Young Womanhood Recognition

Kaitlin was awarded her YW Medallion today in church. This is an award that girls start working on in our church when they turn 12 and have until 18 to finish. It included 70 hours of projects as well as scripture reading and other self improvement goals.  She is happy to finally have it finished, and I'm pretty dang proud of her.  Earlier in the day she finished reading the Book of Mormon in Spanish, something she'd been working on for the past six months. 

Kaitlin also started her new job at Baskin Robbins. Kaitlin says her new job is good because she gets to help old people (butter pecan icecream) and little kids (spiderman icecream).

Comic Con

I don't usually win anything, but a couple weeks ago I won two tickets to the three days of Comic Con.  Comic Con is a huge convention for comic books and fantasy and science fiction, books, art and movies.  There is a huge convention floor filled with venders of all kinds, game rooms, artists, authors, old tv and movie stars, and panel discussions. This thing is huge!  Like 100,000 people in attendance.  And the funnest part, at least for me, was that about 20% of the people dress up in the costumes of their favorite fandom.

 We took turns with the tickets, Ruth and I went on Thursday, Chuck, Ruth and Kaitlin went on Friday and Chuck and I went on Saturday.   We saw panels put on by James Marsters, Warf and Troy from Star Trek, Data from Star Trek, Richard Paul Evens, Studio C, and some other voice actors and costume designers.   On Friday Ruth wore Kaitlin's Rapunzel dress and she got a lot of attention, and was asked to take many pictures, especially by little girls who were excited to see one of their favorite princesses. Overall we had a pretty good time.

 I don't know if I'd pay the full price of the tickets that we had, but I would maybe pay for the family to go for one day.  It did get us talking about what costumes we'd like to make.  There were so many wonderful costumes there!




Diving In

Last week we all went out to Cafe Rio to celebrate finishing reading the Book of Mormon again as a family.  Every night, without fail, we spend 15 minutes as a family reading a few verses together and having family prayer. We've done this for 15 years now, and it's worked out really well for us.  I've lost count on how many times we've read the Book of Mormon, maybe about 16 or so.  We've also read the New Testament, Pearl of Great Price and Doctrine and Covenants.   We've read the Book of Mormon a little bit differently every time to try to gain new insights from it. With this reboot we are reading it along with the seminary study guide.

This whole month  Jared has been taking a diving class. In just three classes he went from doing his first head first dive of the edge of the pool to diving, head first off of the high dive.  He doesn't like it, and we are basically forcing him to go, but  I'm proud of how brave he's been. He's done everything the teachers have asked him.  I don't know about you, but I've never dived off even the diving board head first, let alone the high dive.


Kaitlin finished a series of interviews and got a job at Baskin Robbins.  She starts on Monday and is "scared out of her mind".

Honk!

This week was Ruth's show Honk! The Ugly Ducking Musical. She had a really great time and the show was very cute.

Dot and Greylag in bandages at the end of the show. They are killed in the play but are revealed as only injure at the curtain call.

Ruth's monologue about flight safety. It was tricky for her because she had to time it to the music.

The dancing geese behind Ruth were hilarious. I thought this was one of the cutest numbers in the show.

Dot and Greylag come across the lost ugly duckling and agree to help him fine his 'mum'.

This is one of the chorus numbers Ruth was in. She is in yellow in the middle far right. 

After the show.

I secretly took this video. Videoing was not allowed so that is why the quality is so low. I had to hold the camera close to the vest, literally.


Lorenzo Family Reunion 

Our family sang a musical number at the opening devotional of the Lorenzo Family Reunion this week. We were celebrating the 200th anniversary of Lorenzo's birth, and Elder Holland was the key note speaker.  Even though all the members of my family are musical, this is the first time we have ever gotten together to sing like this.  The week before my sister (Hi! Donna) asked me to conduct. I got a kick out of conducting a choir in the Assembly Hall, though there were a few nervous moments when I thought I might end up fall off the stage into Elder Holland's lap. Luckily, that didn't happen, and our musical number came off very well.

Our family outside the Assembly Hall

We are missing Ruth because this performance was the same night as Ruth's opening night of Honk!  (which we sadly missed). 

Singing Adventures

Kaitlin had a concert this week where they performed all their festival pieces.

Honk has started full dress rehearsals which have kept Ruth late to school every night.  See my tall grass??

Here the the teacher is talking to the cast after the show. Ruth's show is this this week on Wed - Friday.

One advantage of living in Utah is that on choir tour Kaitlin got the chance to visit the San Diego Temple grounds.  Here she is with her friends.  The very tall girl on the left will be Kaitlin's college roommate.

Kaitlin also got a chance to make a very short visit to the Mormon Batalion monument.  They also had 150 youth show up to the Mormon Church on Sunday morning, shocking the local congregation.   Kaitlin's choirs won in every category, bringing home 5 very large trophies. They are really very very technically excellent.