Toon Art

This evening we went to Hardesty Library, where a cartoonist named Steve Quinn was appearing in their new theater, Connor's Cove. He was there to show the children the basics of drawing cartoon characters. On the way in, each person was handed a ticket for a drawing (no pun intended) at the end of the performance. Mr. Quinn drew Fred Flintstone, Dino, Charlie Brown, Yogi Bear, and several other cartoons for them, and showed them how to draw some of the cartoons, step by step, from basic circles/ovals through finished product. At the end they drew tickets to give away all of the pictures that he had drawn that night, and Mikey won a poster-sized drawing of Scooby Doo drawn in black magic marker!

It was fun that Mikey won the picture of Scooby Doo, because it was actually the second artist-drawn cartoon character that Mikey had received within just a few weeks! Not too long ago we went out to Promenade Mall to see a rock & roll art show (there were vintage photos of rock stars, album art, art done by the stars themselves, etc.) and at the show was a guy named Ron Campbell. Mr. Campbell was there because he worked on the animated Beatles cartoons, including Yellow Submarine (apparently he breathed life into the main Blue Meanie, among other things), and now he spends a lot of his time creating original artwork in that style and featuring the cartoon Beatles, and selling it to fans and collectors. Well, Mikey doesn't know too much about the Beatles, but he certainly knows one of the other projects Mr. Campbell worked on... Rugrats! When we told him Mikey likes Rugrats, he immediately asked Mikey what Rugrats character he would like a picture of. Mikey chose Chuckie, and Mr. Campbell picked up a paintbrush and drew him a beautiful picture of Chuckie, right before our eyes. What a great guy!

Big Round World

Yesterday we went to Oklahoma City to visit my uncle Frank and his son, my cousin Frank Jr. and their wives. We stayed until it was pretty late (OKC is almost 2 hours away) and it was waaaaaay past Hannah's bedtime. She and Mikey had spent most of the weekend at Meme's house (the reasons for that are a whole 'nother story) and they really love her, so Hannah was not only sleepy from it being late, but she was cranky because she was in my car instaed of Meme's car! So we got into the car and she started crying... and by "crying" I mean "screaming her head off." She was inconsolable, and very un-ignorable. Finally we decided to try to see if she would go to sleep with some music. I put on my Ashley Cleveland Men & Angels Say CD, hoping that the hymns would calm her down, but it didn't do the trick. So I finally put back on the CD that she had seemed to enjoy earlier: Big Round World by Trout Fishing In America. As soon as she heard the first part of track #1 (the title track) she quieted right down, and didn't cry another peep until the song ended! Then would you believe it, when the song was over she started screaming again! But then as soon as track 2 came on, silence again. It was hysterical! She didn't cry after every single song, but she never cried as long as a song was playing. Finally she conked all the way out.

TFIA has been nominated for Grammy awards several times (including for Big Round Workd), but they've never won so far. I think the "made the baby stop crying" award is much harder to earn, and if you ask me, MUCH more valuable!

The Other MJ

Last night we spent maybe an hour and a half or two hours listening to Michael Jackson songs on Rhapsody (here's a sample) and watching his videos on YouTube (find 'em here). I don't know how much Mikey enjoyed it, but Hannah was sure getting her boogie on to "ABC" and "Black Or White"!

Here's the song that (incongruously enough) I spent my years at Oral Roberts University singing in the dorm hallways...

Big Ugly Tulsa Rainstorm

I looked out the window of my office about 10am today and saw this:



Definitely NOT a 10am look! For comparison, on a normal day it looks more like this. It was looking more like dusk... except for the ugly black clouds just above the BOk building (you can't really make them out in the picture). They were really moving... kind of boiling, and heading east as fast as they could!



It started raining off in the distance before it got where I was, but when it got into downtown proper, it came in with a vengeance:



It was REALLY coming down in sheets... it was very exciting to watch (from inside!) I even called Cathy to tell her about it! But it didn't last long... pretty soon a beautiful ribbon of sunshine peeked through:



If you want to see these pictures plus a few more, here's a link to the whole batch.

My birthday was great, by the way... I'll tell about that in another post. We haven't told you about Cub World - we went camping with Cub Scout Pack 137 last weekend! I've got lots of pictures with actual people in them lined up to upload... stay tuned!

Secret

Psst... don't tell anyone. I turned 39 today!

Singin' and Soccerin' (plus pizza!)

The karaoke night at Grace was a lot of fun... turned out it was sort of a "karaoke and dancing" night! Every three or four songs they played a track from a dance CD and everyone who wanted to could do the Grapevine or the Electric Slide or whatever. (I don't do group dancing, so I just had fun watching.) Cathy and I did get to sing the duet we've been working on, but it was a rough performance... the person before us had turned Cathy's microphone off (!) and she didn't realize it until a couple of lines into her first verse (which is solo D'OH!!!), and then the track was so loud that we actually literally couldn't hear ourselves singing. But I think we did a good job on it considering the adverse circumstances. Cathy also jumped in and sang background vocals on a couple of songs... "Sweet Home Alabama" was one. Mikey sang sort of an impromptu duet of lead vox on that one. He also sang the Tree63 version of "Blessed Be Your Name" with me singing along... what he didn't know was that I held the mic as far away from my mouth as I could and sang really loud so mostly only he could hear me helping him keep his place, and everyone could hear HIM sing! Mwa ha ha! So everybody got to hear Mikey singing it! For my part, I sang some BTO "Takin' Care Of Business" which is on the high side for me but I was able to spit it out OK. People seemed to respond well, so the end result must have been acceptable!

We went over to Mom and Dad's house to pick up Hannah, and we sang our same song, "Pure", for them, and then we followed up with "Revelation Song". They really liked it and want us to call their music minister and come sing at their church sometime! By that time Cathy was worn out from practicing all day and then singing all night... she totally wore herself out!

The next day we went out to one of Mikey's soccer team's games. Turns out we picked a good one... afterward everybody went out to Incredible Pizza for an end-of-season party! We had a terrific time! Mikey hasn't been able to play for most of the season because of his broken arm (which will be splinted until the week after the final soccer tournament) but he's still "part of the team" and he'll be back on the same team next season. In fact, next week when we get back from Cub Scout camp we'll probably head out and see if his team is still playing tournament games. They've only lost one single game all season (!), so they should go far!

We realized at Incredible Pizza that one of the couples whose kid is on Mikey's soccer team not only have a mutual friend with us (the boy was in a drama class with the daughter of a good friend of ours from church), but they actually both went to ORU at the same time as I did... in fact, they met in a class at ORU! I always thought the dad looked a little familiar. It's a small town after all!

End of May Update

Wow... way too long without an update! Well, Hannah's doing fine... she took some antibiotics and some Robitussin and a breathing treatment or five, and now she's back to her regular self. One day, though, she was having trouble eating because she couldn't breathe and eat at the same time, and she got angrier than I've ever seen her get. She's usually very even-tempered. So we're really glad she's feeling better!

School ended for Tulsa Public Schools last Friday; we set up Mikey's schedule to match Tulsa Public, but he actually hasn't finished all his assignments yet so he's still "in school". Probably he'll finish tomorrow.

Yesterday at church we got to see some friends we haven't seen in quite a while... Mike & Amy! We love those guys! :)

Today we got to get our air conditioner fixed. I say that as though it was a privilege to pay $360 to a stranger for hanging out in your back yard for a couple of hours. Actually, though, it is a privilege to sleep with cool air again! We've been sweating it for several days. We got a crack in the pipes and lost a little freon, and you know how that goes. No freon, no cool air! But now we're good.

Finally... and we'd like to invite anyone who's reading this on Thursday or Friday... tomorrow night we're going to a cool new thing at Grace called "Friday Night F.U.E.L." and it's kind of a karaoke and games night. Free to anyone who wants to show up! Cathy and I are all pumped to do a duet we've been working on. If you're in town on May 29, come on out at 7pm and maybe you'll get to hear us sing!