Guitar Hero

I love to play Guitar Hero! I was first introduced to the game back when I lived in Ohio and was doing my practicum at the Hilliard Library. You can't work with teens and not hear about this game. Probably most of you have either played it or seen it played. Basically, the game controller is a guitar. The song plays, and a fingering chart scrolls across the tv screen. There are buttons for the frets and to strum. You try to get as many notes right as you can.

My brother Drew is an excellent guitar player. (Real guitar, not Guitar Hero guitar.) Whenever he comes over, he wants to play the game. Drew and Marquesas were at my apartment last week, so we broke it out. I played with Drew for a while. When I quit, Evan (my 3 year old nephew) asked if it was his turn next. So he "played" with Uncle Drew. (Really, Drew played on one player, and we didn't plug Evan's controller in. But he didn't know that, of course. He thought he was totally rocking out.) I thought these pictures were so cute. Evan is so tiny! He concentrates so hard on the game.

Here we have the instructional session. We had to explain to Evan that he had to hit the buttons with his right and left hands at the same time.

He looks like a pro, right?

And here he is all concentrated on playing the song right.

On another note... my neice Devyn (11 months old) was there also, and she LOVED Guitar Hero too. She danced to the music!

5,000,000 Christmas Lights!

Today I had to drive to Orlando to take and Drew and Marquesas to the airport. (They are spending Christmas in Europe.) Since I was going over that way, I decided to take Devyn along and stop at Disney's MGM Studios to see their giant Christmas light display. The lights are all taken from a family's house (or farm?) in Alabama, and now Disney puts them up on their movie set lot at MGM. The lights are choreographed to the music, as you can see in the short video below...

Here we are approaching the main Disney gate...

This is Devyn rocking out to a band. She loves music. She grabbed the try on her stroller to pull herself upright so she could bounce up and down to the music.

Here we are at the lights. She looked straight up pretty much the entire time. She also tried to catch the "snow" (soap bubbles).

We had a really good time!

I Get Paid to Do This! (Short Post)

So, here's how I spent my free time this evening...



I made nine little colorful felt penguins to use during storytime tomorrow while I tell a story about... you guessed it... penguins! I love doing this kind of stuff, and to top it all off... I get paid to do it. (Well, technically I was not getting paid to do what I did this evening at home, but I do this kind of stuff all the time at work too.)

IKEA!!!

They opened a new Ikea store in Orlando. I have never been to one before (although I have been getting their catalogs for years). There just has never been one close to where I live. Yesterday Valarie, Jill, Devyn, Alaina, and I all piled in my car and took the two hour drive to get there. It was great! That store is humongous, and they have everything set up in a showroom. I bought this great lamp. My plan is to place it so that it hangs over our dining room table.

After Ikea, we headed over to Disney World to play some mini golf. At Disney, near Epcot Center and the Wide World of Sports, they have this mini golf course that looks like a regular golf course. There are sand traps and "lakes." Perhaps the hardest part (at least for me) is that there is no border around the outside edge. If you hit your ball too hard (which I tend to do), then it goes off the course into the grass or bushes or rocks or whatever. We had a good time at both Ikea and playing golf.