Adah Stinks It Up on Stage

Last week Adah participated in a Missoula Children's Theater production of "Robin Hood" at her school. The MCT is a traveling group that comes into a school on Monday and holds auditions after school. After a couple days of rehearsals with the cast they put on the show for the school on Friday and for the community on Saturday.

Adah was cast as a skunk. Having heard ahead of time that kindergarteners would be skunks, Adah spent the weekend before auditions crawling around the house pretending to be a skunk. “What sound to skunks make?” she asked us. After auditions, Adah wanted to read in our animal encyclopedia to learn all about skunks. She really got into her character; you could say she’s a method actress.

Adah was part of a group of skunks who just wanted to make friends with Maid Marion, but found their stink to be an obstacle. “What’s a skunk to do? When you smell P-U?” they sang. Later the skunks became the stars of the show as they saved the day by scaring away the guards with their smell.

Adah had so much fun she declared, “I wish we could do a play everyday!” After a busy week of after-school rehearsals, I’m happy to have her do it a little less often.

Googling Myself--Part II

In a recent post I wrote about googling myself accidentally. That time only "Jillaire" was entered. So, last night, for fun, I googled "Jillaire McMillan." Every single result was me. (There were results where the names "Jillaire" and "McMillan" appeared separately on the webpage that showed up further down the list of results.) When--again, for fun--we googled "Damon McMillan," it wasn't until the second page of results that we found an entry referring to my husband. There's apparently a Dr. Damon McMillan in Florida.

So, thanks, Mom & Dad, for giving me such a unique name. It's kind of nice to be the only one.

P.S. I am, of course, the only Jillaire Wangsgard, too.

Saves Time on Laundry

Friday night we came home from a church activity and Adah got in the bathtub. Well, before we could do anything about it, Gunnar--who loves baths--joined her:


Maggie then decided to join in the fun, put on her swimming suit, and climbed in the bathtub, too!

Family Bean!

Not two months into my blogging life and I've already created a second blog! The new one is dedicated to recipes and cooking. You can read all about it at www.family-bean.blogspot.com.

Googling Myself

Have you ever googled yourself? Having a name like "Jillaire" means that the results are pretty limited for me, and I'm always intrigued to find others who share my name (like Jillaire Jackson the high school track star), since I've never actually met another Jillaire in person.

Well, this morning I actually accidentally googled myself by incompletely typing in my blog address. What came up--other than Jillaire Jackson--was very surreal. I found a blog post written by someone I worked with about 8 years ago. He was interning at the Massachusetts State Archives when I was working there in the Commonwealth Museum. We had a lot of religious discussions in the office we shared. He even came to church with Damon and me one Sunday and had a missionary lesson in our apartment.

It took a bit of reading for me to confirm the identity of the blogger since he didn't use his real name as the author, but I was very certain that I was indeed the "Jillaire" he was talking about due to some of the details he shared (like this Jillaire had a masters degree from Boston College and was married to a convert to Mormonism who had graduated from MIT--hard to mistake that). The blog post was about his spiritual life and his conversion from atheist to agnostic to Catholic.

Other than having him categorize The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a "non-Trinitarian cult-like pseudo-Christian church," I was actually very pleased with the way I was represented. I had shared my beliefs and how I lived them. He seemed impressed by that and respected it. I was glad that he didn't have anything to report of which I should be ashamed. I hope that I will always be a good representative of my Lord and my faith.

If you're not familiar with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, it is a Christian church. We believe that Jesus Christ is our Savior and we worship Him and remember Him in our weekly church services and in our everyday lives. If you define "cult-like" as friendly and welcoming, I suppose my blogging friend was right, but by most definitions of the word, he was completely wrong. If you'd like to learn more about the LDS Church, go to http://www.mormon.org/ or feel free to ask me any questions. If you're reading this, you should have my email address. Otherwise, just post a comment.

They're Catching On

Tonight at the dinner table Adah told us a joke that she made up. It was like most jokes that are made up by 6-year-olds: not a real joke, and therefore not funny to anyone over the age of 6. When Damon gave a polite little "ha ha ha" at the end of it, Adah said, "Daddy, that was fake laugh!" Damon and I looked at each other, and I said, "Uh oh--we're in for it now."

Pretty soon we won't even be able to spell out words in front of her when we don't want her to know what we're talking about. They grow up so fast.

Langley Ukulele Ensemble

Damon and I just got back from a concert by the Langley Ukulele Ensemble from Langley, BC, Canada. Yes, we went to a ukulele concert. Believe it or not, it was amazing!

The group, made up of 20 ukulele players aged 12-20 (plus the leader, who is actually the 20th player, plus a bass player), opened with "The William Tell Overture" and then went on to play songs on the theme: "If so-and-so had known about the ukulele, this is how [insert song here] would have sounded..." They played "Johnny B. Good" by Chuck Barry, "Help" by the Beatles, "Surfin' USA" by the Beach Boys, "The Washington Post" by John Philip Sousa, and more.

The group leader was quite a ham and they had tiny bits of choreography built in that always gave us a chuckle. It was very entertaining. There was also singing with most of the songs, which just made the musical ability of these kids more impressive.

After intermission, they came back to really show us that the ukulele (pronounced ooh-koo-lay-lay, we learned) is a legitimate instrument. By this point, I did not need to be convinced, but was nevertheless further wowed by Mozart's "Turkish Rondo," Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring," Tchaikovsky's "Russian Dance," and Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee." There was also a bit of traditional Hawaiian music and a Portuguese song where they actually crossed hands and played one hand on their own instrument and one on their neighbors'! And then they switched and did it with the other hand!

As we exited the auditorium we spoke to one of the players. Damon asked how much they practice each week. She said that they spend two hours each week practicing together. Two hours--that's all! The ukulele is actually taught in the elementary schools in Langley (like our recorders here?) and there are 6 younger groups that gradually train them and funnel them into the traveling ensemble that we saw tonight.

What a treat! Check it out at http://www.langleyukes.com/ or do a search on YouTube. I couldn't decide which video to post (and I haven't learned how to do that yet, either)!