Another rainy November day!

No matter, we're leaving for sunny Mexico in exactly 14 days. Yay!

Last night Lorenzo and I sat in his car parked on Hastings St. and talked for an hour. This is what it's come to if we want to have an uninterrupted conversation. The kids are driving us nuts. So we've decided that the only way to cope with three teenagers on this vacation is to keep ourselves in a constant state of mild inebriation...

Anyway, I have to share this...my 18 year-old niece was singing at a club in Vancouver this evening. As luck would have it, tonight was also the high school Christmas concert in which our younger son was scheduled to play drums in the band. He came home sick and was laid out on the couch. Lorenzo really wanted to see our niece sing, so he suggested (with barely contained eagerness) that perhaps he was too sick to perform; he offered to call the band teacher and explain. (I know this makes us sound like awful parents, but what the hell - we're music lovers.)

My son, with a cloth on his head and his eyes closed, groaned - "No Dad...I can't let them down. They're counting me." Because what would a Christmas concert be without our son alternating between the timpani and the cow bell on "It's a Marshmallow World" ?

Luckily, he is enough of a musician to know that one of us needed to see his cousin sing. He's very proud of her. So my brother and I headed down to the Railway Club to see his lovely daughter perform.

She's not even old enough to be playing in clubs yet, but she's already a remarkably talented young woman. She sang very well tonight, but I wasn't able to record anything. Here is a link from when she was in high school. So proud of my pretty little Madeline....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMpW_QduN9I