January Happenings

Last weekend I went to the inaugural concert of the Norman Philharmonic. I enjoyed it immensely. The composer was there who wrote an anthem and a symphony for our city as well. She explained how she came up with the idea for the music and told us she got it from our City of Norman flag.

You can see the flag hanging above the orchestra here but you can't tell what is on the flag. There is a pencil representing education, a musical note for the arts, a lightning bolt for the energy industry here. There is also a gear for technology and a sun for weather industry here (NOAA and National Weather Service). I took this picture during the intermission.

In our efforts to make a shrine to our children (joking - sort of) we brought the glass curio cabinet in from the garage and set it up in our hall. Joe got it from Joel's (Joe's biological dad) house when he passed away last year. This first picture was kind of dark. I was trying to stay out of the picture (the back of the cabinet has a mirror) and I was trying not to get the flash.

I tried to give each daughter 2 shelves with something else in the middle. The top shelf is Kristen's because she is the first child, after all. I put her OU graduation picture and her HS letter (sans jacket) for 4 years of orchestra. A senior medal for orchestra and her first skating competition picture when she beat Kaitlyn. They had to skate head to head at the same level.

The second shelf, shows a placque that hung in the ice rink showing Kaitlyn had placed 4th in the qualifying round for the Southwest Regional Championships along with one of her highest skating medals, when she placed 4th out of 36 girls (2 rounds of short/long programs) at Skate Kansas City, and her first pair of ice skates that have been hanging in the garage all these years.

The 4th shelf is Kristens and it has 3 of her soccer trophies on it. The bottom shelf has Kaitlyn's 4th place trophy for her dance at Nationals in Fort Worth, TX as a senior; one of her two letters in HS. The letter she got for cheer/pom is on her letterman's jacket. The one in the trophy case is for 3 years in Orchestra. The large picture is one of her senior pictures and the small one is of her "winning the ball" over a much larger girl playing soccer when she was in about the 5th grade at a competitive soccer tournament.

The middle shelf is special. It holds Joe's grandmother's metronome (antique - she was a piano teacher) that was given to us when the girls were little and just starting to play the violin in the orchestra. The ukelele belonged to my grandmother, Stella Thaxton Doyle. The cabinet lights up only we don't have an outlet in the hall. And yes, that's the hall wall that had to be re-done when we had the mold issue in the bathroom - so no plug.