MORP 2024

(April 13th, 2024)

Backwards Prom is so fun. I wondered who decided to spell that backwards and make a whole dance around it? And it stuck. That's so funny. Regardless, it is definitely a thing. Sometimes the High School does it and other times, it gets missed. I think it really depends on the year and of course Covid messed some things up for good.

Ivory decided to branch out and she asked Spencer. He used to live in our neighborhood, but his family moved a few years ago. But thanks to social media (which wasn't a thing in my day) they sort of stayed in touch. (If by staying in touch, I mean they follow each other on instagram.) She drove all the way out to his house (which is a bit of a drive) and left him a cute ask. 

He responded in kind. (I really love the dino theme)

I think they had such a fun group. I loved their day date. They went to a park and brought lots of wine glasses. Some were for painting. Others were to scoop up cake. The small shot glasses were for...shots basically. But don't worry, there was no alcohol involved. I think they had a good time. (I apologize. Raina has all the pictures and can't seem to share them to Ivory's phone. So maybe I'll get some on here...and maybe not.)

The theme for MORP was decades. That meant you could pretty much dress up in anything. Lots of people did 70s attire, but Ivory and Spencer went late 1600s, early 1700s. Why not? I think they looked pretty awesome. All these couples look fantastic actually. 

I wish there were dances for adults. We never do fun stuff like this. I'm so glad my kids get to.

Rock Canyon Classic

(April 13th, 2024)

I know I just posted a Spikeball tournament, but tis the season, I guess. It's amazing the difference a couple weeks will make. Two weeks later, and the weather was perfect. So gorgeous. It's always so fun to walk over the rim of the Rock Canyon bowl and see all the nets and people below.

June was playing with her boyfriend, Chris. Chris is the BF as of a week or so ago. We all like him a lot, in case you're wondering. He's also really good at Spikeball. I think that is how they met, sort of. Met at a friend's apartment and then played Spikeball later and the rest is history, so they say. Pearl and I came to support and cheer. We also got a lot of good listening in while we watched. Notice the headphones. And I took a walk around the bowl now and then to get in some steps.

It's really nice how they put pictures online. I grabbed a couple from there. You can see June's twisty serve.

It was super sunny and I think all of us got some color. Pearl just turns more tan, but the rest of us burned a bit. June sent me a picture of her feet in the evening. Ouch. And I sent her back my spotted diseased feet courtesy of my baretrap sandals. 

I also took some great video and took some photos from them. Chris really likes to dive. And he is really good at it. His dives are actually more dive/rolls, and he gets right back up on his feet. He's really fun to watch. 

Here are a couple other fun moments. June seemed to lose her hat on almost every play. She was lucky Pearl loaned it to her since it saved her from burning her face. 

There was some down time between games. I love this picture of them resting.

June and Chris chose Out of Pocket as their team name. They did such a good job. During pool play they went 3-1 and were first seed. During tournament play, they won their first two matches, but didn't quite get the win. It was close though. Second still looks pretty good. It's the same place she got in the last tournament, but she played in Advanced this time. I'm thinking her stats are looking pretty good right now.

Free the Spike

(March 30th, 2024)

Long gone are the days when playing tournaments is a good idea for me. Just saying the word tournament can throw my back out. But for some odd reason, I decided to sign up anyway. It was mainly for Jake since I thought he would enjoy trying one out. I'm pretty chill and don't get super competitive or upset if I lose. (Actually, Jake is super chill too. He was a great partner.)

The day was oh so cold. It could have worse...it could have been snowing. At least that didn't happen. But I was freezing and couldn't warm up the entire time. At one point, Jake touched my arm and said, "You are a popsicle!" Yep, that is how I felt too. But still super fun to play.

Here is a group shot. (we are on the far right. You can pick Jake out easy since he's in the yellow shirt.)

We played intermediate or recreational, as they sometimes call it. Everyone starts in pool play and plays everyone in their pool. Then all the teams are seeded and the real games begin. Jake and I did not win any of our pool games. Yikes. June, however, who played with a friend from her mission named Michael, won all her pool play games. I thought that meant that we'd play them first. You know, pair up the worst with the best. But they didn't do that. Instead there was a lower bracket of the four lowest teams. We were definitely in there.

We did win a game however. Same game where I thought I broke my hand. This guy hit the ball really hard and his follow through smacked my hand. Whoa...it hurt so bad!! I'm sure the cold didn't help. My skin was already so sore. I only took a few minutes and then went back to playing while favoring my right hand as much as possible. I knew it wasn't broken since I could still move it, but it hurt for quite a while. And a bruise showed up under my knuckle the same day. 

Meanwhile, June and Michael did great. They ended up taking second. Nicely done. 

They took a lot of pictures of the event. Going back, there weren't any of me really. You can see June and Michael in the background here.

And Jake with his bright yellow way in the back there. 

These are the best close ups they had.

And yes, we played a kid. That guy across from Jake was 12. He wasn't too bad. 

It was a fun day despite my being frozen. But I'll stick to playing with my school gang. They are so much fun and more my speed. :) And we can play indoors whenever it is cold!

Glow in the Dark Hunting

(March 30th, 2024)

The trick for our family is finding a time that works for everyone. We discussed our options and finally decided that a Saturday night would be ideal. And then someone mentioned hunting in the dark and glow in the dark paint and the idea stuck. What a fun idea! So I purchased some eggs with mini glow sticks. The kids were super excited to have new eggs. But we couldn't hunt by color, since the numbers weren't exact, so instead we put initials on them. I like this more because that means you need to check every egg. (Makes the hunt last longer.)

We waited until the last minute to crack the glow sticks and put them in. We obviously wanted them to be as bright as possible. It takes a few minutes to crack over 100 glow sticks, so I got everyone to help.

Then I made everyone go downstairs and Tyler and I hid the eggs. Don't they look cool?

After we hid them and turned off the lights, it looked so cool in the house. There were little eggs glowing all over the place.

I don't really have pictures of the kids hunting. It was dark after all. Everyone helped and gave hints when they found someone else's eggs. I also hid some other items like hats and tattoo pens. The girls seemed to find everything fairly quickly. And they all loved it. I imagine we'll have another glow-in-the-dark hunt in the future.

One of the bonus item was a ring. I had a whole tray and everyone got to choose.

But by far, the favorite item was the temporary tattoo pens. The girls went to town and had so much fun. Here are some of the designs.

They were so distracted by the pens that they forgot to open the camo eggs. (Camo eggs are REALLY hard to find in the dark by the way. We finally had to turn the lights on.) There was only one egg missing and it turned out to be the fiver. It took me a while to find it, but Pearl claimed it since she was the only one missing an egg. That makes three years in a row. That is some extreme luck!

It's fun to find new traditions and this glow-in-the-dark egg hunt was a winner.