Tabernacle Choir/Utah Symphony Concert

Alyssa had to attend an orchestra concert for her orchestra class. I had picked out a concert at Thanksgiving Point that the American Heritage Orchestra was putting on during the Tulip Festival. And then Danny informed me that he and I were going to a Real Salt Lake Soccer Game that night. So I had to scramble to find another concert to take Alyssa to. I found a Tabernacle Choir/Utah Symphony Concert on a night that we, amazingly, had open. And the tickets were FREE. I also must have gotten the first time reservation special because we were in the very front section on the left side. We were like 9 rows back and 2 sections over from the entire first presidency. Amazing.

The concert was really good. I have never seen the Tabernacle Choir in concert, just during Conference the couple of times that I have been. And I certainly wasn't on the 9th row for that. It was a fun outing and we even made it in and out of SLC without any trouble.

Oh yeah, Lula is Part Poodle

We took Lula into a professional groomer in April and they poodled her. We understand that she is part poodle, but we try to ignore that part of her as much as possible. Hard to do with that poodle poof on top of her head and her poofy tail. Funny thing is that we talked to a couple of other families with doodles who had the same problem. Now we know that telling the groomer "short" isn't enough. You have to specifically say "no poodle poof, please." Danny especially loved her bows (any time he saw her with them on, all he would say was "ridiculous").

We shaved her at home on Saturday and she now looks much more like an Irish Setter and we can all call her cute again.

Camden's 4th Birthday

Camden had a fun birthday. Unfortunately, his birthday fell on a Wednesday this year which is already a Young Women's/ Bishopric night. However, Alyssa also had a soccer game that night. So Alyssa skipped Young Women's that night(it was a personal progress night and she had already finished personal progress, so we didn't feel that bad about making her skip it) and we celebrated Camden's birthday with dinner at Denny's, then presents and cake/ice cream at our house after. It was already a late dinner(7pm) and then the service was slower than I have ever seen it anywhere. The waitress told us 30 minutes from when we ordered and it ended up being an hour. Kind of ridiculous. But they gave us a $50 gift card to make up for it. It made for a late bedtime for all of the kids, though. Here we are waiting for our food. I'm guessing that is Alyssa's fingers that slipped into the shot.

Camden opening his first present.

 He was excited about all of the green things he got, especially these green crocs.

His request for his cake was green. So Alyssa made him this very green cake(which she did almost completely on her own). And then after it was all finished and we had shown it to him he said "I want a PJ Masks - Gekko cake." What?!? So we found a couple of PJ Masks figures to put on top and he was happy with it.

Camden is a fun little caboose to our family. He finished his first year of preschool this year(a joint effort with some of the other moms in my neighborhood). He can recognize, name, and tell the sound of almost every letter of the alphabet. He can do the same with the first 10 numbers and even some higher. I even caught him counting to 100, using a homework sheet that Tyler brought home from Kindergarten. His favorite color switched from pink to green sometime around March. His favorite shows are Paw Patrol, PJ Masks, and Puppy Dog Pals. He also loves music. His favorite radio songs are "Party in the USA," "The Middle," and anything with "baby" in the lyrics. He often tells me in the car "turn up the radio. I can't hear it." And on Father's Day he sang right along with all of the bigger kids. I've never seen my other kids actually sing the words to songs as sunbeams. It was so cute. This summer we are working on learning to swing himself, not be afraid of putting his head underwater, balance on a bike, and pick up his toys when he is done playing with them. He is a couple pounds heavier than Tyler and a couple of inches shorter than Tyler. I think his feet about a half size bigger than Tyler, as well. We love our Cam-Cam.

Itty Bitty Baseball

While Camden was playing in the backyard one day, I noticed that he hit a plastic softball almost all the way across our yard. So I signed him up for the 3 and 4 year old version of baseball with the city. He had so much fun. In fact, he loved Itty Bitty Baseball so much that we signed him up for t-ball, as well.

This next picture was during their warm up and stretching. I think they were being alligators or sharks or something else like that.

Alyssa Was Very Busy

Alyssa decided to run track and field at school in the spring. She really enjoyed it, but it took a lot of time. She had practice until 4:15 Tuesday-Friday, plus 6 different track meets from the end of March through the beginning of May. Her best event was probably the 800M, but her favorite event was the 4X400M

Then, on top of track, she also wanted to play spring soccer with the city. I think she liked her team and she had 1 friend on the team that she has played with the past 3 or 4 years. Her coach held 2 hour weekly practices on top of the 2 games a week(almost every week). She ended her season with a tournament, in which they ended up loosing to the undefeated #1 team in the semi-final. It was a team that beat most of the other teams in the league by 10+ goals. I think her team held them to 5 or 6. She had a good season. She played goalie for half of each game and did very well considering her size. She got a lot of comments from both teams in that final game about how well she played.

Tyler also played spring soccer with Danny as his coach. He was able to play on the same team as a couple of his friends from the neighborhood. He seemed to enjoy it, but didn't love how much he had to run. He also had 2 fairly dominant players on his team that scored the majority of their teams goals. They probably won most of their games by a 10-15 point spread because of the 2 boys, one of them pictured below(on the right).

Unfortunately a lot of Tyler and Alyssa's games overlapped, so I was only able to go to about 3 of Tyler's 8 games, and Danny only made it to about half of Alyssa's. Thank goodness we didn't have a 3rd child signed up for soccer!

Catching Up

 I realized as I was unloading pictures from my new phone, that I haven't updated our blog in, at least, 2 months. I guess that is the problem with having more storage space on my phone- It eliminates the need to get the pictures off. I am going to try post daily for the rest of this week and see if I can get it all up do date.
We got to enjoy the Tulip Festival at Thanksgiving Point again this year. Somehow we managed to get there in between all of the rainstorms of April and May. As you can see from our clothing, it wasn't exactly a warm night, but it was warm enough and the tulips were AMAZING!

We had a fun family night there, took advantage of the lawn games and bounce houses, and went out for dinner afterwards. We feel so blessed to have Thanksgiving Point so close to home. They really have some amazing venues and fun events.