December 9, 2010: 4H Parent Night and Christmas is in the House

This is probably the busiest week of the season. As earlier mentioned, Maggie and Ellie both had performances, there were tryouts, the 4-H parent night and prepping for the ward party (which required set-up the night before and a tree that represented the Laurels).

We enjoyed the performances of club members, saw Griffin the in the video for cup stacking and chowed down on cookies and punch. Afterwards, it was time to work on the tree for the Laurels. It didn't work out quite as we had planned, but I thought it looked nice just the same. Griffin loved having two trees next to each other in the living room, so I took some pictures so I could remember how great it makes me feel when the room is decorated for Christmas.

April 23, 2010: 4-H Parent Night

The same night as the Kuester home reveal was the 4-H Parent Showcase. Ellie participated in cheer and Griffin did the lego and robotics clubs. I also was recognized for my help with the Princess and Jewelry clubs.

Griffin's is the blue one in the middle.

A Loooooooong Day

With three of the four children involved in sleepovers, I thought I'd join my friend, Cherise, and a few of her kids on their weekly hike up Rock Canyon in Provo. Griffin was sleeping over at their house, but I thought he'd stay there with her boy until he had to go work on a merit badge around 8 or so. When she pulled up at 6:50 am, there he was, all buckled in and excited to hike. I double--and triple--checked that he really wanted to do this. She told me that he had been talking about it since the night before and was ready to go.




Now this is my kind of hike! It was lovely and not so steep as to cause me to wish to die. It was overcast and cool this morning and we tried to time it so we'd avoid the forecasted morning thunderstorms.

Griffin slipped and fell a few times, but he was quite the trooper, getting up each time and saying, "I don't even need a band-aid," even though he probably could have used one on his knee and hand by the time we finished. As we got in the car, I checked my cell phone which has a pedometer to find that we had walked nearly five miles in that little hike.

We were going to run home and grab more family members before heading to the Provo Farmer's Market, but the heavens opened and rains poured down. Grateful that we had made it out before getting soaked, we agreed that we'd just put off that adventure for another week. I decided to head to the elementary school and help my friend and Ellie's teacher work on her world timeline. (She wants to have it up for Back to School night on Tuesday; I think it will take until Back to School night next year before it will be ready.)

I worked there until about 1:45 when I went home to go with John to a friend's home to work on her in-home network. Ian and I had tried on Friday and failed miserably. After four hours, John had the house on a wireless network and everything up and running. Boy is he handy!
We got home in time to get Griffin (who was asleep on the couch) and head down to the Utah County fair. (Cherise and her family had gone earlier and had taken Ellie with them.) There was quite a bit of the fair dedicated to the 4-H program and Ellie had entered a ceramic plate she had made. She was thrilled to share that her plate won a blue ribbon! Along with the typical carnival games, there were lots of tractors and other equipment for the little ones to sit on.

The 4-H activity was to attend the Demolition Derby that closed out the fair, but the tickets were sold out, so we chose to come home instead. After lots of showers and a few moments of rest, I downloaded my pictures from the day. I'm sad that I didn't have my other camera on me for the hike as the picture quality would have been better, but all I had was the cell phone.Although long, I think it was a great day.

My Silly Songs Choir Performs (April 23-24)

At the end of each semester, 4-H puts on a parent night so they can see what their children have been doing all semester long. This is the performance of my silly songs choir and a couple pictures of them during one of our sessions. I also taught board games club, but that's truly not very exciting to "perform," so I just did a display board for that. I've included some pictures, though.

4-H is Done for the Semester!

YIPPEE!!!

GPS and Food Clubs

I told my GPS kids that if they found our cache hidden by Krispy Kreme and the Comfort Inn, I'd get each of them a doughnut. I think they found it in record time!

And my Fun with Foods class did more Halloween treats:

vampire fangs in strawberry blood

monster toes in ketchup blood (don't confuse the two!),

and popcorn hands.

Whew!

Since we didn't find our last two caches, I was a little nervous taking the 4-H group out again. It was about 50 degrees outside with 20-30 mph winds, so we had a wind chill in the low 40s. (I had a "Cruella-da-Ville" looking hairdo by the time we returned.) I knew we had a hike ahead of us since we had to make it to UVU and back (up a monster hill) in an hour. My group usually consists of 15 kids, but there were only six that showed up today, and they were all good, fast walkers. So we took off for UVU, about a mile away, and the Wolverine where the microcache was supposed to be located.

The hint had said that it was a microcache and that it was magnetic, so we looked all around the statue, with no luck. We came to the front and looked all around the words. Nothing. Then I started looking in the little tiny holes. Bingo!

It was so small! I couldn't believe that was really it, but we pulled it out, opened it, and found a teeny scroll of paper for a log.

They couldn't believe there could be a cache so small and that we actually found it. I'm so glad we did, because I think if we hadn't, I may not have had any students come back the next week. But our next one is right by Krispy Kreme and I told them if we found it, I'd buy them each a doughnut.

On our way back, we passed this lovely Halloween display. I think it's so clever!