Happy Birthday!

Kaitlin wanted to take a birthday selfie with me.

I had a happy birthday this week.  I went out to lunch with friends, and Chuck took me out to lunch as well.  I received a lot of thoughtful birthday wishes and a new frying pan (who knew?). Kaitlin made me home made cinnamon rolls and I ended the evening by singing a solo at a Relief Society dinner. It was a good day.


Senior Awards

This week was also Kaitlin's senior awards dinner.  Kaitlin got a medal for being a Regent Scholar. She also got the Principals Pin for her academics, and two enhanced diploma awards (cords that she'll wear wear at graduation) one for Fine Arts and one for World Languages.

 We got half of Kaitlin's graduation announcements out this week. We noticed when we got them that there is an error in the printing. Kaitlin will actually graduate on June 5th at 2pm.

The Top Ten Things I've Learned From My Mom
by Jared

1. Don't get food poisoning
2. How to basically cook
3. How to read
4. How to take a shower
5. How to get to the high cabinates
6. Don't throw tacos at the taco man
7. Don't get addicted to drugs
8. Don't eat too much junk food
9.  Don't be dumb
10. How to make chicken nuggets


For mother's day this morning I got a nice breakfast made by Chuck and Jared, an original poem from Kaitlin, Jared also wrote me the nice note above, read me some poetry and showed me some of his favorite youtube videos.

 I have some Christmas plates that I use for the holidays to replace my normal white ones. Every year when I put them away and we go back to my white ones I'm a little disappointed. Food looks so much yummier on colored plates! So this year I just didn't put them away.  So here it's May and we are still eating off of Christmas trees. For mother's day this year I got a dinnerwear service for 12 that I've been admiring for awhile.  We figured out this morning, because they are an inch bigger than our other ones, that they don't fit in our dishwasher.  But being the handy guy that he is, Chuck figured out if he bent this and that, so we could lay the plates at more of an angle, they would fit. 


Student of the Month

Kaitlin was made the "World Languages Student of the Month" this week.  This means that she gets her photo hung in the hallway and she receives a snazzy certificate.  She also took her AP English lit test this week, which she said was easy.


Competitions

I think this was our last week of competitions.  Ruth went to regional drama competition. She sang and danced in a musical number from her show Honk! Jr.  Kaitlin went back to State Choir competition.  Last week she went to state with her Chamber Choir and this week she went to state with her Acapella Choir.


My New Job

I interviewed and was offered a new job this week.  I'll be teaching one day a week starting in August at Jared's new school.  I'll be teaching "The Leader In Me", which is a school leadership program from the Covey people.  I'll rotate around the classrooms teaching the provided curriculum.  It doesn't pay much, but it seems like something I'll enjoy and be good at.

You Win Some, You Lose Some

Kaitlin's choir went to state competition last weekend and came away with top scores.  They were told that they were one of the best choirs in the state, and I believe that is true.  They are the best high school choir I've ever heard.

This weekend Kaitlin went to compete at state American Sign Language competition. She is a fist year sign language student and she was competing on a team in the category of deaf history.  They were down a team member, but still after the first round she felt confident that they had done a pretty good job.  When the judge came into the room to say who was advancing, they were one of the first groups dismissed.  So what was supposed to be a 3 hour competition turned was only a 20 minute competition for Kaitlin.  At the end of the day her ASL teacher loaded all the students on the bus early, even before the awards ceremony.  Kaitlin said they protested, but eventually learned that no one from her school had earned any awards at all that day.  All in all she said that they had a good time and she is glad she went.

I wish I had had a video recorder when Kaitlin came home and told me of her experiences. For over a half hour she talked and the whole time she signed as she spoke. I don't even know if she knew that she was doing it.

 Women's Conference

My annual trip to BYU Women's Conference was this weekend.  It's my one weekend away with girl friends, and we had a great time.  It was an extra good year for me because for the first time in a long time I went to the conference with specific questions and needs, and by the end felt that I had been taught a lot.   We went to the conference classes, made some crafts *cough* I mean, participated in some service projects, ate some good food and overall had a great time enjoying each others company.  I don't have a lot of pictures yet, but here is one with me and a rabbit I made out of a sock.

Here we all are with our rabbits. 
Leslie, Jill, Becky, Amy, Annette and Lisa

Ruth's Solo

Ruth agonized over auditioning for a solo for her choir concert coming up in a few weeks.  She finally auditioned, and got the solo she wanted.  She is really excited. 

Goodbye Diving

We forced Jared to take diving for a month, in the hopes that after getting over his initial fear that he would like it and want to continue.   While he bravely did the class and did all the dives the teacher required of him, including rolling backwards off the diving board and diving head first of the high dive, Jared didn't like it and is glad that his required month is now over and he can go back to playing computer games and watching YouTube videos.

Jared playing minecraft with a friend while wearing superman suit and a bowler hat. Your argument is invalid.

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.