Conference Bowl

Easter and Conference were on the same weekend this year. That happens sometimes. I like it, but it makes things a little busy. On Saturday, we did our Easter Egg hunt first thing in the morning. Then we watched two hours of conference.

Then we decided that all those who finished the conference wall would go bowling and between sessions seemed like as good a time as any. So we hustled over to don our bowling shoes and get jiggy with it. Here we are at Mire Bowl.



I'm sure everyone has been bowling before, but no one remembered. The older girls spent time working on their swing and release, but keeping that darn bowling ball somewhere in the middle of the lane is harder than it looks.

Pearl was a natural. Of course, she got to use the bumpers.

I think everyone had a good time despite the fact that Robyn decided she hated bowling. (You can't win them all, especially when your mom is playing.)

We heeded all creepy signs and no one had their fingers mutilated.

Dad and I took a selfie, and Robyn decorated it for us. I'm digging Tyler's pink mustache.

We didn't have all of us. Just Birdsong, Stallion, Peapod, Junica, and Mombie. Daisy and Ivory didn't quite finish all the talks. I was really proud of Pearl for getting them all done. Once again, five out of seven. Still not a bad number.

Here is the wall before we took it down.

And then the baptism. That is what the kids call it when we put up clean white papers. And notice the new apostles in the bottom corner. It was such an exciting conference.

There were many changes in how things are organized and run. It was an amazing two days of inspiration. The talks were excellent and I can't wait to reread them. The solemn assembly as we sustained a new prophet was awe inspiring. I am so grateful for the gospel and the opportunity to hear from the prophet and apostles every six months. I told my family that my favorite part was hearing from the prophet multiple times. He usually speaks several times, but President Monson had gotten so frail that he only spoke briefly or not at all. So it was great to see President Nelson speak often.

Our family always has a good time. We still keep our hands busy stitching, coloring, or taking notes. We haven't had anyone sleep through a session yet. :)

One more photo because Robyn demanded. 

This is the face we make when we find out that Elder Holland spoke in Priesthood session and we won't get to hear him. (Luckily, that didn't happen this time around.)

Hunt by Color

I have to admit that doing the Easter Egg hunt and watching the kids collect eggs is still a highlight of the spring. I wonder if the kids will outgrow it? June is 15 and still going strong. And my suspicion is that as long as I hide money in eggs, they will never outgrow it. Maybe when there are grandkids involved, we will make the kids step down.

We changed up the rules this year. First, we expanded our territory. Well, we lost territory first. The plot behind us, a.k.a. the Sport Court, was purchased and developed. With the loss of that area, I was worried about it being too tiny a space around the house for the five kids, but I had the genius idea to include the neighbors yard. They are right across the street and we used their front and back yard as well as ours, doubling our territory for egg hunting. It was pretty great.

Also, I did the eggs by color this year. It felt like it took longer to hide them because I had five bags of eggs not including the special blue ones and the camo eggs. But the girls really liked hunting for their own color. Plus, every year June is the last one out the door and there are never enough eggs for her. With her own color, she didn't have to worry about people taking her eggs.

Here are the colors:
June - Green
Robyn - Yellow
Ivory - Orange
Daisy - Purple
Pearl - Pink

Although I had a little trouble telling pink and purple apart. Next year I'm using blue. This year, the blue ones were fair game for anyone. They had the chicks inside and were worth tokens if you found them. Luckily, everyone ended up with at least one blue. (I only hid nine.)

Looks like we are ready to get this show on the road. Everyone prepares for the hunt differently. Whether it is wearing your bucket, playing some pre-game music, or struggling with your running shoes.

These girls are ready to go. Only one person opted for the back door. Most people were headed across the street to start.

What a surprise...look who is first out the door? 'It is about time.' she is singing to herself.

I totally adore this silhouette picture of June with her bun.

I loved the extra space. The girls were able to stay spread out. I hid lots of other random things here and there for anyone to pick up.

Robyn found the socks. They filled her bucket up right away. Where are you going to put your eggs, Robyn?

Pearl found one in the tree. It is funny what one person will walk by and another will spot. Ivory had a hard time finding her eggs and the hardest for her were always the sparkly ones. Ironic huh?

I think Daisy should apply for the position of Easter Bunny. With those teeth and ears, she would be a shoe in.

Tyler helped hide the eggs this year. He would take a bag and head out the door. I think I only hid Ivory's and Pearl's. And the camos, of course. He hid one of Robyn's in the spider lair. Here she is looking into it and deciding who would stick their hand in there, because it wasn't going to be her. (The spider lair is really the box for the hose. I may have been the one told the kids never to put their hand in there. You never know...)

Some of the things I hid had multiples. If you found something you already had, you could only have one. I hid five boxes of candy which were different. You could only have ONE of those. So if you found something you liked better, you could switch boxes. Pearl got a little confused. She wanted to trade all sorts of stuff. She was surprised to find that she could keep almost everything in her bucket. She actually ended up with a boat load of extra stuff.

There are the extremely obvious eggs that everyone sees except you. June had one of those moments. Don't worry, she finally found it.

Here are some of the best reaching moments of the day.

Everyone knew they had 25 to find. Periodically they would stop and count. Looks like Ivory only has one more to find. (Yes, it was a sparkly one.)

Everyone checked their loot at the end. There was a few questions on color. Only a couple purple and pink were mixed up. June did have to give one of her yellow and green eggs to Robyn. (It was more yellow than green.) Here is Daisy checking her stash. Are her ears on backwards?

The camo eggs are always the last to be unearthed, but they were discovered eventually. Iver found the fiver this year. I think she ended up with over seven dollars in all. That is some good Easter loot.

It was quite a fun morning, followed by General Conference. Back to back goodness.

Elon-gation

Images of Greatness is an epic project in the A.L.L. program. June did it two years as Laura Ingalls Wilder and Princess Diana. Ivory got to do it last year, but they changed the format because they didn't think the kids could handle the rigors of the full project. I was disappointed, but Ivory did a fantastic job as Simone Biles. However, this year, the new A.L.L. teacher and the previous one decided to bring back the old format. The kids had to choose their person, do side projects, but most importantly, write a bio riddle and memorize it to recite in front of an audience. It used to be at night, but they held it during the day. I'm sure this must drive some parents crazy, but luckily, both Tyler's and my job are flexible so we were both able to be there.

I was very surprised at who Ivory picked. I bet you couldn't guess given ten minutes, so I'll tell you. She chose Elon Musk.

Some of you probably know who this is. Others of you may be clueless. I was more on the clueless side, although I had heard his name before and knew he was a tech inventor guy of some kind. Well, he is much more than that.

Elon Musk is a savvy business man owning many companies and he is one of the richest men in the world. He is extremely pro-American and all his inventions and knowledge are poured into making the world a better place.

There is more to say about him than I care to squish into one blog post, but you should at least go browse Wikipedia and learn five new facts about this guy. He is impressive.

One of the requirements is to dress up as your person. Elon Musk wears suits or t-shirts. Not very iconic. The other option is to dress as something related to your character. So Ivory chose a space related theme, since Elon has sent several rockets into space. She borrowed some stuff and we found other things. She looks pretty official even if she is dwarfed by the suit and helmet.

The helmet had so much static. Check out her hair inside.

The next day at school was the big day. We walked around and looked at the boards first. Ivory did a good job on her board. I like her wavy timeline.

She was especially proud of the rocket she made as one of her props.

I enjoyed walking around and running into famous people. Here is Nikola Tesla and Mother Teresa hanging out.

And William Wallace was being dramatic as usual.

Then it was time for the kids to get up and recite their bio riddles. The kids did a fantastic job. Especially since they had no practice from the year before. See if you can recognize some of these famous people from history.

Ivory did great. She remembered all her stanzas and she had more than most people. Tyler recorded her but the sound was so bad, you can hardly hear her. I'm sure the huge helmet didn't help. So you just get a picture of her being awesome.

I was very impressed with all the kids and the work they did. And I love that they will have a special place in their heart for these people they have learned more about.

Honor Orchestra 2018 and a Solo

June did Honor Orchestra last year for the first time. This year she was selected to do it again. Oddly, I think it was less popular this year. So many of June's friends were busy or just didn't want to do it. I was surprised. And actually, it will be interesting to see which of her friends continue with Orchestra into High School next year. Choir is the big thing around here and people don't have room for both in their schedule. But June is happy with her violin playing and she easily made it into the Advanced Orchestra at the High School.

I carpooled with Brooke's mom because it is still tricky to get the girls out to the Friday rehearsal and the Saturday morning one. Jennifer was kind enough to take them on Saturday morning because I had Camp Kickoff. In fact, I left the meeting midway to go into the hall and call June because she wasn't answering my texts. Turns out, she was asleep and I woke her up only minutes before she had to leave.

But she made it out there just fine and she did a great job. Sadly, youtube will no longer load ANY of my videos. I guess they don't support them anymore. I've been having Tyler record things for me, but at this event, I was the only one recording since Tyler was out of town, so it's a no go. Blogger will sometimes post them, but the song I recorded was too long. Darn technology. We often don't get along.

Here you can see the whole orchestra.

And there is my June.

Last year was weird. They played 4 songs and it was all over. This year, they had the same number of songs, but they had a chunk in the middle where kids from Solo and Ensemble played. I think that was a great idea. There were some very impressive numbers.

I'm glad we were able to go listen. From June's school, only she and Brooke went, but it was nice because she ran into Zuzu. I caught them all at lunch before the concert started.

June is getting very good on the violin. I love to listen to her play. I hope she continues for quite a while.

In fact, I'm going to add on to this post, June's orchestra concert in March. They had their concert at the High School. They had every Junior High orchestra play (Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, and Chamber) and then the High School had their two orchestras play and then I believe the Symphony. It was a great night to combine everything. (They might have even had the band concert after that, but I didn't stay that far.)

June got to play a solo in one of their songs. She did such a great job and it was a hard solo. I'm a little bugged because Tyler did record this song, but his audio is lame. My version sounds much better and you can hear June a lot clearer, but you don't need to hear my youtube sob story again. So, here is the song and you'll have to listen closely for her solo. She comes in the first time at 2:05.

She was sitting one in from the first chair. You can mostly see her here.

It was a fun concert and it was awesome to hear June play a solo. She actually got to play that same solo multiple times because they performed all over the place including Libby Gardner Hall up at the U of U.

Alaskan Spring

Paint Nite is so fun and you have probably seen more paintings on here than you care to see by one person who is neither famous or skilled. Regardless, we really enjoy going, so if you frequent this corner of cyber space, you will see more paintings. Even now...

Grandma Dargan gave June a Paint Nite gift card, but as far as I know, there is only one location around here that is a non-drinking-minor-allowing. So that limited our options quite a bit. Add to that a busy teenager schedule and we were coming up short with a time to go paint that actually included a painting we wanted to do. In fact, it took six months for the stars to align. (Which is rather ironic, because three weeks later, they opened up Paint Nite to kids and had dozens of options.)

Anyway, we chose our painting and our night and away we went.

We arrived and found our spot and immediately took a blurry selfie because that is a requirement of Paint Nite.

Our scene was a mountain scape overlooking a lake. We started on the background. You can see June working on her blues here.

Now for some mountains.

Here are my mountains going in.

And June filling in her mountains.

Somewhere along the way, June managed to blink out a contact, and I hear vision is important for painting. So we called our knight in shining armor and he came with an extra contact and backup glasses. And he took a picture for us. You can see we are hard at work.

Not sure when June got green on her eyebrow, but it makes me laugh every time I see the pictures. Here she is working on the sky, but check out her sinister green eyebrow.

Filling in the flowers was very fun and colorful. Doing the clouds stressed me out. I don't think I excel at clouds.

This painting used more colors than the others I have done. I was running out of space to mix colors on my plate. Check out the carnage.

Because of the contact mishap and possibly because June has a bit of a meticulous side, we ended up being the last people there. Everyone is clearing out and June is finishing her flowers.

But it was worth the extra time. They ended up looking quite lovely in my opinion.

And now that they have kids' paint nites, I will probably take my other kids out eventually. For now, we are still trying to find places for all the paintings in our house.