The Season!

TAIKO season!  It is upon us!  For those of you who are unaware, mid to late summer is the time that we gear up for our largest and most important show of the year - Japanese Festival at the Missouri Botanical gardens.  Well, usually.  This year, we are giving our large outdoor stage and all of our performance times to Osuwa Taiko, who are coming especially to perform with us from Nagano prefecture, Japan.  Our shows will be shorter, and indoors.  However!  We are still starting early, and working hard!

Today was our first attempt at J-Fest set pieces.  It wasn't too bad, actually.  And we stepped up our warm ups to include the 6 minute drill.  I hope we keep that in the schedule.  We need it.

We didn't practice it today, but I'm excited that I will be performing the song Tobihi in the Onna - uchi style.  YAY!  If I get video, I will show you.

We had a really great 4th of July weekend.  Picked up Josh at work on Wednesday.  Traffic was terrible.  Mom was really super tired, too.  I was a little worried, at first.  We got to Gran's first in the morning.  I made my fruit salad - turned out great - and did little stuff, like helping to get out the silver, etc.  Most people came within a short time of each other.  The only drama we had was a temporarily missing cat, and the stout refusal to not talk about it, despite my grandmother's obvious distress.  When that was over, everyone had a great time.  No fireworks were set off, also due to the cats, but we were planning to do ours at my mom's house, anyway.  Baby Natalie was there, and that made my kids super happy.  She really is a sweetie.  My father had quite his share of wine.  So me and my mom were the designated drivers home.  Once in Rolla, we had dinner, and then set off a few fireworks.  We had some very lovely fountains, which happen to be my favorites, so I was happy.  One thing that we didn't have was corn on the cob.  It was not ripe yet this year.  Late rains led to late planting.  I found out later that some people were able to acquire some ripe corn at Dierbergs, but we don't shop anywhere that fancy, and so were unaware.  Anyway, I didn't miss the corn so much when I saw the fruit pizza.  *drool*

We spent the night at Mom's again.  We got out the bows and arrows and taught archery to the kids.  It was fun, and we all had a great time.  I would like them to keep up with it, but I don't know how I feel about archery in city limits, even with a fenced yard.

We left around 2, and had barely enough time to drop off the dogs before we went on to the Franke's BBQ.  It was great, as well!  And delicious!  I ate entirely too much this week.  There was another fruit pizza.  Plus some of Alena's pickles.  Yum.  JennieLily (I call her both names.  Long story.) and I walked around the neighborhood, just the two of us, and I did a little house hunting.  Maybe I can move into that neighborhood someday...when I win the lottery.

I want to win the lottery.  Or come into some money.  It doesn't really need to be the lottery.

Today, I taiko-ed.  Feels good so far.  Should be miserably sore tomorrow.  I'm making sloppy joes for dinner.  Tomorrow is another marathon kind of day:  swim lessons, music lessons, practice and game.  Meh.  I'm exhausted just thinking about it.

Tanks Vs. Chickens

I hope that you all had a safe and fun weekend!  We are going to watch some Indiana Jones.  :D