Some Random Things From May

The boys had a family art night at their school. I wasn't going to go, but then they told me that they were supposed to perform a song at it. We were late, though, so they both missed their performance. We walked around the school and found their artwork.

Camden's was a profile shot,

Tylers was a forward facing picture. Both were their own heads changed into a coloring page for them to design in their own creative way. Each grade had a different angle of the head.

Ashley went to Physics Day at Lagoon. In order to go, she was required to participate in one of the activities that they had going on that day. Ashley chose to design a ride for her activity because it looked like the most fun. We talked through some different ideas and then she drew the ride during classes in the days leading up to Lagoon day. This is what she came up with.

She called her ride "Banana Split." It was a drop tower and a short coaster ride combined into one. The name came from the yellow cars that split into the different directions when they get to the bottom. I helped her with a write up to explain the ride and the physics involved with the ride. We put it on a poster board and she took it with her to Lagoon. She said when she dropped it off, everyone else had 3D models of their rides and she felt like hers was really inadequate. However, when she met with the judge to explain her ride, he was really impressed with her presentation and the way she answered his questions. In fact, he was so impressed that he asked her what college she went to. She ended up winning third place! She said there were like 50 entries, too. I couldn't believe it! She got a prize bag for winning that included a shirt, a bounce back pass to Lagoon, a moon light, a small dome shaped thing that projects a floating image, and a ribbon. And the best part was that she suddenly became her physics teacher's favorite student.

I made a money lei for Alyssa for graduation. I just watched a couple of you tube videos to figure out how to make the ribbon lei and the folded flowers. Then I arranged it in the way I liked the best. She was not allowed to wear it to graduation, though, since she was on the stand. But she wore it afterwards for pictures.

The picture is a little blurry, but I went to a field trip for each of the boys. Tyler's was to the Orem rec center to swim, play basketball, play racquetball, rock climb, and play in the play area. He loved having me there and wanted me to stick with him in the pool for most of the time. Camden had a field trip to the bowling alley and a park. I didn't bowl with them, but the group of kids in my lane were pretty calm, so they were easy to supervise.

The boys had a choir concert. The theme was heroes. They had some fun props like these masks. It was a cute show.

The boys had their end of year dance festival. I went early to save seats and barely made it on the front row. The seats were perfect to see both of the boys. 

We gave Lula a poodle cut for fun. She looked kind of ridiculous. we almost had to leave her this way for a few days, rather than a few hours when our clippers stopped working. I had to make an emergency run to PetSmart to get a new set. She looked much better after it was all shaved short.

Camden had a job fair at school. He chose to research a chef. I was just glad that we had everything that we needed for his costume at home. He did a good job with his power point presentation.

The end of the school year is always crazy busy. Camden also had a piano recital, which I did not get a picture of. We were glad when summer break arrived, and we could all relax a little bit.

Hope of America - Tyler

Tyler got to participate in Hope of America this year. We have been hearing about this event for years because the 5th graders from all of the public schools in the area participate. Ashley and Alyssa did not get to do it because American Heritage does their own thing to celebrate America in the 5th grade.

The event takes place in the Marriott Center and is part of Provo's Freedom Festival. Most of the other events take place in July, but this one happens in May because that is when the kids are still in school. There are about 30 schools that come on each of the 3 nights, so getting in and out with the traffic was kind of crazy. Also, getting Tyler to the right spot and then finding him again afterwards was also made us a little nervous. But the teachers have a system and it worked really well. We went a little early and stopped by the convention center to pick Danny up. I think this also helped us to avoid some of the traffic both on the way there and on the way home.

There was a preshow that had some fun things. Danny's good friend manages the Marriott Center, so he was able to reserve us some amazing seats in the center and on the 2nd row. We had a great view. Tyler wore a blue shirt, so he is up in the stars section. He was hoping to be one of the lucky ones to get assigned as a star at the last minute, but that went to the kid sitting in front of him. I think he is 1 row behind and slightly to the right of the star (white shirt) wearing sunglasses towards the bottom of this picture. Tyler has a pair of white sunglasses on his forehead.

We slowly saw the big picture come together. When they were done arranging it, they looked pretty impressive. The show was about an hour long and they sang a lot of songs about America, the constitution, the Bill of rights, heroes, etc. It was so good and a great reminder of why it is such a blessing to live in this country.

The best song was the one that they used their flashlights for. They dimmed all of the lights and then during the chorus, the kids moved their flashlights in the same pattern. I tried to post the video, hut it was too big. I found the full performance on Youtube so I'm posting the link here. The flashlight song is at the very end, around the 1 hour mark.

The link if the above video doesn't work https://youtu.be/zsqC9v9nQ60?si=xKLvyClBmMTLZcR8

 

Prom for Ashley

Ashley went to Prom with one of her best friends. She didn't want to make a big deal about it, so she wouldn't even let me take her out to get a dress. She was just going to wear a church dress, but I talked her into wearing on of my dresses that I got for events and the Convention Center. She also did not want her hair curled or down and she only let me put on the bare minimum for makeup. 

Her group consisted of all the people she eats lunch with plus a couple of extra girls. They did a daytime date to the nickel arcade, took pictures at a park, had dinner at Sol Agave and then went to the dance.

She said it was more fun than she expected it to be. This was her first Official date, so I'm glad it went well. We have been trying to tell Ashley for a long time that dating is really just hanging out with your friends. I'm glad she was willing to go.
 

Date Night with Ashley

For our one on one date, Ashley chose to go to dinner at Olive Garden and then a play at the Lehi Arts Center. She didn't want to tell me anything about the play before that night, but I found out on the way to dinner that we would be seeing "Daddy Long Legs." 

Dinner was good and the service was super-fast, probably because it was Friday night and Olive Garden gets pretty busy on Friday night.

The play was interesting. I had never seen it before and it took about 4 scenes for me to realize that there would only be 2 people in the entire cast. I liked the play more then I thought I would. The Lehi Arts center is tiny and we had seats on the front row, so there were a couple of times that we had to pull in our feet or tuck our legs a different way so that we didn't accidentally kick or trip the actors.

After we left the play, Ashley admitted to me the reason for choosing this play on this particular night. One of the actors was supposed to be the physics teacher that I aide for. We still don't know why he wasn't in the play. He must have dropped out after they bought the tickets. I'm kind of glad that he wasn't in the play because that would have been quite awkward since we were so visibly there. We had a fun night together.

Camden's 9th Birthday

We celebrated Camden's birthday on 2 different days. On his actual birthday, we had a steak dinner at home, opened presents, and ate some of the bottom layer of his cake. We found this cake on pinterest, so I did my best to recreate it. 

Ready to blow out the candles.

On the day after his birthday, we had Camden's birthday party. He chose to take 4 friends to Airborne Trampoline Park. They jumped and played for an hour and a half and then we headed back to our house for pizza, cake, and presents. The weather was nice, so we did everything outside. 

Children of Eden

Ashley was in her school play in April. The play was Children of Eden. I had never seen this play and I wasn't familiar with the music. I also had mixed feelings about someone portraying Heavenly Father on stage. But as I attended the play and focused more on the idea of relationships between parents and children than the actual relationship between Father in heaven and Adam/Eve, I was able to really enjoy the play. I always love watching Ashley on Stage doing what she loves most.

The costumes were very simple for this play. Ashley also said they were very comfortable The only thing we had to provide was a pair of colored high-top converse.

I took Camden with me to the Friday night performance. We had front row seats and I wish I had been more familiar with the play so I could have taken pictures and videos this night. 

Alyssa was my date for the Saturday night performance. Our seats were on the second row, so the few attempts I made at pictures were not great. I especially wanted to catch a short scene during the gathering of the animals onto the ark where Ashley had a rock paper, scissors battle with another monkey and one of them gets thrown off of the stage. Our seats were perfect to see it on Friday night, but hard to see on Saturday night without holding my phone up in the air. 

Ashley was sad when it was over but looks forward to learning what musicals the school will do next year. She is hoping for Annie, so that she can volunteer Lula to play the part of Sandy.

Senior Prom

Senior Prom had the potential to be amazing for Alyssa. All she wanted was to go with her group of friends that consisted of 4 guys and 3 girls. They found another girl to join the group and everyone knew who they were going to ask. Alyssa's guy friend, Aiden, even convinced her to break things off with Kevin (the guy she had gone to the last 2 dances with. A nice kid that wanted more from Alyssa than she wanted to give at this time in her life.) Then everything fell apart when Aiden got really mad at the girl he was going to go with and decided not to go to prom. And he convinced all of the other guys not to go either. So now, Alyssa wasn't going to be asked by Kevin, or any other guy because they all thought something was going on between her and Kevin. Long story short, Alyssa's friend, Leisel (who has a boyfriend) found someone to ask her and they joined up with their group. She was happy that she got to go, but was also sad that she didn't get to hang out with her friends at their last high school dance together.

Her hair

Her date

Their group

Her dress matched her eyes perfectly and she looked gorgeous that night. She said it was fun, but it would have been more fun if her best friend, Kate, would have been there with her. I'm just glad that she got to go because it would have been a sad night for her if she didn't.

Easter

 Easter came and went. I didn't get any pictures except a quick one of the kids in their new easter church clothes. 

It was early this year and the weather was still cold outside, so it didn't really feel like Easter. It kind of snuck up on me, but we still managed to dye eggs, do some egg hunts, and have a nice dinner. We were going to go over to Gawbie and Grandpa's after church, but Gawbie had to be admitted to the hospital a couple of days before Easter. We told her we would postpone dinner and do it when she got out, but she ended up staying for over a week and by that time, the ham wasn't good anymore and no one felt like doing all of the work to have Easter dinner. So hopefully next year goes better. I am so grateful for Jesus Christ and his atonement. Easter is such a special time of year as we celebrate his life and all he did for each of us.

My One on One With Camden

About a week after Tyler's one on one, I went out with Camden for our date. He chose to go to the bowling alley. We went to Jack and Jills because we had leftover money on an arcade card there from February. We bowled 2 games. I got worse but Camden got better.

After bowling, we tried to use the arcade card, but it would not work at the Lehi Jack and Jills because we bought it at the American Fork location. So we went to an early dinner at Black Bear Diner. 

After dinner, we decided to go over to the American Fork Jack and Jills to finish out the arcade card and cash out for some prizes. On the way over, we drove by the house that had exploded a few days before.

Camden got to bring home some slime and a little bowling game from the arcade. It was a fun night.

One on One Date with Tyler

For my birthday, one of my gifts was a chance to make memories. Each of the kids(and Danny) picked an activity to do with me so that we could make some memories together. The first one on one was with Tyler. He chose to go to Nickle City (an arcade). We spent a couple of hours at the arcade, most of the time on this Wizard of Oz coin dropper game. We won over 1000 tickets on that one game. We came home with an inflatable chair, some candies, and a little stuffed doggie. Tyler was pretty excited about his inflatable chair and spent a lot of time sitting in it over the next month or so.

After the arcade, Tyler chose to go to Kings Buffet for dinner. He loves the imitation crab with teriyaki sauce from the Mongolian grill and the sesame balls. Oh, and the ice cream!

It was a fun afternoon together.

Some Random Things from March

We had a random snowstorm in March after some warm days and we were all a bit angry about it.

We celebrated my birthday. I chose to go to Tucanos. The food was good, as usual. A friend of mine brought over flowers for me. That was a nice surprise, and it brightened our home for the next week or 2.

We played a family game and one of the things that Camden had to do was use household items to make a snorkel. He was spot on, since we had bought the boys over the face snorkels for Hawaii and they looked just like this minus the storm trooper resemblance.

New tradition in our household is to make pie's on pi day in memory of Grandma Bev who passed away on pi day 2 years ago. We sure miss her and we love her strawberry pie. I wish I could make it as good as her.

The boys completed their basketball season. They both had a lot a fun playing. It was good to see them improve their skills over the season.

Tyler's Wax Museum

Shortly after we got back from the Bahamas, Tyler had a wax museum at school. He chose to research Sandra Day O'Connor. He had to do a report on her accomplishments and life. We had to complete it at home because he missed a week of school while we were on the cruise. We had him wear a wig, a robe and a fluffy collar. 

He got to do the wax museum during the day for the other students and then again at night for the families. We went past him a few times to hear his 2 minute presentation. We also listened to a few other students, including astronauts, athletes, MLK, presidents, etc.

He did a good job.

Bahamas Cruise - Disembarkment

We did not rush to get off of the boat on that last day. We finally said goodbye to the Knudsen's around 8:30am. We breezed through the disembarkation right up to the point of finding our rental car shuttle. The line was super long. This wouldn't have been a problem if the shuttles had been big, or if they had more than one shuttle. Unfortunately, they didn't have either of these. And everyone had 1-2 big suitcases with them. so they were fitting about 4 suitcases and whatever people could go with that many suitcases (the shuttles could hold like 12 people, but not 12 bags, if that makes sense). It took at least an hour to get on the shuttle. And then and the rental car lot, there was an equally long line with piles of luggage and people waiting all over the parking lot. Danny got in line and I told the kids to wait by this nice palm tree.

They quickly came back when they read the sign.

After about an hour of sitting in the Budget parking lot, I sent the kids to a park that was a few blocks away. It looked like it would be better than sitting on a curb. When we got the rental(3 hours after getting off of the boat) we picked them up.

We had planned to drive down the coast a bit and to explore, but since it took so long to get the car, we didn't really have time for that anymore. We found a firehouse subs with a gluten free bread option for Alyssa so we got lunch there. The kids liked the fireman hats.

We made it to the airport in plenty of time. We got a kick out of this "lonely traveler" exhibit in the airport. He looked so realistic.

Camden and Tyler loved flying Delta, because of the games on the screens. Usually we fly southwest, so that was a nice change.

We saw a pretty amazing sunset from the airplane window.

We got home in the evening to a very excited dog. We were sad to be back after such a fun and relaxing week. Plus, Utah was so much colder than Florida and the Bahamas.