All The World's A Stage

Truer words were never spoken at our house. Or on the street in front of our house. There is often some sort of musical number going on here. And around the world. The smalls put on an impromtu show in Piazza del Campo in Siena last month. Meanwhile, the Mister and I finished off their pizza and our wine.

That they're musical is all thanks to the Mister. Who always danced and drummed with them as babies in his arms. Left to me, we'd listen to lots of news radio and each other without a soundtrack in the background.  I'm the one who is perpetually yanking an iPod out of the speaker after people have walked away from it. Mostly because I can never figure out how to turn it off. Or down. Or change songs.

I love that music fills our house, but rarely think to turn it on. On the other hand, the Mister has a playlist for parties and Biggest Brother downloaded an afternoon's worth of Mary Poppins tunes for last week's fete. We make a good team around here because they don't really sweat the favors.

When 5 or 6 of us are scurrying to get ready on a school morning I confess that I don't find Biggest Brother trailing me with his acoustic guitar all that charming. Sometimes I mention that to him. When I think about it though, it actually must be funny to see me frantically multitasking (load of laundry, breakfast for Baby Sister, Big Sister's hair, dishes, picking up errant towels, backpacks, "WHO PACKED THEIR READING BOOK?" pajama-clad me announcing to everyone and no one every few minutes that "I'm GOING to get in the shower!") with a Catholic school uniformed minstrel hot on my heels.

Big Brother is beautiful singer and now a piano player and the girls dig their vocals and interpretive dancing. No wallflowers here. I came across this video they made one school morning when I was apparently - finally - in the shower. The time stamp shows we should be getting on the bus in about 5 minutes so you can be sure about the time the song ended I came racing through the kitchen in search of 4 little school children. Funny that I didn't even know what they'd been up to. With all the jockeying for camera time, it's no wonder Baby Sister didn't get in the video at all. Keepers, the whole lot of them!

And today Biggest Brother busked in the cold. A chilly Saturday while the rest of us stayed inside and continued our "Waltons" film festival!  (The Waltons is absolutely worthy of another post. I hope I dream myself onto Waltons Mountain tonight.)  Biggest Brother wasn't out long and we had such fun waving from the windows and cheering when we saw passersby stopping, taking pictures, and even better - tossing money in his guitar case!  His earnings are nothing to sneeze at either: Would you believe almost £20 in two short stints? I'm telling you, the prospect of paying them an allowance for chores is getting tricky. But even though he's spent the money a hundred times over in his head with Big Brother's assistance, playing and singing for an audience was his favorite part of the day. It was priceless. Music to his ears. The limelight is sweet.

Woah. It's always a good time.