cares.

Musical Fun

This post is a bit belated, and I apologize for it (Hannah :-) but I have been very busy with other things besides blogging. This post should have been posted a couple of weeks ago, but oh well... better late than never.



Dad has sort of organized an ensemble with the string players at church. We've had two practices so far, and though I don't play a string instrument (except piano which doesn't count and which I have recently been informed is actually a percussion instrument) I enjoy looking on. The first practice was just playing around with some pieces for fun and dare I say, not for the listener's enjoyment. :-) The second practice was a decided improvement. For those of you who read this post before when I said I couldn't find video from the first practice, that is now changed and here are a couple. I've been told that by videoing I have broken the first rule of group practices, that being, leave no evidence, but I am afraid I don't feel even a twinge of guilt on the subject.

This is a minuet by Haydn (one of the better sounding ones :-)



And this was requested by Mrs. Erber because a certain person in the group was a little - ah - rusty.



While the musicians were making music at the second practice, some of us bystanders were amusing ourselves with trying to figure out the Landler, the dance that Maria & Captain Von Trapp do in The Sound of Music. Here's just a sampling of we had to decipher (please don't try to read it, it's worse than a knitting pattern - but we did figure it out eventually!):

Landler (Danced by Maria and Captain Von Trapp in The Sound of Music)

Start M l.f., W r.f.

Introductory mixing figure (as seen in ballroom behind the couple - 16 bars and hold for bow):

With 8 waltz steps M travels along l.o.d. around outside of circle while W travel alone against l.o.d. on inside circle, finishing taking skaters hold (l.hs over r.hs) with 8th new opposite / then with 4 waltz steps wheel as a couple 1 1/2 acw and travel together along l.o.d., M on inside, and with another 4 waltz steps M turns W acw over her l.sh. under raised hands, finishing opening out to face each other across the l.o.d., taking 2 hs in open hold and bow.

That's just the beginning - the rest is about 7 times that long!! And one thing within the instructions that greatly amused us is that "acw" stands for "anti clockwise"! Not counter clockwise - ANTI clockwise. :-) And here we are trying to figure out that fancy turn they do: