Our Family's Got Talent!

I started to write this a month ago, but never finished, so I'll post it now:

While this title may raise some eyebrows, it simply must be the title of this blog, because I have to report that three of our children participated in _________ (the name of our town)'s Got Talent last weekend!  Fifty-two contestants auditioned for the finals, and twenty-two made it in, three of which were Josh and his friend Connor, Jesse and Libby.  Josh played the piano while Connor sang "Go the Distance" from Hercules, Jesse played the Revolutionary Etude by Chopin, and Libby did a gymnastics floor routine to "He's a Pirate" from Pirates of the Caribbean.

Libby was the youngest solo contestant, and she did great on her routine.  It wasn't quite as good as what she had practiced, but to get out in front of a crowd of 300-400 people and perform is brave, and she did it!  Two days before she did a back-handspring on her own, so she added that to the routine.  She stumbled on it during the performance, but it was fun that she even attempted it! 

Jesse's number was amazing!  Her fingers were flying up and down the keys.  Unfortunately, before she started the piano was moved to the middle of the stage, and the top was left down and there was no microphone on it, so you could hardly hear the piano at all.  It was such a disappointment.  Bruce had nightmares that night about not going up on the stage and fixing it right in the middle of the performance.  But we didn't think of it while she was performing, and I will explain in just a moment why we think that happened.

Josh and Connor were the next to last performers.  The arrangement Josh played is actually an arrangement for piano, and they took an arrangement for voice and put them together, even adding a whole last page that they made up on their own.  This made a big difference, because when Connor wasn't singing, the attention switched to Josh on the piano, and his part was just as exciting, so the energy never went down during the performance.  Two other women with beautiful voices had sung earlier, but they both sang to recordings, and when they weren't singing, it was just awkward, watching them pass the time up on the stage.  In addition, "Go the Distance" is a familiar song to many in the audience, and since the audience had a vote and many in the audience were young kids, I think that helped.  Also, Connor and Josh are well known because of the MAD Boys (an acapella group that they performed and recorded a CD with in High School), so that helped also.  Interestingly enough, Connor's microphone got a short in it right when he started singing.  It kept cutting out, but Connor just kept singing without missing a beat, and Josh did the same playing.  I was amazed at how they acted cool as cucumbers and it didn't affect their performance in the least.  It turns out that they didn't even know!  They couldn't tell at all that it was happening, but we couldn't tell that in the audience, so it sort of earned the audience's respect right off the bat.  So the long and short of it is, they won the whole thing!  They won the top prize, which was $500 in cash!  They were thrilled, of course!  They split the cash and have put it away for mission funds.  Connor already has his call to the Manchester New Hampshire mission, and Josh will start processing his papers in April.  

So it was a character building experience for Jesse!  She handled it SO WELL.  I was more proud of her for how she handled the disappointment than if she had won.  She did have to go out to the car right after it ended and pull herself together, but by the time we got home, she went to the piano and played the Etude for us again while we gathered around and did our own cheering for her.  Bruce came home and said that one of the ladies there said that she had played the same piece when she was a teenager.  She said it was one of the hardest pieces she ever learned, and that she played it about 1/2 the tempo that Jesse had played.  She was impressed!  I think what really happened is that if Jesse had performed at full capacity, it would have been too close of a contest.  It was Joshua's night to win, and Jesse had a character building experience - and WOW, did she handle it well!  She will have other nights and other "wins".

The last three weeks have also been a big transformation as far as eating goes.  I saw some videos put out by the Gerson Institute that really galvanized me into action.  The videos talk about how they heal all sorts of very serious disease, even life-threatening ones, by changing the diet to fruit and vegetable juices.  One of the facts they gave (and this was in the early '90's) was that if you practiced medicine in the State of California, if you treated cancer with anything other than surgery, radiation or chemotherapy, you would loose your license.  So when patients at the Gerson Institute would go back to their doctors and tell them that they were cured, the doctors would say, "Well, keep on doing what you're doing, but I don't want to know about it."  What a truly dismal state of affairs.  Sadly, I don't think much has changed in twenty years on the doctor side of things, but I think things have changed tremendously on the patient side.  People have choices and they are researching and figuring out a better way to live!


So the action I have taken is to go to much more of a diet that follows the Word of Wisdom.  (Why do we - mostly meaning me -- need an outside source to confirm that the Word of Wisdom is wise???)  Another impetus was that Bruce has been having severe congestion in his nose and sinus area.  It is not getting infected, which is due to the oils that we use, but we haven't been able to pin point what's causing all the mucus formation.

I found a great website that has the education, the research and the recipes that I have been looking for.  It is www.whfoods.org.  I wrote a seven page document in the last couple of weeks that details what substitutions you can make to eat healthier.  It is fun to have done that.

I have good news - I am a new Young Living Exectutive!  This a level in YL that I've been striving to meet for awhile, so I'm very excited!

Joseph and Jesse sang a trio in Sacrament Meeting today.  It was a beautiful arrangement of Come Thou Fount with the words being the lyrics from "Oh How Lovely was the Morning".  It was very nicely done!

Peter scored 2 or 3 goals yesterday in his indoor soccer team.  He is a great player!  Bruce is coaching his indoor team, and has already started practices for Spring outdoor soccer.

Mary did a great job on her Festival songs yesterday.  She played a Jazz piece and then a Clementi Sonatina for her numbers.  Jesse, Peter and Libby also played, and they did great!

Have a good week, everyone!