A Christmas Carol

We attended the winter production of "A Christmas Carol" last night (12-10-08). This play is put on each in year in Leavenworth, WA by the Leavenworth Summer Theater and this was our first year as a family to attend.

I was working with on of the executive producers of the show to have a photo for the play put in the classified banner of the paper and I expressed interest in seeing the show. She sent me tickets to take the family for the last dress rehearsal. It was great and all the kids really liked it. 

This time we took all the kids, even Jaxsen. In the summer, Jaxsen didn't want to go see the Sound of Music, but we convinced him to go to this one. I kept looking over at him to see if he was interested in the play or not. For the most part his eyes were glued to the stage. Good memories for our family.

Sound of Music

We attended an outdoor production of The Sound of Music last night (8-27-08). What a treat.

A very nice sister at church gave Alecia 4 tickets to the Leavenworth Summer Theater's production of Sound of Music the other day for helping her with some genealogy items.

These tickets were great seats up on the second row right at center stage and eye level. Also, there were a little ways off from the orchestra pit. Perfect to say the least.

Since we only had 4 tickets, I was going to let Alecia take the 3 kids, but Jaxsen was strongly apposed to going. So, I skipped my Wednesday night Stake meeting (which happened to be a bar-b-que at the Stake President's home) and went with them.

When we got there, this young man escorted us to our seats. He played Kurt, one of the VonTrap family children. He also happens to be our Bishop's nephew. We have been to his house before, so I think he recognized us. But as he was taking us to our seats, he had his canned conversation that all the ushers had from what I could tell. "Have you seen the show before?" "Is this your first time to the theater?" "So, where are you from?"

I had to laugh to myself at the last question as he knew we were from Wenatchee, but he was doing such a great job at his work that I just said "Wenatchee" and "I will tell your dad, hello."

I took his picture and emailed it to his dad and uncle, and guess who showed up right after that. His dad. So I shared the story with him.

The Nuns started off the program by coming out and singing "How Do You Solve a Problem Like a Cell Phone". Very creative way to tell people to turn off their cell phones, watch alarms and to remain seated during the production. The main Nun was a very good at her part.


I was worried that Logan wouldn't like the play, but he really did.

The play started at 8:00 p.m. and we had to arrive at 7:30 p.m. or earlier as you have to park and then walk up the hill to the theater and then get seated. It was a really neat setting as it was a little cooler and a cloudy night, but it wasn't windy and really added to the ambiance of the program.

Next year I think we might try to take the family to see "Sugar" a play based upon the classic film "Some Like It Hot." Looks very funny.

Challenge Completed...???

As you know, Alecia publicly challenged me to read the Twilight series on June 11, 2008. She challenged me for what I think was two reasons. 1st to learn something about the attributes that women find so amazing about the main character, Edward. 2nd to give me an entertaining read.

I accepted the challenge and finished last weekend, August 10, 2008. Took me a month (4 weeks) to read 4 books. That is the most I have ever read in that short of time in my entire life. I will address the 2nd part of her challenge, that yes it was an enjoyable and entertaining read.

Never mind the mushy gushy stuff (almost romance novel type) in the first half of the first book, I can see why these books were on the New York Times bestsellers list.

Now the 1st part of her challenge. I can totally understand and see why women around the world are in love with Edward. Here is a man (immortal) that loves this girl more than he loves himself and would do anything to keep her out of harms way. The other part of what I see to be so lovable is his ability to exercise self-control to express his love and keep her safe. This self-control covers many aspects of his life, such as appetites, temptations, anger among many other things.

So does this mean I have completed the challenge...I don't think so. I do love my wife and my family extremely so and would do anything to keep them safe to let them know I love them. Where I need tremendous help is exercising self-control. Now my self-control isn't necessarily in the same areas as Edward, but there are many I can relate to.

I still think Alecia is much more like Bella (the main leading lady), more than she will ever realize, and I truly love that about her.

TVGuardian

We love to watch movies in our home and a few years ago (before High Definition TV's were really popular or should I say while they were really expensive), Alecia and I bought a new DVD player for our regular TV with a new item called TVG Technology or TVGuardian.

This technology was built into the DVD player and didn't cost anything extra to have it. What it does is filter out foul language. And what I mean by filtering out language is the DVD player looks at the Closed Caption on a movie whether it is running or not. It recognizes a bad phrase or word, then mutes the sound on the TV when the phrase or word comes up. You can change levels of filtering and settings and it will pop up a Closed Caption phrase in place of the muted word, or you can choose not to have that happen.

We LOVED this DVD player. The only downside sometimes was if there were mentions of Christ or God in a movie of a religious tone, and not a taking of the name of God in vain, it would mute the sound. We found that we were losing a lot of important dialog (DaVinci Code was the movie we really noticed this on), so we would have to change the level of filtering or turn it off. Anyway, we really got so used to this that when we watched regular TV, we were really shocked at how many bad words are on there since the TVGuardian we had only worked with DVD movies.

Well, our DVD gave up the ghost a year ago or so and when we went to get a new one, they didn't have any DVD players for High Definition TV's with the TVGuardian. In fact it was hard to find any DVD players with TVGuardian. I chose to get a DVD burner/player that had HD Upconvert. We were never really happy with it and really missed the TVG Technology. I researched on the internet for the TVGuardian and found out the company that does this is not making DVD players with this anymore and the technology is changing so fast for players and they can't afford to keep up with the technological advances. They are however hoping to get TVGuardian available with Satellite and Cable company providers. This would mean we could filter regular TV shows.

Whenever I go to the big box stores, I always look at the DVD players to see if they might have some with TVG. Well, I was in Target earlier this week and found one. The technology was a little different as you had to pay an extra fee to activate it. Thought about it and thought "it's worth it." The DVD player even had a HDMI upconverter for my HD TV. I will be selling my RCA DVD Burner/Player and hoping to offset the cost of the new player.

I got it all hooked up, settings are now different, but got it all worked out and watched Vantage Point. Great movie and even better now that we have the TVG back. It caught every word as far as we could tell. I highly recommend buying TVG technology if you ever get the chance, especially if you want to avoid the bad language from the ears of your children.

Below is a YouTube video on how the filter works. If you don't want to hear the bad language example in this, stop the video before it reaches the end as the filter is turned off then to show you the difference.