Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Excellence in Education Volunteer Recipient

Each year, a teacher is chosen to receive what was formerly "The Golden Apple" award and a luncheon is held recognizing all the recipients in the Orem area. This year, I guess the award was changed to the "Excellence in Education" award and they also recognize a Volunteer of the Year. I was selected as the representative from Westmore Elementary.

So John, the teacher recipient (Cherise Burke) and her guest, PTA president (and former YW president) Marchele Oldham, PTA president-elect Brooke Price, and principal Barry Beckstrand joined us for the luncheon and awards presentation. The volunteers were called up and given a tile with the words, "Live to Serve, Serve to Live" on it and given a round of applause. (John thought maybe it should be a doormat instead of a tile since we probably all get walked on and over all the time.)





Sunday, April 18, 2010

My Goal

I made this my Facebook Status at one point today. It illustrates the point that I'm maxed out right now and am having to schedule--2 months out--a day of rest!

EVERYONE MARK YOUR CALENDARS! On June 14, upon my return home from work, I am going to get in my bed and watch TV all day. School will be out. Trek will be over. There will be a month until camp. I'm not going to do anything even worthwhile or productive. OK. Maybe I'll eat some chocolate WHILE I'm watching TV. (Note to Family: this might be a good time to order pizza.)

GORGEOUS!

Although beautiful, this takes nearly an hour to do. Definitely "special event" hair.

April 17, 2010: The Medieval Fair




Three kids down. One to go. Part of the sixth grade curriculum is learning about Medieval times. There is a 6-level packet that culminates with the day-long fair. All the sixth graders dress up, show their castles that they built, and enjoy the feast. Ellie teamed up with Chloe. They built their castle by themselves. Chloe even made her own beignets for the feast! (Ellie provided cheese and pita bread--neither of which were made by us.)

Unfortunately, they've "outlawed" building castles out of Legos finding it much too amenable a medium. That's bad news for Griffin. I'm thinking of working now on getting an exception since his would be impressive to say the least.

April 17, 2010: The Semi-Annual King Oden Viking Feast

My nephew, Ben Roden, regularly holds a Viking Feast. I'm pretty sure I've posted about this before. This year, Ellie was invited to attend along with Maggie. Although invited, I still hold to the belief that this is a purely male event and any girls who attend should be truly serving wenches. I must be in the minority in this belief. The "Mother Wench" prepared 40 pounds of ribs and chicken for the eating, along with I don't know how much bread and assorted fruit.

When I went down to pick up the girls, informing them that they had eaten their share of MEAT, I took Griffin with me so he could see what this whole shindig was about. Having just taken a bath, he scootered down in his pajamas. I warned him that when someone arrived, there was a rousing cheer of "SKOL!" given by all those in attendance. He made it through that with his ears covered, but was overwhelmed when King Oden/Ben welcomed the greatest Viking warrior of them all, Buzz Lightyear, and an even louder chorus of "SKOL!" was shouted by the crowd. He ran out, crossed the street, switched his shirt so that Buzz was on the back, and then Ben came out to apologize. Griffin later told John that he was embarrassed by his shirt. At church, Ben assured Griffin that they weren't making fun of him but that Buzz Lightyear truly was very cool.









April 12, 2010: Griffin at the Dentist

Having had his first check up in quite a while (we always avoid them due to the enormous expense usually associated with them and his reluctance to let anyone near his mouth), we were thrilled to find out that he only had 6 cavities and that most of them would be able to be treated without anesthetic. Through the use of modern medicine (valium and nitrous oxide), he was able to sit through 3 of the 6 fillings in a half hour. He was even happy enough to head right back to school!

This is huge. I can't even express how huge this is. He used to have to be sedated (really, complete with IV) and the bills were unbelievable. When they told me the total cost, I nearly fell over--not because of how high it was, but because it was an amount we could actually afford!

He'll go back next week to get the rest of them done. We're so proud!

Lunching at Chuck-A-Rama




Since it was Spring Break, I told my kids on one of the days that if they took care of all their chores, I would take them out to lunch at Chuck-a-Rama. Having completed their lists, I followed through with my end of the bargain. Here are some of the goofy pix we took while there.

April 10, 2010: BYU Ballroom Performance



I think I've mentioned that Maggie LOVES ballroom dance. During conference, we saw an advertisement for the annual BYU Ballroom Team concert. Knowing that Mags appreciated the work that went into it, I got tickets for me, Mags and Ellie to attend the Saturday afternoon performance. It was amazing! I love being able to do these sorts of things with my girls.

April 3-4, 2010: General Conference/Easter Weekend

Having hurt my neck the day before General Conference, I spent most of Saturday asleep. Shockingly, I decided to hard boil eggs so the kids could color them. I think the last time I did it was probably 5 years ago. It just seemed like SO much work for about 5 minutes of "fun." Below are some of the eggs Griffin and Ellie decorated.





By Sunday, I had made what I consider a miraculous recovery and made a huge dinner for Easter. It included brown sugar ham, asparagus, deviled eggs and yellow cake with strawberries and whipped cream for dessert. This was a great way to celebrate both conference and Easter: at home, listening to the counsel of our spiritual leaders with family and good food.

This was also the kick-off of spring break, a much needed relief from the daily grind of school activities and afterschool activities that keeps me running from dawn to dusk.

March 29, 2010: Maggie's Ballroom Dance Concert

Maggie LOVES ballroom dance. She started with a club in junior high and then tried out for the ballroom team at MVHS. She didn't make it and was going to take a class instead, but dropped it. This year, she put it back in her schedule, and did I mention that she LOVES it? This was the spring concert. It's really hard to get pictures in a dark auditorium and quick movement. She did such a great job and you could see how much she LOVES doing it. She will be trying out for the team again this year.




The very best part of the night was between two of the dances, a banner dropped down with the following:
In case you can't read it, it says, "Maggie Prom? Kamiron" John and I looked at each other and said, "Do you think that's OUR Maggie?" It was, and Maggie had a date to prom! During the intermission, she brought him up and introduced him to us. What a great evening!

March 27, 2010: The General Young Women Conference

Our stake was fortunate this year to receive tickets to the annual conference. Since Ellie turned 12 that week, she was able to go with us! It was her first time actually in the Conference Center and we were lucky enough to be moved up from our original ticket selection to about 15 rows away from the very front!

We decided to go quite a bit earlier so that I could drop off Kevan's final draft and visit with Terri a bit. We were lucky enough to see Jeremiah and his boys as well before it was time for us to walk down. (We also really appreciated the parking spot since it alleviated the jam that inevitably follows conference. There were also NCAA finals going on downtown so that didn't help with the traffic situation.)

It's such a cool experience to be in the Conference Center. It's funny that the natural inclination is to look at the big screens on the side instead of just looking straight ahead to see the speakers. The music is always so powerful when it envelopes you. I'm glad I was able to do this with both my daughters.

Here we are inside the Conference Center.

At City Creek Park on our way back to the condo.

March 10, 2010: Ellie's Surgery

As part of Ellie's orthodontia, she needed to have a tooth that is growing into her palate banded and a chain attached so that the process of bringing it into place can start. So it was back to our favorite oral surgeon! The surgery went great, but the recovery was a struggle. Because of a previous reaction to pain meds, she was told to take only OTC pain relievers. After the initial numbing wore off, the real pain kicked in. She was on the floor crying and crying. I talked with my sister about our options and after a while, we were able to manage the pain she was in. Within a couple of days, she was good as new! Now, we'll see how she does once they actually start bringing it down....

The Days Fly By

I know that I've been slacking in my blog updates, but I couldn't believe when I got ready to start and saw that the last time I posted was St. Patrick's Day! That was a month ago!

I spent last Sunday calendaring and laying out my plan of attack for the next 7 weeks. That would get me through the end of the school year. One of the things I needed to do--amongst the numerous other tasks--was update this family memoir before I forgot everything!

So sit back, relax, and enjoy the updates.