Wordless Wednesday: Hypnotic Moments

The boys are enamored by our screen saver! Our TV is set up as our computer monitor. When this screen saver comes on they will stand motionless and stare at it for several minutes straight.
Instant quiet is a true blessing!

I love to singa

Do you remember the old Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes cartoons? There was an episode from 1936 featuring the character of Owl Jolson. This little owl only wanted to sing jazz, and his parents disapproved and insisted he learn classical music. Sound familiar?

Well, over the weekend we lived in “I love to singa” land. All. weekend. long. Prince Charming sang the song nonstop around the house as he played, sat, ate... You get the idea.

It went a little something like this:

I love to sing-a
About the moon-a and the June-a and the spring-a,
I love to sing-a,
About a sky of blue-a, or a tea for two-a,
Anything-a with a swing-a to an "I love you-a,"
I love to, I love to siiiiiiiiiiiiiing!

You remember the song, don’t you? Fair warning…since you just read the lyrics and found yourself singing along in your head, there is a 99% probability that the song will now, in fact, be stuck-a in your head-a. At least I’m not the only one-a!

He even included the nasal rendition of the piece that Owl Jolson’s parents wanted him to sing instead of jazz.

Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with miiiiine.

Prince Charming nailed it every single time. Perfectly. In hindsight, I guess it was a nice distraction from Monkey’s constant talking about cars.

As I sat down to write this post, I reviewed the cartoon again to refresh my memory (as if I needed to be reminded).

Guess what? I made a discovery!

Both of my boys have been saying, “stop, Stop, STOP!” in increasing volume and intensity as they play together. Let’s just agree that it’s NOT an enjoyable experience to be in a room with them yelling, “STOP!” repeatedly to each other. Anyway, I discovered that the boys got that little gem from Owl Jolson’s father who yelled those words with the exact same inflection whenever he wanted his boy to quit singing jazz.

Well, I guess that cleared up the question of where the latest and greatest phrase came from. I could choke Owl Jolson’s dad for that one. Perseveration is fun, isn’t it? Mommy needs coffee. Or maybe vodka.

    

My first YouTube video!

My bestie, Miss C, called me up about a week ago and told me about a local contest. She’d heard a radio advertisement from a Seattle credit union trying to find their next representative Mom to blog, vlog, and speak at various events. And, the best part…the winner gets paid!

Since I am a blogger and I speak regularly in the community, I thought this position would be an amazing opportunity to expand my horizons doing something I enjoy. But, the problem was, I had never done a video of myself. Ever. I’ve taken hundreds of videos of my kids, but I’m the kind of person who loves to be behind the camera, not in front of it.

I’ve got some great experience speaking and performing for audiences both large and small, so I don’t know why it was so hard for me to take the video plunge. The first day I decided to get in front of the camera I took about 4 takes. Then I dove right in to learning the video editing software. I didn’t even know I had editing software on my PC, so I was happy to make that discovery! It was pretty user friendly so I quickly got up to speed and produced a working edit. I uploaded it to YouTube so that Miss C could see it and give me a critique. She called me back and gave me some constructive criticism. In a nutshell, it wasn’t good. She didn’t think it was horrible, but it had some definite areas for improvement. After I had my husband watch it later that night and give me his feedback, I decided to remove the video and go back to the drawing board.   

The next day I got back in front of the camera and took about a dozen takes. I know there are some awesome bloopers in there, but I’m too chicken to post any of them (yet). Anyway, I re-edited the video with the new footage. It went together a lot faster than the day before because I had learned quite a bit when I had tinkered around with my first video flop. The second video passed the friend and hubby quality control test without hesitation, so I posted it onto YouTube. Later that night I finished up my bio and blog entry and submitted my application and video.

And now I’m officially in the running to be the next Verity Mom! If When I make it to the next stage, I will be asking for your votes. So, be ready to help a girl out. It would help our family immensely if I were able to bring home a little bacon. And, frankly, it sounds really fun!   

Here’s my video. Also, please take a minute to hop over to read my blog entry. Thanks in advance for your support!