Spikebrite and the Week of June

June turned 18 this year. I wanted to make it a special event, but I wasn't exactly sure how to do that. I thought about having the 'week of June' where we would give her a gift each day for a week leading up to her birthday. But I decided I didn't want to worry about remembering a gift a day.

Then one of her gifts came in the mail and she saw it. So I HAD to give it to her early, so we went with the week of June after all.

Some of her gifts were a phone, games, and this fun apron. It is very accurate. June is always sweet.

I took her a boutique and she choose a super cute sweater.

June was very happy to get a new phone. Her other had some issues. 

You would think the phone would be the favorite gift, but I'm pretty sure the fav by far was Spikebrite. It is a glow in the dark attachment that clips on to your Spikeball net. It does raise the rim just a bit, but it allows you to play in the dark, so it is totally worth it.

I think it is easiest to play if there is still a little bit of ambient light. But you can play in the pitch black. The glow in the dark ball is easy to see. However, the other players are much harder to see in the dark. We didn't run into each other much more than usual, but what you realize is that people telegraph their hits through body language. With no light, you can't always tell where people are going to hit it. You just have to watch the glowing ball.

These pictures are funny because it looks like Tyler painted on them with some photo editing software. But it is just the ball. 

The video is better at showing that in actuality, you can't see much besides the ball and the rim. 

June loves Spikebrite. She used it on her birthday (an upcoming post) and sadly, it isn't as handy in the winter because it is cold, but I bet it gets some great use next year.

When the Library is More Than Just Books

This won't be the first (or the last) time I post about Sharon and her amazing talents at decorating the library at the school where I work. At one point, I thought that I wanted that job, but I'm so glad she got it. She does such an amazing job. She tells me that nothing is an original thought from her brain, it is all copied off pinterest.  But man, she can do a great job copying. Wait, I thought copying was my job...

Anyway, she currently has some Christmas stuff up for the holidays. She built this fireplace out of boxes. Pretty amazing.

All the ends of the bookcases have fun Christmas themed characters. 

There are some things that stay in the library year round, like this Harry Potter display. The snitch in the jar and the floating candles are my favorite.

But possibly the coolest is the display she had up before Christmas. She did an Alice in Wonderland theme. Here are the doors as you come in.

There were some fun Mad Hatter decorations.

And a Queen of Hearts selfie backdrop.

But the best thing was Alice's feet coming through the ceiling.

Sadly, Sharon had to take Alice down because she was a fire hazard. What a shame. I can't wait until new year to see what goes up next.

General Conference and the Aquarium

Our conference system seems to be working. We still have our awesome wall of conference and everyone can put up a sticker or write their name when they finish rereading a talk. We all worked together to go to the Fish Kiss Spa last time. This time we put the Aquarium as our goal. We haven't been there in a long time. And everyone made it!

We changed the format and you have to finish rereading the talks by the 15th of the month before conference. That gives us a little extra time to claim our reward. So we went to the Aquarium in September. It was a blast. We had SO many pictures, but I limited myself to 30 of the animals. I chose the best of the bunch. I hope you enjoy some of these cool creatures we saw.

The sloth was super active—for a sloth. They were trimming his nails and feeding him to keep him busy. Cutie.

This dove looked like someone shot it. It is called bleeding heart for a good reason.

The penguins were so fun to watch. They've had a couple groups hatch at the aquarium. One of the penguins even shares my birthday.

There were so many cool jellyfish. They are amazing and beautiful.

Except for this one. It really creeps me out. The tentacles were so wispy they looked like spider webs in the water. Gross.

There were even these interesting jellies. They looked like they swam straight into the bottom and stayed there. And basically they did. They live life upside-down.

The mini sea horses were some of my favorites.

The kids really liked the Nemo fish. They thought the black ones were really cool.

The octopus was really cool. It was white, but Ivory caught a picture when it turned slightly pink. So neat.

We only saw one otter, but he was swimming on loop. He had a memorized path he traveled and he was speedy.

There were even some interesting people there.

The gift store was fun. Pearl and Daisy got cute penguins.

Since this is all related to conference, I'm going to jump back to finish covering Conference weekend. I always make breakfast on one of the mornings. Breakfast paninis are so delicious.

As always, conference was amazing. It is so nice to take an entire weekend to focus on the words of the Lord, given through his apostles and disciples. We all have our own way to listen. There was stitching, bingo, coloring, snoozing (okay, that isn't the best way to listen), crane folding, and picture taking. (Thanks to Pearl for our conference photos.) 

It was a wonderful weekend. Now we just need to decide what we are working towards for our next goal.