I'm Millstream-ing of a White Christmas

Ain't no party like a Millstream party! And that's especially true at Christmas time.

It was the annual ward Christmas party Thursday night, and it definitely helped to get me to start thinking about the Christmas season and into the holiday mood. I actually got to enjoy this year's festivities, too, which is nice; last year, while taking part in the Improv show/entertainment, I really didn't get to do that too much.

In addition to being fed a good meal, we were treated to a plethora of entertainment acts throughout the evening, including Allison and Scott's violin duet and several numbers by the Harmony Sisters, of whom I am a proud groupie:


Okay - so, I'm, like, old enough to be their older brother. Whatever!

Yours truly contributed with another dramatic reading, this time of "'Twas the Night before Christmas" - in Spanglish. If you missed it, well - yeah, you pretty much missed out.

In addition, the bishopric gave each of us a nice CD to listen to. I also discovered what is possibly the greatest dessert I have ever tasted - pumpkin pie cheesecake, combining two of my favorite foods.

Great times were had by all.

Voyaging back to Narnia

Thursday night/Friday morning, Ben, Adi, and I ventured to the Megaplex 12 at the Gateway for the midnight premiere of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the latest film entry into the series by C.S. Lewis.

It was, in a word, awesome. It is a faithful adaptation of the book (one of my favorites in the Narnia series), and, fortunately, it is not padded (and, therefore, not as long) as Prince Caspian was. The child actors - particularly Will Poulter, who joins the cast as the Pevensies' cousin, Eustace Scrubb - once again do a fantastic job, and Simon Pegg steals the show as the voice of Reepicheep the mouse.


Yes, I'm a nerd. I grew up with the books, and it's great to finally see them get the big screen adaptations they deserve.

I hope you all get a chance to see Voyage of the Dawn Treader once or twice, particularly considering the fact that if this film doesn't do well at the box office, there may not be a Silver Chair movie in one or two more years. And that would be a darn shame.

I think we can all agree that it's preferrable to any more Twilight movies.

FHE Dance Party '10

It had been more than a year since our ward's last dance, but fortunately that drought came to an end last night.

For our FHE activity, a brave group of souls and I gathered in the gym for a Christmas-time (though not necessarily Christmas-themed) dance. And it was a blast.

Brian, MaryAnne, and I took turns as the evening's D.J., playing everything from "The Electric Slide" to Kenny Loggins's "Footloose" (a must-have at any dance held in Utah). One of my favorite moments of the evening was Steve and Brian's interpretive dance to Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'," of which I managed to capture a photo:


The photo doesn't really do it justice, but suffice me to say that it was quite entertaining.

Good times were had by all.

Grow-vember Comes to an End

November 2010 is now a thing of the past, and that also brings Grow-vember to an end.

What, exactly, is Grow-vember? you ask?

Basically, if you haven't already guessed, it is an annual challenge and/or contest, participated in by guys who really have nothing better to do (i.e. me, right now), to begin the month clean shaven (something I did for Halloween, as part of my Samwise Gamgee costume) and then grow out the facial hair all month long.

Here is a picture of my beard, as of this morning:


Try not to be too jealous.

My Dinner with Luke

For his upcoming birthday, I took out my soon-to-be-five-year-old nephew Luke to lunch today and got to spend a good deal of the afternoon with him. Since Luke's parents and older sister, Jenna, were attending the BYU vs. Utah football game at the time, he and Kira were up at Mike and Jana's home in Layton, so I picked him up there.

For lunch, Luke selected McDonald's as his restaurant of choice, and we found our way to the nearest one. His Happy Meal included an Optimus Prime toy, with which he was pleased:


After we finished eating, I waited as he burned off those excess calories and some of that extra energy on the playground.

Following lunch, we headed over to Target so he could pick out his own present. Since this was all taking place during the middle of the big football game, we listened to it on the radio as we traveled - me wearing BYU colors, and Luke wearing his U. of U. sweater. (I couldn't help but wonder, in fact, whether the people who saw us, an odd couple under the circumstances, thought I had kidnapped the kid.)

For a five-year-old, Luke certainly knows what's going on in football and knows who plays for his team. When Christopher caught a Ute touchdown in the fourth quarter, in fact, he asked me, "Is that one of our guys?" I told him that it was.

Once we arrived at the store, Luke selected some Power Miners Legoes. I'm not really familiar with this new branch of the Legoes empire, but they're Legoes - need I say more? Luke is amassing quite a large collection of them.


Luke's a great kid, and I enjoyed getting to spend some one-on-one time with my nephew.

Turkey Day 2010

It was another enjoyable Thanksgiving holiday for the Plowman clan today, as my parents, all of my siblings and their families, and I, as well as Adi and a couple of our good friends (namely, Bryan and Ryan, who were away from their own families for one reason or another), gathered together to eat a delicious and plentiful meal.

The candied yams - which I developed an immunity against in Peru - have, in fact, now become one of my favorite dishes. (I may, in fact, have been the only one eating them.) Jana's perfectly prepared dish of yams was very tasty:


For dinner, Grandma and Grandpa sat at one table with most of the grandkids, while the rest of us assembled at the other:



There was also plenty of good NFL football to watch on the TV, and most of the kids went sledding on the hill over at Hannah Holbrook Elementary.




We took advantage of the family gathering opportunity to celebrate Luke’s fifth birthday, which falls on Monday. Several people chipped in and bought him a rather large City of Atlantis Lego set, which kept him fascinated for the remainder of the night. He had a pretty cool-looking cake, too, which featured Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader duking it out on a soccer field:


A group of us capped the evening by playing a special holiday edition of "Celebrity," one of our favorite family games.


I am thankful to have been able to spend the day surrounded by most, if not all, of the people and things I am most grateful for.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.

Movie Review: Bare-y Bottom and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1

Last night/early this morning, Biz once again marshaled the forces - her own, personal Order of the Phoenix, of sorts - and organized a large group of family and friends, including yours truly, for the latest Harry Potter movie premiere at midnight.

Much ado had been made about this film, at least from local sources, due to a supposedly scandalous scene in which Daniel Radcliffe was to allegedly show his bare bottom to the camera - or so some of us were told. Fortunately, no such scene appeared in the movie, and our freakin' eyes have been saved for another day.

As one who is really not as much into Harry Potter as the rest of my siblings, I will say that, if anything, my only possible complaint about the film, like the others, is that it is too long. And there is a laugh-out-loud unintentionally funny scene in which Harry and Hermione begin to dance, for no apparent reason.


Once again, Dumbledore's Army, or the nerd patrol - or whatever you call these non-Muggles - came out in full force to support the cause of their favorite fantasy franchise, and several of them dressed up as their favorite characters from the series. They kinda put the Star Wars fans to shame with their enthusiasm - some of them.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1, was surprisingly good and, I must say, the best film in the franchise, to date, that I have seen.

Revenge of the Peanut Gallery

Earlier tonight, the Improvables were invited to perform an abbreviated version (time wise and cast wise) of our regular show, for a 27-to-40-year-old singles group in Centerville. Guy, Kim, Parker, Steve, and I represented the gang for this event.

This performance was notable, in my mind, mainly for the fact that, as the evening's M.C., I faced my first-ever real-life heckler. Throughout the course of the performance, some lady seated in the front row made several snide comments about our show, and she wasn't afraid to let everyone around her hear them.


This was nowhere near as fun as playing the "Hecklers" Improv game. (For those not in the know, we actually do heckle each other on purpose when we play that.)

My reaction to this was to humor her as much as I could and to ignore her the rest of the time. Upon further reflection, part of me thinks I need to work more on developing a thick skin for this kind of thing, and another part is amazed that it's actually taken this long for me to encounter a bona fide, real-life heckler, considering all of the Improv performances I've been involved in over the years.


My point - and I do have one - is that you shouldn't say anything at all if you can't say anything nice. I'm just sayin'.

"Accusation"

Here's another great, brand-new piece of animation by my cousin Eden:

"Epic Donut Dangers"

Here's a link to my cousin Eden's newest film: