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By Dan, on May 27th, 2010 In January I was invited to be part of my church‘s production of Twelve Angry Men. We have a drama ministry known as The King’s Players, and over the last 20+ years we’ve done dozens of productions, including Ben Hur, Steel Magnolias, and It’s A Wonderful Life. In recent years I’ve had small parts in a few plays (for some reason, two different times I was cast as Judas in I Am The Vine), but I haven’t had any significantly large roles since I was in High School, when I was in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever and Release.
Anyway, the two young ladies who were co-directing the play asked me to play Juror #8, the lone dissenter portrayed by Henry Fonda in the 1957 film. It sounded like a lot of fun, and although I’d never had a leading role before I was pretty sure I could pull this one off. (In truth, the character is not that much of a stretch for me, and a few of my friends even commented that I was just playing myself and wasn’t really acting at all. Heheh, fair enough.) The only thing that I was sorta concerned about was how much the rehearsals would impact my work schedule and how Janet would feel about sacrificing any and all major weekend plans until the end of May. But Janet was quite supportive of the idea, so I decided to go for it.
It should be noted that although Fonda’s role in the film certainly seems like the “leading” role, the play is really an ensemble piece. There are a couple other characters whose parts were comparable to mine in terms of size and importance to the story. Thus, I was very pleased that we had such an excellent cast filling the other parts. These guys were so much fun to work with! I had an especially fun time in the confrontation scenes with Juror #3, played by Brian Herrington. Unlike me, Brian really had to act to portray his role, and he’s very good at it.
How did I do? Well, I wish I could say each of our performances went off flawlessly, but of course that’s not the case. On Friday night, I actually got completely, horribly stuck on one line for several seconds. In fact, it was a rather critical part of a scene where my argument was finally winning a solid majority of the votes on the jury. I’m afraid it was rather obvious to everyone that I just blanked out and momentarily forgot the line. (Sigh…) Oh well. Eventually I got back on track and finished the rest OK. I felt embarrassed, but I didn’t beat myself up about it, and I didn’t let myself dwell on it too much. There’s just no point in that, right? On Saturday night I think I did much better, but still had a bit of trouble with a few lines (different lines, at least). Fortunately, this time my mistakes were the small and inconsequential sort that were probably transparent to everyone in the audience. Finally, on Sunday, I think I more or less nailed it — at least, I think I nailed it as well as I could, so that felt nice. I’m glad I got to finish the play on a positive note rather than a disappointing one. Here are a few pictures from one of our dress rehearsals, taken by Paul Hara:
 Juror #8  Tell me what the facial characteristics of a killer are!  How come you believed her? She's one of them too, isn't she?  Look at it! It's the same knife!  Guilty... Guilty... Guilty...  Down the hall?! Are we to send a boy off to die because it's down the hall somewhere?  You don't really mean you'll kill me, do you?  He had to get up out of bed, get his canes, walk twelve feet, open the bedroom door, walk forty-three feet down the hall and open the front door -- all in fifteen seconds.  Look out!  To say this boy is guilty, you have to toss his intelligence like a pancake!  The cast and crew I just wish I had remembered to wear a belt to rehearsal that night. (Sigh.) Oh well.
By Dan and Janet, on May 12th, 2010 Believe it or not, our precious baby girls are now one year old! It has certainly been quite an amazing year. Carolyn and Elizabeth bring such joy and delight into our lives. Their pediatrician appointment isn’t scheduled until next week, but my best guess says they are now somewhere around quadruple their birth weight. And remember those little pink and blue hats they were so big while they were guests in the Intensive Care Nursery? Those hats won’t fit on their heads at all any more. In the past weeks they’ve gone from fairly immobile little blobs who could sometimes roll over when they wanted to nearly toddling. They can sit up with ease and they speed crawl across the floor. They can pull to a standing position and are beginning to cruise along while holding on to things. They have even begun trying to let go. They promptly fall down again, but the delay between letting go and falling is increasing. It might almost be measurable now. They looked so fragile and delicate when they were born. Now they fall and bump their heads on the floor. I know we’re entering that phase of constant scrapes and bruises. But the girls have also managed to stay healthy for this entire year, and that’s a tremendous blessing for which we’re all very thankful.
We had a very busy weekend! On Saturday we celebrated birthdays for Carolyn, Elizabeth, and Janet. (Janet’s birthday isn’t actually until the 19th, but we made the decision to have her celebration a bit early and combine it with the girls because the next couple weekends are also going to be enormously busy, thanks to the production of Twelve Angry Men that Dan is in.) Then on Sunday we all got together again with Dan’s family here in Livermore to celebrate Mother’s Day. Last year on Mother’s Day we had no idea that our girls were so close to being born. This year was special for us all because it was the first time our daughters were really there to celebrate with us. Here are a few fun pictures from the weekend’s festivities. Enjoy!
 That was a fun song! Let's sing it again!  Janet had to really huff and puff to blow out the sparkly hurricane-proof candles!  There's something stuck on my head...  What do you mean, we can't have any cake?  Happy Mother's Day!  Hanging out with Mommy on Mother's Day  This is fun, but partying two days in a row can get tiring...  Mother's Day Blessings  Carolyn is learning to be quite a little snuggle bug  It's so much fun to watch them play and explore together!
By Dan, on May 4th, 2010 Now that the girls are able to pull themselves up to a standing position, there’s SO much more to distract them from sleeping in their cribs! We are blessed with two generally happy and playful little girls. Unfortunately, this means they probably aren’t getting as much sleep as they really need right now.
 Naptime Fail
By Dan, on April 22nd, 2010 Just a bunch of random little observations:
- Janet and I recently put our heads together to calculate how much milk she has produced since the girls have been been born. We didn’t keep exact records, but in the last 11½ months we figure that she has pumped or nursed over 15,000 fluid ounces, which translates to around 120 gallons. My first thought at hearing this was “Wow, that’s a TON of milk!” Actually, it turns out to be only half a ton, but still, that’s a lot of milk! Janet’s thought was “No wonder I’m always hungry!”
- The inevitable corollary to the observation above is that we have changed well over 1000 pounds of diapers.
- Bottle feeding both girls simultaneously for these many months has made me very aware just how often some part of my body itches. Almost without exception, as soon as I’ve managed to get the girls settled and both of my hands are busy holding bottles, something starts to itch. Insistently. So, I’ve had a lot of practice improving my mind-over-itch control. On the plus side, the girls can now manage to feed with about 50% efficiency while holding the bottle themselves. It’s not good enough yet to just let them handle it completely on their own, but progress is being made.
- Elizabeth is now in full crawling mode. She wants to explore everything and everywhere, and is not long content in one place. And our house still needs a lot of childproofing before I’ll feel comfortable letting them crawl around without watching them every second! Carolyn is sorta crawling, but she still reverts to scooting or rolling sometimes. In another week or so she’ll probably have it down.
- There are a ridiculous number of Oxi-Clean products scattered around our house. Just off the top of my head, I know of at least four spray bottles, two bottles of gel stick, and one six pound tub of powdered stain remover.
- Carolyn’s inquisitive little fingers are fascinated by my comparatively big fingers. When I least expect it, her tiny little razor sharp fingernails unerringly seek out my cuticles, and then they dig in. Apparently she wants to completely peel open my fingertips and expose the root of my fingernail. It is quite painful. Elizabeth does this too, but it seems to be not as often.
- Carolyn has also learned to whistle a few notes, which makes her just about as good at whistling as I am.
- I’ve been practicing with the girls trying to get them to say “mama”. I guess those M-sounds are a little tricky to make, so developmentally they tend to come later than D-sounds. They’ve been making D-sounds for a while, and often say “dada” — but I don’t think they’re saying it as a name for me… You see, they also say “dodo” quite a bit.
- It’s hard to believe we’re coming up fast on their first birthday! But I don’t look back on the last year and wish that they could stay this age longer. I know that each developmental stage brings its own set of challenges, but I’m really looking forward to being able to converse intelligibly with them. I can see some advantages in not having to carry them everywhere too. But we’ll do our best to enjoy each stage as it comes.
- We feel so very blessed by these wonderful little girls!
 The Siemens Twins
By Dan, on April 19th, 2010 This last weekend I had the opportunity to go on a fantastic hike through Sunol Regional Wilderness with a couple geocaching friends, Fizzymagic and Kablooey. It was a beautiful day — the hills were brilliant green, the wildflowers were in bloom, and the weather was sunny and warm, but not too hot. (I did end up with a bit of a sunburn on the back of my neck though.)
 This view is looking south toward Calaveras Reservoir We started our hike up near the top of Welch Creek Road and then hiked one way to the far end of the park where we had a second vehicle waiting. Our route included climbing to the top of the highest peak in the park, and altogether I managed to find 10 caches, putting my total just over 3,300. I hiked around 9 miles total, and I can tell I’m sorta out of shape. I can think of only one other semi-long hike that I’ve been able to do in the last year… It was a great day!
 This rock was just begging to be climbed...
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