Sleeping While You Shop

Daddy took Nathan to Walmart. This is what happens when you try to shop during your son's naptime! Love how daddy tried to pacify him with a pink ball...instead he ends up using it as a pillow! He's such a little comedian.

King Wannabe

He loves to pretend he's "king"!

So, is anybody watching American Idol? The girls were much much better than the guys...very disappointing. My favorites right now are Blake Lewis, Chris Sligh (love his personality & sense of humor), Melinda Doolittle, Stephanie Edwards and Lakisha Jones. Sundance was disappointing as I loved him in the first audition.

Future Pitcher?

Nathan loves throwing the skee balls @ Chuck E. Cheese. He's quite good at throwing with both of his hands. Dan takes him there once or twice a month to just play around and get out of the house.....very quiet there during the weekday.

Organ Concert

So we went to a wonderful organ concert at the Kimmel Center yesterday. The organist was Paul Jacobs, who is the chairman of the organ department @ Juiliard. He's only 26 and is the youngest faculty appt in the school's history. He's one of those musical geniuses: he studied piano when he was 6 and organ at 13. In 2000, he performed the complete organ works of J.S. Bach in 14 consecutive evenings in NY and Philly. He also performed an 18 hour non-stop marathon in Pittsburgh. What tops it all off is that he's memorized the complete organ works of Brahms, Franck, Durufle, most of Messiaen and Bach. I couldn't believe he did the whole concert completely memorized! We had box seats towards the front, so we were able to see all his fancy foot pedaling. He was at such ease at playing those difficult pieces....he definitely owned the instrument. We're really blessed as a city to have this beautiful instrument in the Kimmel Center as they don't have anything like this in NY. He showed just how much the organ can do with its beautiful sounds and dynamics. I'm definitely inspired. On a side note, my organ teacher was on the planning committee when they were building the organ in the Kimmel Center (Verizon Hall). The pics of the pipes are what it looks like in the hall.

I also learned something new too. He played a piece by Reger, "Fantasy & Fugue on BACH". He explained on the American music scale, it starts from A to G. Well on the German scale, it starts from A to H. H translated to us is our Bb. So this song was based on the notes B-A-C-H (Bb). It was beautiful and fun to hear those notes intertwined in the music.

CD Recommendations

Got some new CD's that I highly recommend:

Katharine McPhee - Katharine McPhee: A surprisingly great album. More R&B/pop with attitude, unlike some of the cheesy pop songs she sung on American Idol. Some of the songs sounded a bit influenced by Mariah Carey/Beyonce/Christina Aguilera. In my opinion, great vocals and good debut album minus 2 songs I'm not too crazy about (Kelly Clarkson is still the best out of all the American Idols). I still think she was robbed last season running against Taylor Hicks!

Daughtry - Daughtry: If you like the hard rock style, this is a great album. Very Creed like. You can hear his passion and emotion in each song. I still think the AI finale should have been between Chris Daughtry and Katharine McPhee, not Taylor Hicks!

Norah Jones - Not Too Late: If you like the jazz/pop genre, this is a great album. One warning though: her voice is so soothing that I started to fall asleep listening to her album at work. Listen to this in the comforts of your own home!

Chris Tomlin - See the Morning: If you don't already have this album, you need to get this! Powerful new praise songs that I'm sure some of you have already started to sing during your worship services (we've already sung half of them).