Photos, Killer Plants, and a Weekend Getaway

So this has been an eventful week! Wednesday night we had a maternity photo shoot done by Maria at Frozen Reflections, who did our photo shoot from last Spring. It was fun...Jay didn't wear much. We will have some nice pictures for various baby albums and scrapbooks now, plus a few that only arty folk like us will see.

Thursday night, after a frustrating day at work, was seeing my favorite musical Little Shop of Horrors done by the local high school. A couple guys from our Youth Group were involved in the production, as well. For a high school production, they did a fantastic job, even better then the rendition I saw at UofM. It was nice to see it done with a real talking plant, rather than a giant pod with a girl in a green leotard coming out. It reminded me of how brilliant the lyrics are in that show, and there were extra songs not included in the movie that were just as good. I found myself almost tearing up during 'Somewhere That's Green'...the 50s references are awesome and make it nostalgic but classic. The one song I noticed they cut was 'Mean Green Mother' which was fine, because it's not a very strong song. It works well in the movie, but I think given the dark tone of the play near the end it would have seemed out of place, so I'm glad they cut it. Now I want to watch the movie again...and again.

...and again.

Now we are in Victoria and you are not, unless you live here, hi.....for a much-needed getaway. Not sure what we're going to do today, except eat at Chandlers and have tea, shop, etc. whatever. Ok time to go.

That's all she wrote

Apparently Jay is telling me she's going to out-blog me, so I guess I'd better starting updating this site more...not sure what I get if I win, but I bet it's good.

Anyway, for all intents and purposes, the book is DONE! Or at least there is no more new material to be written or pictures to take. Now begins the process of editing, writing up bibliographies and whatnot, fine tuning kind of stuff, and also preparing movies for the CD that comes with it. Now perhaps I can actually start to watch movies, hang out with Jay and have a social life. Pretty overwhelming that all of this stuff I've been doing is going to be out there being read by thousands of people I may never meet. But again, it's kind of like this blog, if anyone reads it.

Today I need to clean up all of the mess I've left around the house while working on books and puppets. This is why we need a big house so I can have my own workshop for this kind of stuff. Here is a sneak preview of some of the puppets I've built to include in the book.

I've been finally getting to feel the baby kick, which is neat. Doesn't always work, she tends to stop when I put my hand there expecting to feel something. Tricky little thing. Sounds like trouble. I don't believe in karma, but I think there might be something to that 'what goes around comes around' theory when it comes to having children. But that's life I guess. All the good stuff about us will be there too. We've already been wondering which characteristics our kids will have. Guess we find out in about 15 weeks or so!

Ariel in 3D!

Meet Ariel Lynn Priebe...in eye-popping 3D!

After technical difficulties during our first visit, we returned to get the rest of our sneak-peek at our little girl. This time the technical difficulties were presented not by their equipment, but by the baby, who had her back turned most of the time. Jay had to eat chocolate and run up and downstairs to see if it would coax our little bean sprout to turn around. After much prodding, we did manage to get a good enough profile so we could get some shots of her face, before she turned around again. Think this will be a difficult child?

Anyway, this is all very exciting and we can't wait to see her leave her womb service hotel to enter the real world. Here's her feet! She got long legs like Daddy.

In other news, I'm taking a few days off work to finish my book and build puppets, and enjoy the Easter weekend activities with family. Last night we finished up a successful wire armature puppet, and over the next few days will be attempting a latex build-up character. I recently discovered the joys of YouTube and have posted some of my students' work online, and it's a big hit over at the StopMotionAnimation.com message board.

Back to writing...