Beautiful Music....Beautiful Nature

On Friday night, Olivia and I had the pleasure of attending an "Intimate Evening with Lorie Line" in a small concert hall at the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha. I've been a "Linebacker" for many, many years and when I got the postcard in the mail I called immediately to get tickets. We were not disappointed...my early call landed us tickets in the third row and it was a fabulous evening! Olivia really enjoyed the show. Lorie and 5 select musicians played for over two hours. We were most impressed when she performed her famous "medly." She took a legal size notepad and wrote down two columns of music requests from the audience. She then played for 15 solid minutes, seemlessly uniting every song into a breathtaking medley. It was mindblowing. One of her musicians played a clarinet for several numbers much to Olivia's delight. We picked hers up this week and she has her first lesson for 5th grade band next week!

Olivia picked out a new cd before the show and Lorie was gracious enough to sign it for her and pose for a picture. Poor Livie was SOOOOOO TIRED! The concert didn't get over until after 10 pm. I'm so glad I got to bring her though and I hope it inspires her to continue making music!


We didn't get home until 11 pm and the poor kid had HER piano recital at 10 am Saturday. She was tired, but did a great job as always. Sorry about the picture...I had to lean WAAAYYYY over in my chair to snap it and obviously wiggled a bit. Oh well.

After the recital we packed a lunch and headed out to the Loess Hills region in Iowa for our first real hike of the year! Liv was already tired from the night before, but we couldn't let a beautiful 80 degree day go to waste! Both kids need to get their "hiking legs" as it was a bit much for them first day out. I love this time of year when everything is so green it hurts your eyes.

They were troopers though and we let them rest when needed. You can see the leash in Chris' hand, yes, Nelson came along. However, he has so much energy and was in seventh heaven out in the woods there was no way he was getting in any pictures. Not to mention, we came home with more woodticks than we could count...we were still pulling them off him into the evening. Even Tony has become an expert "tick puller!" Ah, life skills.

Here Tony examines a pile of scat...he determined it must be from a coyote. He is so proud of the rucksack he is wearing in one of the earlier pictures. One day he brought home from school a biography of John Muir, a naturalist who founded the Sierra Club. After he finished it we decided he sounded just like Tony and that Tony was a naturalist too. We went to the Sierra Club's website and signed him up! In the mail he received a Sierra Club rucksack and he has carried it to school each day and couldn't wait to take it on our first hike. No SpongeBob or Captain Underpants for this kid!

Upon examination of this hole in a sandy cliff, he narrowed it down to a badger or burrowing owl's home. About 10 minutes after getting dirty and looking at poop, he held in his hands, while skipping down the trail, a beautiful arrangement of juniper and wild flowers. My Renaissance Man! We've got 80's forcasted throughout the week and Wednesday is our last day of school...hooray for summer vacation!