The Count of Monte Cristo

I LOVE the Count of Monte Cristo. I love the movie, I love the book....and now I officially love the musical. :)

I heard that BYU was doing a musical version, but tickets got snapped up fast. I thought I would have to miss out. Then today Melissa facebook messaged me that they were releasing cheap tickets for a dress rehearsal tonight.

I read up a little bit on the show before we went. Turns out, it's an even bigger deal than I thought. It's a musical originally commissioned for a theater in Switzerland. It's done very well overseas, but this was the first time it's been performed in the US. 

Frank Wildhorn, the composer (a famous composer who's done many Broadway shows) was invited to perform a concert at BYU back in 2013 and to teach master classes to the BYU theater students. He was so impressed with the quality of their work, that he decided to do something essentially unheard of and debut his musical for the first time in America at BYU, before it goes to Broadway.

You can read more about it in this awesome article from the Deseret News: 

BYU readies English premiere of Broadway composer Frank Wildhorn's 'The Count of Monte Cristo'

Or you can watch Frank Wildhorn talk about it here: :)

Anyway, all of that really impressed me. I felt like I was getting to preview a Broadway show. And it felt very Broadway. (Okay, I've only ever seen Wicked, but still). The set and the special effects blew my mind. The actors were all super talented with amazing voices.

And the book was adapted beautifully into the musical, in a way that felt true to the original story. I loved it.

And I love that we got to see it on dress rehearsal night, even before the official opening night. We were some of the first people (on American soil, anyways) to see the musical! I loved it so much--I wouldn't be surprised if it's hugely popular once it hits Broadway. If you ever have a chance to see it, you should go!!

I think I'm going to reread the book.

The Tech Generation

Tonight I got to spend some time with my cousins. The six year old proudly showed me his new smart watch. I had no idea they made child versions of these things (much cheaper than the adult versions, I'm sure). I don't think he's learned how to tell time yet, but there he was, playing games on his watch.

His watch also comes with a camera. He showed me several videos he's taken of things going on in his life, like the time he hid his brother's dinosaur toys (in a treasure hunt game that his brother quite enjoyed) or the time his sister painted her bedroom wall.

We live in a super tech world. I'm used to seeing glimpses of younger people's lives--teenagers especially--in the videos and photos they take. But it was very interesting to see what a six year old would record. And all of these videos are taken from a six year old's height, reminding me of what it was like when everything and everyone is so much bigger than  you are.

Kids just get more and more tech savvy all the time. What are my kids going to be like?

Post-Christmas Blues

I always have a hard time letting Christmas go every year.

Of course I know that we can keep Christ as the center of our lives year round.

But there's nothing quite like the Christmas season. The lights and the decorations... the endless holiday parties... My year's longest break from working... Time home with my whole family...

There's so much build-up, and then, just like that, it's over. Back to work, back to Utah, back to a normal life without a break in sight... and then there's the fact that January is when the snow really hits. Winter becomes dreary instead of festive.

I guess I need to come up with some things to look forward to until we make it to spring! A Winter bucket list of sorts.

...

Of course, looking at that snow outside, I'm not super motivated to go out, so I guess this is gonna need to be an indoor bucket list... I'll get back to you on that.

Bunny Dog

Mom got a great idea. It's hard to send letters to Jason through the mail, but we can always use the missionary pouch system (letters sent to Salt Lake and carried to missions with the latest batch of missionaries). She discovered we are allowed to send postcards through the pouch system, so she's been working on custom postcards from Walgreens to send to him.

Here's a little preview of what he has to look forward to (his Easter postcard):

Word of the Year: Light

Melissa gave me a challenge to pick a word of the year.

A word to define 2015, to remind me of my goals and resolutions and help keep me on track.

After a lot of thought... I've decided my word will be "light."

Light means:

• Striving to grow closer to Heavenly Father

• Being optimistic about my future

• Learning new things, reading good books, visiting new places, all kinds of good things. :)

I think this is gonna be a good year.

Dream Come True

So ever since I went to see the Christmas lights in Temple Square, clear back in my freshman year, I wanted to come back with my family someday so they could see it too.

Mom's in town this week, so last night my sisters and I went up with her to Salt Lake City. We had dinner at the Lion House and then headed over to check out all the lights.

One more thing to check off my life bucket list! :)

Watch out... the Robots are coming for us

So you may have heard Stephen Hawking predict that artificial intelligence would destroy the world.

Well, I think it may have begun already. Tonight Melissa and I tried to watch a movie. She'd just set up my DVD player this weekend. She watched I Robot on Saturday, and it worked fine. She tested a few other DVDs, and they worked fine. We put Bride Wars in on Sunday just long enough for me to see that it was working.

Tonight, we put in about 20 DVDs before we got one to work. Melissa has a lot of burned ones, so we thought that was the problem. Nope! We tried an official DVD, no luck. We tried a million more movies, we tried to clean out the inside of the DVD player, nothing. Finally, Melissa stuck I Robot in since that's the only full movie she'd watched on it.

It worked.

And for the next 45 minutes, nothing else would, no matter how many disks we tried.

It was clear that the DVD player had taken on a life of its own and was going to kill us in our sleep.

Although, we did come up with an alternate theory eventually. We finally got it to play the first half an hour of Kate and Leopold. Have you seen it? Basic premise--guy from modern era time travels back to 1876, and accidentally gets followed home by the guy who invented the elevator. As soon as Elevator Guy gets to our time, all elevators in the present stop working.

So we're watching. Elevator Guy goes to our time. The movie switches to Meg Ryan, innocently waiting in an elevator, not realizing it's about to freeze...

and the movie dies.

So... hypothesis number two: Somewhere in the past, something has happened to the inventor of the DVD player.

On a completely unrelated note... can anyone recommend a good DVD Player?