Last Sunday was the talent show at our church. It was quite a show. There were over 20 kids performing during the show. Madeline sang "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" and she wasn't one ounce shy about it. Mackliney read his short story (Josh the Polar Bear) that was published last year in the Williamson County AM paper. He read it well, but opened with the line "my mom told me I have to read this, so that's what I'm doing".....it got a good laugh from everyone....Well at least he listens to his mom sometimes. Andrew played "Red Wing" on his violin/fiddle, and also played "We're all in this Together" on the piano. That one is a work in progress, but he should have it down by the piano recittal at the end of May.

This coming Saturday (4/28) will be a busy day for us, too. I have to fly to San Antonio for the weekend on business, so I'm going to miss the fun.

• Andrew is in the regional finals with his pinewood derby car.....he got second in his pack overall, so he advanced to the regionals at the Mall on Saturday morning.
• Later in the afternoon, Andrew is playing with the "Franklin Fiddlers" at the Main Street Festival in Franklin. They are on the main stage this year. He has several songs he is going to play, and he's even singing too.
• Saturday evening Andrew has his violin recittal at the Mercantile restaurant in Franklin.

Andrew is going to be worn out..............oh and just to add some more chaos to the mix......Madeline has a birthday party to attend somewhere in the middle of all that.

Well that's all for now. I'll keep you posted on how the events go. Maybe I'll even get a little crazy and put some pictures on the site.....

I attended a business luncheon with my CFMA group. We had a guest speaker come and give a speech on effective listening. He was quite entertaining.......he began with a story about him taking Tango lessons........he took several lessons and finally his instructor told him he would now have to go practice. So off he went to a ballroom dancing event.......he approached a lady that he said had gotten seperated from the herd, and asked her to dance. She accepted. He was very nervous...he concentrated on his footwork, making the frame, kept with the beat of the music, etc.....and although he made many mistakes, he eventually got through the dance. At the end the young lady stated, "the words to that song were beautiful weren't they."......."Words??" he said. He didn't even hear the words............what aren't you hearing??? There are often warnings to all bad events in life......the Titanic, Enron, WorldCom, Columbine, Va Tech, etc. they all had warnings.........we just need to listen. The presentation was very good, and was a good perspective on something most people were never taught how to do.

What I took away from the discussion though was something different......leading up to his story on Tango dancing, he said that the reason he wanted to learn the Tango was because of the movie "Scent of a Woman".........after he saw the movie he was inspired by the Tango scene so much that he added the Tango to his "Life's to do list"...................I thought, you know that is a great idea........everyone should have a life's to do list. So after a little thought I started my list.....in no particular order

• Take a tour of Alaska
• Visit the Grand Canyon
• Raft the Salmon River
• See a broadway musical in NYC with my wife and kids
• Take a hot air balloon ride at sunrise
• Walk Madeline down the aisle
• Learn to play a musical instrument (if you know me that will be a hard one to cross off, but Andrew has such a gift and I'd love to play a song with him someday)
• Visit the Lourve
• Hike the A.T. (I'd like to be a thru-hiker, but 5 months will eat up quite a few vacation days......being a section hiker may be more realistic)
• Lead 50 people to Christ (whoa that seems like alot.....but if I live to be 86, one a year isn't too hard is it? And I think I can already knock two (Mack and Andrew) off the list.
• Take up woodworking and be as good as my grandfather was.
• Go on a mission trip with Andrea and the kids

Well that's a good start, I better get busy.