The Haunted Mansion -- Jeppson Style

Ok, there was a Uke contest where you could play a Disney song from a Disney movie and win 2 tickets to Disney World! So in thinking of the song I wanted to do I kept thinking of Disney ride songs. I asked if I could do a ride song and he said no problem. So... me and the kids did Grim Grinning Ghosts from the Haunted Mansion! It was a blast!!! I think the video ended up being about as long as the actual ride, but we had a lot of fun making it! I may have to do an out-take reel some time because there are some funny little things that happened... including a break down from Callie when she decided Ruby was too scary... haha!

The contest ends Sunday night... fingers crossed!

Oh, Lettie!

Lettie likes to wear headbands. But she does not look in the mirror when she puts them on. There has been many a time I have the kids rounded up to go to the bus and turn around to see this...
And to add insult to injury, often the head band does not match at all!

But it is what makes her Lettie... she is an endearing, sweet, whimsical girl!

BTW: Sorry for only having Tomfooleries... we have been working on a epic rendition of a Disney song for a Ukulele contest for 2 tickets to Disney. I am going to put it together tonight and tommorrow and will post it here. We had costumes, lighting, camera angles, music, and voice over to put together. It should be EPIC!

In Mim on the Uke News:

Before I show you this video I guess I should let you know this little tidbit (or you will be confused):

On Ukulele Underground my screen name is Mim. Like Mad Madame Mim on the Sword in the Stone. I thought it would be fun and I created a cute little avatar of Mad Madame Mim carrying a Uke around...

That being said... I never put my name in my signature, so people just refer to me as Mim... so I just owned it and for fun that is sort of my "Uke name".

Ok... now that I have word-ily prefaced this post... they have contests on this site and when I am bored and if I have time I will enter them. This is my first one. This one I put off until the last possible hour... LITERALLY! It was called Random Places Uke'in and you were supposed to play a series of chords twice over in Random Places to Enter and submit it by midnight Valentines Day. I submitted mine 5 min shy of the deadline. Then Krabbers was going to come up with a Random way to pick the winner:

Here is his video to set up the contest (mighty cute idea if I do say so myself):



I submitted this:


He compiled everyone's submissions into this:


And here is where he chooses the winners (if you have a hard time knowing which one was me... he calls me the "running machine girl" and I am on the left bottom) I would tell you if I won or not but that would spoil the fun of cheering on my sticky note!:

I think the coolest thing is how many countries all these submissions come from! We are one international group of crazy Ukers!

Better Late than Never

Here are some of the pictures I took from the

Annual

Jeppson Family

nativity!

This year there were so many kids that we even had some "stable" animals!

Getting this many kids to look in the same direction at one time was a chore,

but we got some cute shots!

My favorite are the individual and small group shots!

The shepheard and wise men look cool and suave!

Mary and Joseph are the sweetest!

And the picture of angel Ruby trying to tame the wild angel Ollie is priceless!

The best Snow Hill!

The Friday that school was getting out for winter break, the weather was calling for some good snowfall in the mountains. So, Levi packed up the kids and headed to the mountains before the weather got to bad to get there. Well, he almost got stuck in the snow (a whole other story) but he made it to my parents house and the kids had a weekend of fun in the snow!


It worked out well because I had a kid-free house to wrap presents in without having to hide anything... nice! But for awhile there I was afraid I would not have them home for Christmas!

Levi had to put a shovel in the middle of the hill to help the kids keep perspective on the hill and know where the road in the middle of the hill was because it is bumpy there! The girls did not sled that much, but the boys were all about the snow!

A Stop Along the Way

On our way down to Florida, we made a few Geocachine stops!

This was by far my favorite!

This is the Smallest Church in America.

Or so they claim. I think there are a few others that claim that fame as well.

This one was built in 1950 by Agnes Harper and it is deeded to Jesus Christ.

It sits back from the road in a beautiful grove of mature trees dripping with spanish moss!
The inside is only 10 x 15 feet. People leave messages, pictures of loved ones, and prayers. It is very well taken care of and they ask you to make sure the light is off when you leave.
It is really a very sweet little spot to stop.

Workplace Hazards!

Getting Caught Red Handed!

This happens a lot more often than I care to admit! This particular one is Strawberry Shortcake... a nice neon red! The worst is the Blue Raspberry... which is above my head and if a little flavor goes astray sometimes it will make a blue vein-like line down my arm. These colored hand and/or veins last for about a day no matter how hard you scrub. The worse is a yellow concentrate because that just looks "off" to have neon yellow hands.

Valentine's Day is HARD WORK!

OK... only 3 of my kids are in school right now... but getting all those Valentines ready was exhausting! And 2 are home schooled! What if all 5 had to do them?!?

The good news... I bought some Valentines end-of-season last year and the kids LOVED them... so I did not even need to buy some!

The bad news... they were "make-your-own" kits, so they had to put them together!

The good news... they really enjoyed doing it.

The bad news... it really made a mess, took a long time, and after an hour they were over it.

The good news... I had some easy Pirates ones that they wanted to give the boys in their classroom.

The bad news... I had to put the little tattoos in them and sometimes the Valentines would rip and it was just cumbersome for the mommy!

The good news... the kids are old enough to write the names themselves.

The bad news... there are 3 of them, 1 of me, and they seemed to be impatient that I could not get the tattoos in them as fast as they were writing the names.

The good news... Nolan is a doll and sat right down and helped Ruby out with hers the whole time. They were a cute team! And the babies stayed away which is a modern-day miracle!

The other good news... they had a lot of fun and I had a really good time with them (once I gave them the "how many kids are there? how many mommies are there? Cut me some slack!" speech!) They would all ask me to do things at the same time and did not seem to understand I could not do 3 things at once for their valentines AND make dinner at the same time! Ha!

Here they are with their supplies spread out!
Lettie's teacher did not send a name list home... she just told you how many boys and how many girls! The woman is a genius!!!

Ruby looking over the name list as Nolan licks an envelope. Good thing their handwriting looks the same (very messy). You could not tell who wrote which! They would each talk about who they were making valentines for and cross the names off the list. Talk about cooperation.

Silas took his work very seriously and he was very thoughtful about which Valentine he picked out for which person. He is a sweetie!

He puts up with so much...

I call Levi more "socially conscious" than myself...
in other words... my goofball meter is at like a 10, while his is at let's say a 6.

On our way down to Florida for our anniversary trip in December we stopped at some Geocaches along the way. This one was in the woods off the interstate in South Carolina and we never found it. But I did find this beautiful hanging vegitation that looked like hair... so... I put it on my head and enjoyed my long locks on the hike back to the van. With cars passing and everything...
Levi may be more socially conscious... but he is also a good sport and took this picture of me with my long "natural" hair! He is a good man... he puts up with me!

Cue the "pucker faces"!

Jovie came up to Levi with the bottle of lemon juice from the fridge wanting some.

What is a dad to do?

Give her what she wants of course!

Callie and Lettie got into the action as well. Crazy girls! They did not like it, but kept coming back for more. Maybe it was the sour sensation, maybe it was feeling like they conquered something... but whatever the reason, it led to some great pucker-faced pictures!

My first Uke Jam...

ROCKED!

At first I was afraid no one was going to come and I suddenly had a bunch of customers and only 1 uke player that I did not have any time to jam with. But there really was no reason to panick. It was only like 5 min. after start time. And then... the ukuleles started rolling in...

We ended up with about 6 ukes, 2 guitars, a trumpet, with some tambourine and maraca thrown in there... we played a group Somewhere Over the Rainbow... tried out a few more songs... and at some point we ended up singing some Latin music... which sounded really good with the trumpet!

Some random tidbits:

A lady showed up because she is looking for a Uke player to play Somewhere Over the Rainbow as she walks down the isle. (random, but cool, great people)

We had a local young person come and get a quick beginner lesson from our friend Jeff and she stayed and played a few songs... which was really cool! I can tell she enjoyed it! (Thanks Jeff)

And we have some great ideas and a good base to make the next jam even better! (some organized chaos without losing the 'jam' part)

I thought my shop would not be busy because the weather is crap... and for some reason we were packed! (not that I am complaining)

We got a few new people on the underground! (gotta spread the UkuleleUnderground.com love)

We are now going to meet every first Saturday! (and I already can't wait)

I wish I got more pictures and video... but I seriously was so darn busy! It was like a snow explosion!!! But here are a few: