Last night we went to see State Fair at the Sugar Factory Playhouse, and it was a pretty good show. Some of my old friends there haven’t seen me since I was a single, not-even-anyone-on-the-horizon sort of guy. Finding out that baby Dodge is on the way was a real shocker.

But even with all this great news, the most memorable part of the recent week was when we decided to take the kids to a free puppet show at the West Jordana library for Family Home Evening. It was the Starry-Eyed Puppet Show, and it was really something else. What made it so great? Well, let me tell you…

Johanna’s friend Heather told us about a free puppet show at the library, and since we didn’t have any concrete plans for the evening, we decided to go and see if it was any good. We got there quite a bit early, and had some time to wait in the kids section of the library. There is a ‘bug’ theme going on right now, and kids are able to sign up for contests and reading clubs to earn prizes – plastic bugs among them. Of course, for little boys, there’s not much that can top a good plastic bug.

When the puppet show finally got under way, and we were completely amazed at the quality of the show. We thought it would be some hokey little thing with a card table and a guy with some socks on his hands or something. But there was a complete 2-tiered ‘puppet-stage’ with soundtrack, silly-string-sneezing noses, giant spiders (remember the bug theme), and the kids went crazy! The show was actually funny enough that most of the adults were laughing a bit, too. And since it was at the library, of course it was educational to boot.

The show was about things that “Bug” us, and one of the first I can recall was rap – a sorry excuse for music, in my humble opinion. They had a rap about the life-cycle of a butterfly. Then they had another thing that “bugs” a lot of people – bad poetry. Some boring-to-tears worm came out and read poetry about daffodils, and all of a sudden, daffodils are flying all over the place at this worm…he never does finish the poem.

During “scene changes” a puppet comes up singing “eency weency spider” to the audience, but he isn’t supposed to be part of the show. So the master puppet tries to shoo him off, and calls on his friend spider to help. Each time the scene changes, the singing puppet reappears, and the spider shooing him away gets bigger…until the spider is HUGE and the little puppet runs away screaming! A classic joke, but well played here.

The main story was about a worker bee who noticed that all villains are popular, while nobody remembers the heroes in those books (eg. Dracula, Moby Dick, etc.) So he decides that in order to be famous, he needs to be bad. But every bad thing he does ends up saving some other bug’s life, and he gets frustrated. In the end, his conscience gets the best of him, and he is awarded for being a good worker bee.

All in all, it was a really fun little show, and Johanna thinks it might be something we could do on the side for extra income – put on puppet shows. We will have to see about that, but this much I can definitely say: the Starry-Eyed puppet show was a real hoot, and I will not second guess the programs that the library puts on for kids again. I highly recommend looking into the nearest public library to see what youth activities they have planend in the near future – and going!

Just two days ago, Johanna emailed me a link to the gallery our wedding photographer had just posted of our wedding photos. She was beyond excited, and wanted me to see ‘em all.

And so I went to the gallery and looked around, and I must say that some of ‘em turned out pretty good. I have my favorite, as does she, and soon we will be going to our photographer’s house to get a CD of our pictures.

One of the great things about this guy is that he is giving us full copyright on the pictures…we can make as many prints as we want! Pretty rare for a wedding photographer, from what I hear.

So the wedding photo idea started out really well. Then, last night, I got to give her sister our ‘wedding gift’ of editing her wedding announcement photo in Photoshop (I love my job and all the kewl programs they give me.) It wasn’t bad, but it took four hours to get it all done. She was happy, in the end, which is all that matters.

On a really good note, last night was opening night for me. It was so fun! Practicing day in and day out got kind of old, but the end result was totally worth it. I won’t be doing this very often, because it is hard on the kids when I have to devote so much time to it, but I will defiantly be doing it again in the late future.

That is about it for now. Hope you liked this blog of mine, and Mike if you are reading this, I love you so much, thank you for being so totally awesome!!!!!!!

Hopefully we will be starting to upload pictures of Vegas sometime soon, but they were so grainy or dark, I don’t know how much I will be able to rescue. Only time will tell.

Today we moved the bunk-bed from Johanna’s old apartment to our house, and the kids were excited. We also went to the optometrist so Johanna could get some contacts (her prescription was OLD, now she is seeing me clearly for the first time…and she didn’t run screaming!) We have to give mad thanks to AJ for helping us out. My insurance doesn’t cover the family until April, but we needed these immediately. AJ saved us over $100 at his store. Anyone wanting great glasses/contacts, fast service, and a quality experience should go to Eyeglass World on 6100 S. and State.

In other news, work is going great. My cousin Allan is interviewing with Love next week to see if they will hire him on as a “Final Cut Pro” guru for some big stuff they have coming. Rehearsals for “The Hasty Heart” are going very well, and I will have complimentary tickets soon for those of you who are interested. The number will be limited, so if you don’t get one from me fast, then please buy some tickets. Johanna’s rehearsals are going well also, but you will have to read her post (if she makes one) for the lowdown on that.

In other news, work yesterday was spent installing all the software I would need onto my new computer. For the most part I got all that done, but there are a couple of things that I will need to install later today. No big deal, they really won’t be using me for any “heavy lifting” until after the wedding.

Johanna and I are testing out the affordability/feasibility of using TRAX to get me to work every day. A month pass is around $50-$60, and to fill up the tank in the car is $30-40 each time. So if we can save two tanks of gas a month (feasible) then it will be worth it. But this getting up at 6:00 and not getting home until 6:30 is rough…ugh.