Home from Canada. Insanely busy!

26 hours and counting until we fly away for our Spring Break cruise to the Caribbean!
(Aruba's prediction for Tuesday: 89 degrees)
I have yet to start packing and am instead frantically working away before deserting my friends and coworkers with a project theoretically going online next Friday. The only person packed here is Mali, our little planner.
Not so little anymore, the nurse measured her at 5'3" yesterday, so it's official: she is as tall as Susy now. Mali also got her eyes checked, and it was like a cartoon where the character reads the eye-chart's bottom line, which is the tiny little copyright notice at the bottom. Mali has extraordinary vision. She must have gotten that from her grandfather.
Mali was visiting the doctor to investigate a problem on her forehead. A small black spec that looks like a blackhead, but has taken up permanent residence and is actually under the skin, is really a small piece of rubberized turf field. My theory is that she must have had it driven into her forehead on a header during a game or practice. We will see a dermatologist after our vacation.

More new news below: Andrew's track meet! Mali's report card! Susy's review! My product delivery to Canada! It's all Good!!!!!

Holidays Begin! and Jesus Christ, Superstar

The kids are out of school until January 7th! They are upstairs watching a Charlie Brown Christmas right now. Susy's off until January 2nd. I'm not done until tomorrow, but then I will hopefully be off until the 7th too. WooHoo!

Last night we stopped for Thai food on our way downtown to see Jesus Christ, Superstar at the Schnitzer Concert Hall. The Thai food was the highlight of the evening, with lots of laughing and some delicious food. We split two orders of their wonderful salad rolls and an order of the spicy eggplant with chicken. Andrew ate the salad rolls and an order of fried won tons.
JCS was okay. The kids were less than thrilled with it in general, though Mali liked the King Herod/Elvis scene, and the second to last one with the heavenly cool Judas and the dancing girls.
Paul (we didn't know they went too) summed it up this morning by saying at the start it looked like they needed two more dress rehearsals. The start was a little shaky, but Susy and my biggest problem was with the lead. Ted Neeley played Jesus in the movie - thirty-five years ago. Apparently this is his farewell-to-the-role tour. Possibly he should have bowed out after his last national tour in the 90's. Crispin Corey (thanks, Bette!) Glover, of Living Color, was great as Judas, and the rest of the cast did well. I just kept wishing that we'd gotten an understudy for the big Jesus role. Neeley only nailed it when coming across as a 70's heavy metal rocker, which isn't something we ever appreciated. The rest of the time his voice was just old and grating.
Susy and I do love the music, but there were a number of miscues with microphones and the sound quality in general was pretty spotty. I remember similar problems when we saw an uninspired tour of Cats at Iowa State in 1987. We saw Les Mis in London in the 90's and were blown away by how good it all was. I think we'll stick to the Broadway shows on Broadway or in London.