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Theo Tams and Tigana
2008-11-30 06:50:00 Mary took Tigana to see Theo Tams and the other Canadian Idol finalists tonight as Tigana's Christmas present... and so naturally -- given the charmed life my daughter leads -- they were invited backstage for a meet and greet with all four performers.Back row: Theo Tams, Amberlee Thiesen, Mitch MacDonald, Drew Wright; Front: TiganaAlmost looks like the four Idol finalists are Tigana's backup singers in this shot...
Theo Tams, Tigana, and Canadian Idol
2008-09-11 07:06:00 My 10 year old daughter follows Canadian Idol closely, hoping to go for it herself when she is old enough; so when UofL student Theo Tam made the final two, Mary sent me to line up for tickets for the hometown viewing of the final show. The university lent its new gym for the purpose, and we showed up early enough to be among the first through the door. Tigana ran ahead to get good seats for Mary, Kasia and I even though it was 90 minutes before the show and the gym was not yet crowded. I was pleased with Tigana?s choice of the front seats in the second section, a good spot to see and be seen, and about the best we could have gotten without being the very first in line. But after about 20 minutes the producer came over to us and asked if we would move to the section signed as reserved for Tam friends and family. We were pleasantly, though not very, surprised: yet again, the ?cuteness factor? had worked in our favor, as the producers selected Kasia and Tigana to be front and center ...
Road Trip to Vancouver
2008-08-21 14:42:00 Desperately needing a break after a long and stressful period dealing with estate matters, we packed up the (new to us) van and drove out to Vancouver, via overnight stops in Jasper and the Sun Peaks Resort near Valemont. Jasper was pleasant, the dining at Sun Peaks even better, though Mary's on-going tooth ache somewhat detracted from the experience for her. We took the driving in easy stages, stopping for a couple of hours at the lake in Hope (photos above and below) and a couple of other scenic views to make the trip seem more like part of our holidays rather than just a way of getting to Vancouver.This display at the tourist info center in Valemount (below) suggests to me that beavers can be terribly indecisive....
Shakespeare and Edmonton School of Ballet
2008-08-17 05:30:00 Having to spend much of the summer in Edmonton to take care of my mother and to attend to my brother?s estate, we tried to make the best of it by registering the girls in appropriate summer camps. The first was Tigana's participation in the Free Will Players "Shakespeare in the Park" week-long, half-day camp. It was well done and we appreciated the attempt to introduce Shakespeare to youngsters. The theme of this year's camp was "Shakespeare's Clowns", with the children doing bits from "As You Like It" (probably a good choice, since the other play they were doing was Richard III.) We all enjoyed attending the matinee performance of As You Like It, which was very well done; I was disappointed by the low turn out for this excellent production, but am told mutinees are often sparsely attended but that night time audiences were quite satisfactory. The second was the Edmonton School of Ballet's intensive summer camps. These ran for two weeks, culminating in a performance at the Meyer...
Cruise: Maui: Whale Watching
2007-12-18 05:18:00 Took Prince Kuhio Maui-Molokai whale watching tour. The tour shuttles arrived at the dock at the precise moment scheduled, and the rest of the trip was equally efficient. The crew appeared genuinely interested in both whales and our safety; the onboard concession was dirt cheap and so good Kasia ate two hotdog combos, an unheard of intake at a single sitting, and that after a good sized breakfast. The tour started with an orientation by the company?s naturalist, Katie, who was superb! I learned more about humpbacks in that 15 minutes than from any PBS special, and somehow seeing the whale?s tail spread out before you in person has a lot more impact than seeing something on TV. There were also two volunteers from the Whale Sanctuary on board to assist the naturalist, and they did a great job of floating around the boat answering questions as they occurred to us, as Katie provided intermittent commentary over the speaker system. Both of the volunteers were drawn to Tigana?s fanaticism...
Oahu: Penguins
2007-12-11 00:48:00 For weeks prior to the trip, Mary had promised Tigana and Kasia the opportunity to see the Penguins in Hawaii, in reference to the movie Surf?s Up, at which I would invariably protest that there were no penguins in Hawaii, that they lived in Antarctica, and that their mom was pulling their leg. Mom would then argue back with the usual, ?who you going to believe, me or Dad?? shtick, to the bemused amusement of all involved. At Turtle Bay, Mary presented the kids with two toy penguins to further confuse the issue, implying that these were the promised penguins. Of course, the setup was based on Mary?s Internet research that the Hilton Hawaiian Village had a colony of penguins within its grounds. Thus, we conspired to find out where the penguins were located and to maneuver the kids to the compound at feeding time. It worked great (see photo of Tigana?s reaction.)Turns out that only two species of penguins actually live at the south pole, and the others live in South Africa and South A...
Oahu: Sharks
2007-12-10 23:56:00 Tigana has long been fascinated by sharks, buying and reading every book available on the topic. Her interest in shark conservation was greatly heightened by seeing Shark Water, a documentary she highly recommends to anyone who will listen. So when Mary realized that there was an opportunity to see sharks in Hawaii, she arranged for Tigana to go on a shark encounter. Tigana and mom took a boat out to a spot in international waters at 6AM (when waters are supposedly calmest and sightings the best, but a voyage Mary describes as rollercoaster-like) where the boat lowered a shark cage and everyone doned snorkels and climbed in. Then the guys on the boat throw out fish for bait, and approximately 60 sandbar and galapagos sharks showed up, swimming right up to and banging into the shark cage. Mary and Tigana going into shark cage somewhere off the northern coast of Oahu.Tigana in shark cage as shark swims by.A few of the 60 or so sharks that swarmed round the cage.
Halloween
2007-11-02 06:23:00 Kasia (as unicorn, sans head portion), Tigan's friend Emily (as dead cheerleader), and Tigana (as Hippie).
Tigana gitti i?ler bitti
2007-09-25 12:59:00 Ertu?rul Sa?lam, Frans?z hocan?n vazgeçemedi?i Baki ve Burak’a sadece iki?er maçta ?ans tan?d?. Be?ikta?’?n Tigana ile yollar?n? ay?rmas? belki de en çok Baki ve Burak’? üzdü. Geçen sezon tak?m?n de?i?mez isimleri aras?nda yer alan iki futbolcu, Ertu?rul Sa?lam döneminde formaya hasret kald?. Be?ikta?, Sa?lam yönetiminde 12 resmi maça ç?karken; Burak ve Baki sadece ikisinde forma ...
By: iddaa tahminleri
Tigana on Front Page
2007-07-12 05:57:00 Photo by David RossiterIn addition to this photo on the front cover of the Lethbridge Herald, Tigana was also interviewed on CTV news yesterday on the space camp she is attending. Since she had her picture in the paper just last week, and this is now the fourth time she has had her photo in the paper, she is slightly insufferable. So where was space camp when we were kids, that's what I want to know...
Mary Featured in Lethbridge Herald
2007-07-01 05:45:00 Photo by David RossiterMary was the feature interview on the cover of the Careers Section of the Lethbridge Herald today... The headline was "Are You a Workaholic"; story was by Dave Mabell. It's currently on-line full text at the Herald site, if you care to read it, and if it is still up when you read this post.Mary was reasonably pleased with how it turned out, felt the reporter was professional and competent. One is always a little nervous how the press is going to report something one is involved in, but this came out more or less intact. (Mary felt the punchline was missing -- that the last line of the story quoting Tigana missed that 'this was a bad thing'. But close enough.)
Tigana Art
2007-05-25 04:12:00 Kasia, our 3.5 year old, is crazy for My Little Pony. Her mother has therefore redone her bedroom with an My Little Pony wall paper border and stick ons. Tigana, not to be out done, contributed this portrait of a pony on Kasia's blackboard.
The Relative Merits of Saving the World
2007-05-08 06:37:00 I spent most of last night fighting off alien invaders. I am pleased to say that I was successful in defending Earth. But I must admit a certain disappointment upon waking to discover that my wife and children were not in awe of my feats of daring-do in protecting our city. I may have gone so far as to mention to my wife that I deserved some special consideration this morning for saving Earth.Her response: "I dreamt that I took has to take both Tigana and Kasia to the dentist."Me: "Okay, you win."
More lunch time art
2007-03-26 23:12:00 Tigana's serviette artTigana produced this "portrait of a young girl in dress with a bow" while we were waiting for our order at East Side Mario's the other day. Photo is from my cell phone again, so little blurry, but I think you can make it out.
Kasia Sings the Blues
2007-03-14 04:53:00 (Again, apologies to Googlers looking for that Polish singer....)Kasia has started to sing original compositions about her life -- commentary on events as they unfold. For example, on the way to day care in the morning, we often get this:Oh, I don't wanna go to school,Don't wanna go to schoolDon't wanna go to school,Oh, don't wanna go to school today.The thing is, it comes across as the Blues, not as whinning or complaining, or as an actual request not to go to school. (She actually seems okay with day care when she gets there and enjoys being with her friends.) She just sings her stream of consciousness, and it often has this rythmic repetition and slight melancoly, as if she's been listening and preforming the Blues for years. But once out of her car seat, it's all smiles and and three year-old giggles.What's fascinating to me is that Kasia's Blues style is developing in contrast to Tigana's more musical theater and country tendencies -- perhaps reminiscent of Carrie Unde...
Ned, Still Under the Bed
2007-01-08 07:08:00 Well, we had been interested to see if Tigana's love of the stage would survive 9 performances of the same play, but she came through as enthusiastic as ever. Indeed, she was a little depressed it was over. Most interesting point for Tigana was a performance we weren't at, where one of the lead actors fell ill and had to be replaced at the last second...Jeremy, who plays the head bed bug, stepped in to the title role, and the stage manager stepped in as head bed bug... but there were apparently a couple of spots where in the ensuing confusion, that the villain ended up playing off bed bug Tigana rather than the stage manager, who was still running the lights and sound cues.... Friends of ours in the audience later told us, "I had no idea from what you'd said that Tigana had such a major role." News to us too!But the whole experience was great for Tigana...second time in front of a paying audience, but first time for an actual "run", of which she was in 9 performances; first time...
Ned, What's Under Your Bed?
2006-12-27 05:29:00 ...is a play for children by Jeremy Mason which had its premiere performance today. I enjoyed the performance immensely, which I say quite aside from the obvious bias that Tigana was cast as one of the bedbugs. I was already impressed with Mason (and fellow actors Andy Jenkins and Jamie Dunsdon) as instructors at the Empire Theater summer drama camps, and as writers/actors in the Empire Theater's summer series plays. I had been struck by how much more effective this camp had been for Tigana than some of the others she had attended. Part of that was the camp's structure, which incorporated the children's performances into a Vaudville night along with skits and musical numbers by adult performers -- so that kids got to perform in front of a real paying audience, rather than just a room full of relatives, as is the usual conclusion of these sorts of summer camps. Furthermore, Tigana had the opportunity of going to the Empire Theater's summer plays and seeing her instructors actuall...
The Skating Party
2006-12-24 06:55:00 My daughter's school organized a skating party during school hours in the run up to Christmas break. I volunteered as one of several parent drivers for this field trip, a short car ride to the nearby rink. My daughter, and others, had to borrow skates from parents who loaned pairs their own children had outgrown, or not yet grown into; the school promised to provide hockey helmets for those who did not have them, which included our daughter. (School Board regulations required that every student have a hockey helmet; bicycle helmets were deemed insufficient.) My daughter had had skates, but outgrown them and had chosen to do drama and gymnastics this term, rather than skating lessons, so we hadn't gotten around to replacing them.When we arrived at the rink, I helped my daughter and another girl into their borrowed skates, then went in search of helmets. The rink staff pointed out that they did not have a key to the school locker that contained the helmets; the schools staff had ass...
Tigana and Robert Munsch
2006-12-09 15:29:07 Took Tigana to see Robert Munsch reading tonight at the Yates Theater. This was our third Munsch reading, having previously seen him in Halifax and at the University in Lethbridge. I thought he ws strating to look older and bit tired at the strt of the reading, but he gathered momentum as the show progressed, and I always enjoy hearing the stories about how the stories came about. Munsch, as is his standard procedure, invited kids from the first few rows to either offer their names to be substituted into this or tht story, or occasionally to join him on stage while he told the story. Tigana inevitably put up her hand to be chosen, but I pointed out to her that since we were way back in row H, she might as well not bother. "No problem," she says, and calmly walks down, and then onto the stage. "Tigana, get back here!" I whisper shout, as Munsch, says, "Who would like to volunteer for...?" He turns and sees Tigana walking onto the stage. "Ah", he says, "Perhaps this young lady who is...
Tigana learns about Meteghan
2006-12-09 15:29:07 has shown up in Google already, but ranked quite low -- page 11 for "Meteghan" and page 13 for "Meteghan Nova Scotia" and page 8 for "Acadians". I'm not sure teachers will persevere through pages of houses for sale listings or classified ad pages to find my curriculum resource. It does a little better on Yahoo --Page 5 (#41) for "Meteghan"; but then only #70 for "Acadians". Hopefully, the site will rise as social studies sites start to list it and teachers click on it enough to increase traffic so Google and Yahoo promote it, so that more teachers find it, and so allowing the site to slowly spiral up. But feel free to link to it in your blogs etc to strt driving it up now.... |
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