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Bad Rehearsal, Good Show

6/21/2026

The Dress Rehearsal for our Summer Theater Camp was pretty crazy. The worst of it was that after taking a lot of time to build the set and arrange the audio equipment before everyone came at 9:00 am, a great wind came up and blew over our already compromised set pieces so that they split apart. Then we had some technical difficulties with the audio. I experienced so much stress trying to keep little fingers from exploring the equipment and altering the settings. I had an exceedingly hard time keeping calm amid the storm of smoky winds, 90 degree+ heat, and too many curious little kids.

The Country Mouse and her Country Siblings

Fortunately, my middle son Matthew came to the rescue and helped me fix the sets, check all the equipment, and calm me down. Our two short shows that share some of the flats could be saved! "The Ants and the Grasshopper" and "The Country Mouse and the City Mouse."

The next morning started out very ominously. The skies were thick with black smoke clouds from the fires in the south county. The sun was orange as it tried to shine through the clouds. The winds were not so forceful as the day before, but they were still present. The helpers that said they would come at 8:00 am, did not come until ten minutes to 9:00 am to set up for the show.

The City Mouse and her City Neighbors

I rarely sleep the night before a show, and this night I was particularly nervous. Boy, did I miss my husband and grown up, talented children yesterday morning. In the past we'd get up at 6:30 am and start setting up the shade canopies and chairs for our audience. They would also help me set up the sets on stage and carefully arrange the audio equipment and microphones. Then I could feel able to set out all of the costumes and props and other things that needed to be ready before the kids came. Yesterday, I tried to set up what I could before anybody came to help me, but there was plenty I could NOT do without help. (I am definitely getting too old for this!)

Fortunately, people did come to help. And they did set up the shade canopies and chairs for the audience. Then some people helped me set up the set pieces on the stage. One of the dads even offered to stand behind the most vulnerable set to support it during the entire show! That was so chivalrous of him. He missed his child's performance for the greater good. Bless him!

Half of the Ant Line with the Grasshopper

Well, about 150 people came to see the show in my backyard. And it turned out pretty good. The biggest problem was when a couple of "ants" kept getting their antennae (little black pipe cleaners) on their headbands entangled. Once I had to go up on stage and untangle them, the next time they got disentangled by themselves.

Half of the Ant Line with the Queen Ant

The old adage that if you have a bad rehearsal, you are certain to have a good show actually came true. I was so proud of my young performers. They actually saved their "best" for the performance.

Now, maybe after a few days to wash, sort, and put away costumes and props, I might get some blessed sleep!

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When You Grow Up

10/9/2024

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When trying to have a conversation with little children, often adults will ask "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

The answers are usually creative, like "a baseball player" or "a princess." Of course, young children don't have enough life experiences to know what they really will want to do or be when they grow up. But maybe some do.

When I was in 3rd grade, my teacher asked the class to write what they would like to be when they grew up. I still have that little paper. I wrote, "I like to sing, so I want to be a singer. And I like to play the piano, so I want to be a pianoist. I like to draw, so I want to be an artist. I like to dance, so I want to be a ballerina. And my teacher says I write nice poems, so I want to be a poemist. I know I need to be a wife and mother, but I'm not sure how I can make all of this work in my life."

My teacher wrote back a nice little note encouraging me to maybe pick just one thing to focus on.

But little me kept singing, drawing, dancing, and playing the piano. I even kept writing little songs using my fondness for rhyme. All through school I kept having opportunities to perform. It helped that my mom was so talented that she made me look good and helped me learn a lot of songs.

You might say that I grew up instilled with a lot of confidence in my abilities. I basically had no stage fright. If someone asked me to sing or entertain, I just did.

In 8th grade our math class straddled the lunch period. During the winters when it was cold, we just hung out in the math classroom after lunch. There were a couple of guys who decided that we should do a talent show every lunch break. Those guys were funny and liked to tell jokes and banter being the M.C's. Other kids would show their artwork, or do magic tricks, or demonstrate sports moves. But whenever there was a lull, one of the M.C's would just announce, "Now Betsy will sing us a song." I sang practically every day.

Maybe my teacher didn't understand how much I understood what my God-given talents were already back in 3rd grade. But apparently, I did. I guess if you are on stage practically from birth, you don't know anything else.

Yesterday, I was asked to play one of the Olympics themes for a meeting of the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers. Our guest speaker had just competed in the 2024 Paralympics in Paris. I chose to play "The Call of the Champions" written by John Williams and performed by the Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square. I asked the ladies to shout "Citius, altius, fortius" along with the choir. Then I felt like I had to provide entertainment as we listened (mostly to the orchestra), so I sort of directed the air as we listened and brought the ladies in on cue for the three word chant.

Little did I expect that they would thank me for playing that wonderful song and being so entertaining to watch. They said that it was so fun to watch someone who had the talents that no one else in that group had and made it look so fun!

So there, Mrs. Bunton. I am doing all of those things I listed in 3rd Grade. Singer, artist, dancer, pianoist and poemist. And I'm a wife, a mother, and a grandmother, too.

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Planning Out Another Family Storybook

8/7/2024

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For the past eight years I have produced a children's picture book to give out as Christmas gifts to all of my families. I had promised a story for each of my children, as least one in which they shared a prominent role. Then I did a couple of my own stories from when I was young. Then I wrote one about my mother's mother and then one about my mother's sister. (My mom has been in several of the stories.) Now, I have decided to write up a storybook about my Father, well, actually, I have decided to feature one of his stories that the grandchildren all loved, but let him tell it from within the story.

My dad's favorite subject was SPACE. Because my dad Thomas W. Lee was a research physicist at NASA during the Apollo program (1963-1970), he got a front row seat to the latest and greatest goings on in the Space Program. His science was hypervelocity impact physics. He built guns that could shoot very small particles at tremendous speeds to test what happened upon impact. They tested all sorts of materials that would be used to cover the space vehicles and even the space suits.

My dad's team was tasked with providing protection for the astronauts. The materials used would have to repel or absorb the meteorites so that holes in the outer cladding would not destroy the atmosphere created inside the spaceship or spacesuits.

I loved asking my dad to come to school for my "Show and Tell." He brought all kinds of cool stuff to show and when he told about something, he could really tell a wonderful story to go with it. He even had little sample squares of all of the insulating layers of the spacesuit. That was cool.

The story I am writing is about how my dad told stories. As far back as I can remember, Dad would take us outside on a starry summer night, throw out a blanket, hand out the treats, and tell us about the stars. Somehow, I always woke up in my own bed in the morning.

Over the years, I learned that my dad would just talk and talk until everybody fell asleep. Then he'd just stop. (I guess he also had to carry us into bed.) In my retelling, he doesn't have to heft kids around. Several of the grandkids are at a Cousin's Campout with Grandpa Tom and their dads up in the canyon. If they all fall asleep, they are already in their sleeping beds.

The story my dad told on those campouts was "Johnny in the Moon." But until recently, those older grandkids remembered hearing Grandpa Tom tell the story, they remembered they loved it, but no one could remember for sure the ending.

This picture book is an attempt to put in writing (for a younger audience) the story complete with the ending.

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Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?

7/24/2024

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When I was still very young (age 8), I was often responsible for tending my younger siblings. My mom was rarely not in rehearsals. So we went along and I tended the kids. My mother encouraged me to create a babysitting bag filled with things to entertain my charges. I collected special books and little toys that I would save just for babysitting time. One thing we liked to do was act out stories. So, apparently, I drew out these paper puppets to enact the story of "The Three Little Pigs."

I don't know why my mother even saved this box all these years. I had been going through tubs of old stuff yesterday de-cluttering, when I found this curious little box just 4"x6." I opened it and couldn't even remember what my 8-year-old self had made. Drawing and making "visual aids" like paper stick puppets were such a daily occurrence for me that, though I didn't doubt that I had made these, I just couldn't believe that my mom thought they were worth saving. To young me, they were just quickly made, disposable playthings.

However, I do remember watching "The Wonderful World of Disney" in the early 1960s. That's probably where we got to watch "The Three Little Pigs" cartoon. It had a very catchy song, "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf" we liked to sing. I'm sure I made these puppets so we could sing and tell the story and present it like a puppet show.

Undoubtedly, a good time was had by all back then, but these things are so old and delicate their time has come and gone. Now that they've been digitized and catalogued, into the trash they go.

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Too, Too Much to Do

11/16/2022

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Thanksgiving is just one week away! Surely, we will take pause to be grateful for our many blessings. But we, like so many others, may also think about all of the work hosting a big family dinner can be.

This year I am forced to remember that it is also my birthday. (I am getting too old!) But, gratefully, my children are taking good care of me. In fact, although my house is hosting the get-together, everyone has pledged to bring something so no one person has to slave in the kitchen. Now, that is something to cheer about! (We always seem to feed ourselves well!)

My mother was a hostess with the "mostess." She loved to entertain. So, it was not surprising that she invited her parents from Idaho and her brothers and sisters living nearby in Utah to come to her house for Thanksgiving dinner. So what if her baby was due in two weeks. That shouldn't pose a problem, should it?

She worked all day on Wednesday mopping floors and making up beds for guests. She baked pies and prepared everything she could for the big meal the day before. Then she got up early Thanksgiving morning to put the turkey in the oven to roast. Dinner was planned for 1:00 pm.

My grandparents drove through the night and arrived at 6:00 am, just when my mother's water broke. My mother just barely had time to give instructions about the dinner and kiss my 3 year old bother goodbye before my dad rushed her to the hospital. I made my entrance into the world at 9:00 am.

After all of the hustle and bustle of the morning, the hospital staff took baby me to the Nursery to let my mother rest. My mother was not interested in resting. She was worried about her beautiful Thanksgiving Feast. She trusted that her mother would tend to everything well, but my mother was upset that she wasn't going to be there to enjoy it! Then, at noon when the staff brought her a less than adequate plate of hospital food, she begged my Dad to go home and bring her back some of her own fabulous Thanksgiving Feast --- with pumpkin pie!

Yup! And I have never had regular birthday cake on my birthday since that beginning. I always have pumpkin pie with candles on top! (Or nowadays, no candles. I don't want the house to burn down!)

For those of you who think preparing for Thanksgiving is just too much work, here's a song for you. This is "Too, Too Much to Do" from "The Adventures of Dick Whittington."

The cook sings this as she is preparing for a grand meal in the house of Lord and Lady Fitzwarren. She is chewing out her kitchen staff, particularly the new guy who accidentally knocks over the fancy food display.

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Growing Your Skills

11/3/2022

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Years ago I was on a tour with the Tabernacle Choir to the Upper Midwest states. One day we had a chance to do a little site-seeing in downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin. My sister and I decided to follow the "Happy Days" (a television sitcom from the 1970-80s) trail that took us to see many of the featured filming sites. We even got our pictures taken with the Fonz.

On the way, we stopped into this little bookshop to browse. On the wall I noticed a framed picture of some early artwork of Dr. Seuss. Clearly these sketches were of ideas for his early characters. They were very rough and not clearly developed. It looked like he was still working out his style and honing his cartooning skills.

At the time, I was writing and illustrating my first picture book. In those days I just used paper and pencils. I didn't know anything about how to do ink and pen illustrations or paint with watercolors, let alone use a computer to clean up paintings and design the layout for a book. I just knew I had to document some of our family stories for posterity. I took heart and gained some courage to go forward from looking at those early drawings by Dr. Seuss.

So, after years of attending workshops, watching YouTube training videos, acquiring some technology tools, and practicing a lot, I can actually see how my illustrating skills have grown. Can't say that my books are ready for the market, but I know that I have a few grandchildren fans. (And that's the most important thing because these are family stories after all!)

Writing songs for Children's Theater is much the same. After years and years of practice, you may be able to come up with some pretty good songs. Here's the first song I wrote for my very first show "Stone Soup."

And here's a song written when I had hit my stride. Enjoy "Over Yonder" an opener added several years later to the same show.

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Fifth Generation Soprano

6/9/2022

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On our hike up the canyon yesterday, I managed to sneak a short video of my granddaughter singing a bit from "Frozen II." She is still very young, only 2 1/2, and yet she has begun to sing actual songs on pitch. Granted, the three note motif from the siren voice in "Frozen II" is built on intervals that are judged easiest for young children to imitate. The starting pitch descends first down a half step and then down a minor third. However, my granddaughter even tries singing it in different modulations just like on the soundtrack. Pretty good for a toddler!

My daughter and I were musing yesterday about how this little girl marks the fifth generation of fine sopranos in our family. (We are only counting the mothers and grandmothers I have known personally.) So, starting with my mother's mother Lora (her operatic voice spanned 5 octaves) to my mother Carolyn (beautiful lyric soprano), myself Betsy (another lyric Soprano), my daughter Cami (also a huge vocal range), to her daughter Camilla (destined to sing soprano, too). That makes five generations of soprano voices.

Of course, that is only counting one direct line, and not even mentioning the many fine singers in her generation. (I have 25 grandchildren and they all sing well!) We have stories from our more ancient history of many fine singers and entire families of singers and musicians on down through the extended family lines. We are just happy to continue the tradition of SINGING and playing/composing music.

Camilla, or CJ as she is called, goes around the house singing her own soundtrack. She favors us with many songs from movies and a lot from "Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood." Because I am her Nursery Leader at Church, I am noticing that she is picking up more and more phrases and melodies from the Primary songs we teach her. She is sometimes the only child in Nursery, so we sing a lot.

It is clear that this toddler loves music and so does her 1 year old brother Peter. In Church he also has to have his own hymnbook open so that he can "sing" and wave his arms directing the music. Their mother started her conducting career at age 2 by sneaking onto stage when the extended family was singing a choir number. She stole the show while imitating the conducting of her great-great aunt Janie Thompson.

Toddlers should be allowed to show their developing talents!

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Toddler Tantrums and Truths

4/18/2022

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Living with toddlers can be so fun, though exhausting, and may sometimes point blame back directly at you!

My little 2 year old granddaughter loves to have Grandma's storybooks read to her. Nearly everyday, she insists that they be read to her. Sometimes she sits and "reads" them to herself. She particularly likes "Spin-Around Dresses and Click Shoes." Yesterday was Easter. Her "Grandmama" (not me, she calls me Grandma) sent her a beautiful new dress to wear for Easter.

The trouble was that she had only hot pink polka dotted Sunday shoes, and her mother thought she should have shoes to wear that matched her new dress. They went to the store and eventually found some shoes that would match her dress. But when Easter morning came, she adamantly demanded that she wear her pink polka-dotted "click shoes" to Church. She cried and fussed and flatly refused to wear the new shoes that matched the dress in favor of the hot pink polka-dotted shoes. After some major convincing, her mother finally convinced her to wear the new shoes. But they are not her true "click shoes."

Earlier this year, their family was visiting at Grandmama's house when another funny incident happened for which I am partly to blame. Another of my picture books Camilla likes is titled "Is This Cowboy Food ." One line happens at the end of the story when the whole trouble starts happening all over again. Well, Camilla was watching a marathon of "Mulan" movies. When the Huns started attacking in "Mulan II," Camilla shook her head, put her hand to her forehead and wailed, "It's happening again!"

I have to admit, it's nice having Camilla as my most loyal fan!

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You Had to Audition to Get Into This Family

4/12/2022

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Whenever my siblings and I complained about rehearsing or getting ready to do a show with my mother, she just said, "Singing is what we do." And then she added, "Don't you know you had to audition to get into this family?"

I think that was what her mother said to her when she was little, too. (My grandparents were excellent singers and were carrying on that singing tradition from generations before them!) My mother was the fifth child in a family of seven singing siblings. They grew up singing together for fun and to entertain others. Many became professional musicians, educators and entertainers.

My mother started training her children to sing practically from birth. She put me in my first show when I was just two weeks old. Anyway, all six of us learned to sing together in harmony from our very early ages. Her line was that when we were in heaven, we made sure to stand in the "singing talent" line. And then we had to go through an audition process before we got assigned to come to earth into our family. "Singing is what you were born to do." So, we did.

When my children came along, I knew what I had to do. My kids grew up knowing that they also had to audition to get into our family. We sang a lot as a family while they still lived at home. They all learned to hold their own parts and play different instruments. We enjoyed singing together.

Now, it is harder to gather from so many different places in order to sing together, but whenever we can, we still love singing together.

Megan and Melanie singing

My daughter Kathryn shared an experience she had with her kids from the other day. They had had a long day of Church meetings and choir practice and visiting other wards. Then, after a quick dinner, Mom and the older kids needed to go practice again for Stake Conference Choir. Kathryn needed their help because she was the choir director.

Eleven-year-old Megan started to complain and drag her feet, but her voice was needed in the Soprano section with her two older sisters and just a few older women. Kathryn said, "Singing is what we do in this family. Don't you remember you had to audition to even get to be in this family?"

Confused, Megan said, "Wait. What?"

Kathryn shook her head and muttered as they got into the van, "Where have you been all these years?"

Megan and Melanie have lovely voices, and here's the proof. "As the French Say" song from the play "The Country Mouse and the City Mouse."

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Friend or Just Entertainment?

4/5/2022

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We moved around a lot through my youth. I often felt like I never stayed in one place long enough to really bond with friends. But, I guess I had friends enough, at least I had plenty of invitations to birthday parties. We did the things other kids in that time did --- dancing to pop hits, building crazy ice cream concoctions, skating at the roller rink, swinging on the Tarzan rope over the canal, having sleep-over parties, etc.

What I remember most about going to sleep-over birthday parties is that my friends always asked me to sing them to sleep. I don't know if that was because I had a voice that would instantly put them to sleep or that they honestly liked how or what I sang. Guess I will never know for sure.

I remember the parents at the party house insisting that after a certain time, no more television or playing records would be allowed. They insisted we all go to sleep. So, I was elected to quietly sing to them. My repertoire at that time was fairly vast. I could sing Movie and Broadway tunes ad infinitum. And it felt like I indeed sang all night long. Every time I stopped, thinking the girls were all asleep, someone would pipe up and say, "No, don't stop." So on I sang from the scores of "My Fair Lady," "The Sound of Music," "Mary Poppins," "Funny Girl," almost any Rodgers and Hammerstein show or Disney show, and so on.

Providing the entertainment is something I was called on to do a lot in my life. One thing I've noticed through the years is that the entertainer doesn't actually get to mix with the audience. So, I think a lot of kids thought they knew me, but I didn't really get to know anybody.

Thank goodness I had built-in friends having a tight-knit family. They were my best friends then and still are. We sang as a family in our growing up years. And we still like singing together. And my kids sing with me and and with each other, as well.

If I had only had my sisters or daughters with me at those sleep-over parties, we could have sung in parts!

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Bad Rehearsal, Good Show

When You Grow Up

Planning Out Another Family Storybook

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?

Too, Too Much to Do

Growing Your Skills

Fifth Generation Soprano

Toddler Tantrums and Truths

You Had to Audition to Get Into This Family

Friend or Just Entertainment?

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