So tonight I decided to make couscous (a first for me) as a side dish with our grilled Iowa chops for supper. (Mmmm-mmmmm!) (Matt did a splendiferous job of grilling, thank you my dear.) I’ve been on somewhat of a mission to have Elena try as many new foods as possible that are not choking hazards for her, so I gave her a bit of the couscous. (By the way, if anyone has any great ideas for healthy, baby-safe foods that one might not normally think of or a favorite snack your kids enjoy, I’d love to hear about it!) Boy, oh boy, did she love it! Matt and I took turns trying to spoon it directly into her mouth (no self-feeding for this food, folks!) and it just seemed like she was thoroughly enjoying the texture.

She must have still been on a quest for new taste sensations, because about 15 minutes later, I found her with her hands in the dirt of our ficus tree and a muddy tongue. :) At least she didn’t appear to enjoy the taste as much as the couscous, so hopefully there won’t be a take two of that scene!

Some of you have picked up on Matt’s appreciation lately for Mark Driscoll’s teaching from Mars Hill Church in Seattle. I often end up adopting Matt’s preferences, so I, too, have been enjoying some of Driscoll’s books (Confessions of a Reformission Rev.: Hard Lessons from an Emerging Missional Church and The Radical Reformission: Reaching Out without Selling Out). His up front-and-honest teaching and communication style is very refreshing for me.

Recently, I have been reading one of the blogs on the Mars Hill website: Reforming the Feminine. I definitely can’t claim to have a wide, wide knowledge of women’s resources online, but in my opinion, these women have done an incredible job of tackling some of the tougher women’s issues. During the past month or so, there have been posts on unplanned pregnancy, sexual sin, stereotypes of Christian women, gluttony, fashion, marriage, and children. I have been greatly encouraged and challenged by these writers and wanted to make sure that all ya’ll out there have an opportunity to check out this resource.

I was just checking the forecast and I noticed that tomorrow is Friday and it doesn’t look too nice out. Then I realized how many awesome Friday nights in a row we had for having The Rock outside at the terrace! Wow, God! Thanks for blessing us!

Along the same line as my last post about The Five Browns, (sorry, the teacher side of me got thinking about more of the media that I have really enjoyed lately) has anyone else out there seen Mad Hot Ballroom? Autumn, who is always in the know about the newest indie/documentary films, told me that I would love it, and indeed, I did. It is a documentary about schools in the New York City Public School system (mostly in low-income, ethnically-diverse areas) that start an after-school ballroom dancing program culminating in a city-wide competition. Oh my, oh my…after teaching 5th and 6th grade band for two years, I feel like this is the best insight anyone could get into what it is like to teach students this age (which happens to be probably my favorite age to teach).

Between slices of the classtime, they do candid interviews with the students. Sometimes I think God planned that our best source of humor would be kids…and you definitely get a taste of that here. Besides being an quasi-inspirational film, I think pretty much anyone would get a kick out of it just from the candid humor.

You may have noticed the nifty feature at the bottom of our SWEET new design (I totally dig it…especially the little nuances that Matt will talk about tomorrow) where it shows “His”/”Hers.” When Matt put this at the bottom of the page, I was like, “Dude! I want to talk about this!” (There are a few things that I get really excited about :))

A CD/DVD that I have acquired (somewhat accidentally, but that’s another story) recently is “The Five Browns” which is a group of five siblings that all happen to be almost piano virtuosos. The CD has arrangements of classical and popular favorites (Flight of the Bumblebee, arrangement of Westside Story songs, etc.) for five pianos (yes, that’s FIVE pianos) and comes with a bonus DVD that shows them performing a few of the pieces on their five (yes, that’s FIVE) GRAND pianos. It’s quite the show. The DVD also has an interview with them which explains how their mother started giving each of them piano lessons at the age of 3 and sat with each of them nearly every day as they practiced. No wonder they are virtuosos! They continued their studies at Juilliard with several of them being there at the same time.

One of the most interesting parts of the deal is they are young and fairly hip/normal-looking. This really gets the teacher in me excited because it portrays young people who really enjoy and excel at music, and also gives my piano students (I guess maybe some of you probably didn’t know that I teach piano on the side…well, I do!) a visual of “what they could be like someday” if they work hard (always a bonus in motivating students :)) I also like using their example to have my students notice dynamics, posture, expression, etc. One of the pieces on the album is “In the Hall of the Mountain King” by Grieg, and there just so happens to be a very basic arrangement of the same piece in one of the books I use with my students, so it’s fun to have them listen to that after they’ve played it.

I doubt there are many music teachers out there that read this blog, but even if you are a classroom teacher, this would make a great tool for listening and discussion. And if you’re just a random person looking for a little diversity in your CD/DVD collection, I recommend it :)