"March"ing On

Last week Jenna and I spent 4 days at BYU for the National Championships of Ballroom dance. It was quite the experience and I spent a LOT of time watching ballroom dancing.  In fact I read 3.5 books while I sat in the stands so it ended up being a fun break from my usual daily grind.

Jenna participated in the Syllabus competition for 6 different styles of dance. Her goal was to get called back at least once, which she did, so she was pretty happy about that. She is the one with the long ponytail.

Her team was excited to place 2nd in their division for the Latin formation team dance.

To see the complete dance go here: https://youtu.be/feMoaGjSk7M

During one of our breaks we saw this Mormon Museum and thought we would check it out since we had some time to kill.

It was the most random museum we have ever seen! It was about the church in Mexico and had all sorts of creepy mannequin people who would "come to life" during 3 different presentations.  We sat through one of them, which was 13 minutes long, and that was plenty for us.

  We had to take a few pictures to document the adventure.

When they give awards at competitions they have all of the teams from each division come out and surround the floor, then one couple from the team goes out to accept the award on behalf of the team.

Jenna's team with their 2nd place medals and trophy.

Team bonding at the BYU Creamery

 The team with their trophy after their Standard Medley on the last day of compeition.

Jenna had to be in complete hair and make-up for 4 days in a row.  They also had to use tanning lotion and the girls had to get fake nails.  Apparently all of this stuff is expected at Nationals. Some of the teams even used temporary hair dye so everyone on the team had matching black hair. It seems so crazy to me, but a certain percentage of the score is based on costuming and uniformity of the team so everyone goes all out. I must say that I have never seen so many fake tans in my life.  I joked with Adam that it was like being at an Oompa Loompa convention.

One of Jenna's up-dos.

Adam had fun holding down the fort at home. He was able to take the boys to the Jump Zone on Saturday which they enjoyed immensely.

While I was doing laundry on Friday AJ ran into my bathroom and put my lipstick all over his eyes. It wouldn't be that big of a deal, but it was the kind of lipstick that stays on for 24 hrs and doesn't come off for anything.  He looked like a pink Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle for an entire day this week before we were finally able to get it off.

We had tickets to tour the Jordan River Temple yesterday.  I recommend going on the first day of an open house when possible as we were able to walk right through without any delays even though it was a Saturday afternoon. It was awesome.

Typical AJ.

Never a Dull Moment

Korinne's team participated in last Saturday's ballroom competition.  It was their only competition this year so we snapped a quick picture of Korinne and Cara in their costumes.

On Monday Britton, Jenna, Korinne, Jameson and I went to Black Violin.  I had heard about them from Facebook friends so when I found out they were coming to town I knew we needed to go. They are 2 classically trained musicians who mix classical music with hip hop and blast through stereotypes in the process. One of them had the body type of a football player, but you could tell he was in his happy place every moment he spent playing the violin.  He said in high school kids would try and get him to play sports and couldn't figure out why he would want to play in the orchestra but he just said, "No way, I'm making the violin cool." And he most certainly is still making the violin cool.

They had a drummer and a DJ that was absolutely amazing.  We don't get to see real DJ's do their thing very much around here, but the good ones are incredible.  He was moving around that spin table so fast I couldn't figure out how he could keep it all going. 

The beats were loud and we absolutely loved it.  When I say "we" I really mean Britton, Jenna, Korinne and Myself. Jameson was so overwhelmed by how loud it all was that he literally shut down and fell asleep about half way through the concert.  Note to self--J-mo doesn't love loud sounds and I should avoid taking him to concerts in the future.

Tuesday night was a bit crazy for us.  Our ward had New Beginnings for all of the YW and their parents and an Eagle Scout Court of Honor for Britton at the exact same time.  This meant we had to run back and forth between the two and there wasn't a single YW available to babysit the boys who were having a hard time sitting through either event. In the end one of our neighbors took a struggling AJ out in the hall while Adam and I went up for Britton's Eagle presentation.

 Congrats to Britton.  He finished his project in 2016 and received his certificate in November 2017, but the ward finally had the Court of Honor to recognize 4 boys from our ward who all received their Eagles.

The last week of the trimester at the high school was this week so there were a lot of extra events because of it.  Britton took a social dance class this trimester and the teacher (who is also the head honcho of Jenna's ballroom company) invited all of the parents to come and watch their students dance for the final and show off what they learned. I really love that this is an option for high school kids. They learn how to dance the waltz, foxtrot, swing, cha cha and other styles of dance so they can do more than the deacon shuffle at school and church dances. The boys learn how to lead and the girls learn how to follow and it was great to see how far they have come in a trimester.

At the end they had a ballroom type competition with a real judge. They had trophies for the winning couple in the Cha Cha.  Britton and his partner made it through three rounds and were the runner-up couple receiving a medal for their efforts.  It was fun to watch and Britton was happy to get as far as he did.

That night Jenna had a choir concert.  She came straight from ballroom and arrived about 1 minute before her choir went up on stage.  I shutter to think what would have happened to her grade if we had arrived just 2 minutes later.

Jenna and friends after the concert.

When I went to Britton and Jenna's orchestra concert on Thursday night I had no reason to believe it would be unlike the rest of the 40 orchestra concerts I've attended in the last 7 years.  I had to sit through 40 minutes of the middle school classes playing their pieces (which I didn't know about or I would have come late), before the high school orchestra finally took the stage.  My first indication that this was going to be a unique concert was when the lights went green, the projector started and the orchestra started playing "Radioactive" by Imagine Dragons with a really cool percussion section adding a lot to the song. They even had a fog machine going! Then they played music from Les Miserables and La La Land with different lighting and projection images. 

 The entire auditorium went pitch black for "Uptown Funk" by Bruno Mars and all you could see were the glow sticks on bows and around necks and wrists.  They memorized it so they could play in the dark.

When they played music from Star Wars they had people in professional Star Wars costumes walk through the auditorium.  For the final number they brought in the band and played 12 minutes of Harry Potter music perfectly timed to a montage of scenes from all 8 movies projecting overhead.  I almost forgot I was at my kids' orchestra concert I was so entertained!  Needless to say it was the best concert ever and I hope their teacher continues to think outside of the box in the future.  I know for a fact that he was going to have Jenna and one of her ballroom dance partners do a cool ballroom dance while they played music from La La Land, but then her ballroom team had a last minute dress rehearsal for nationals at the exact time of the orchestra concert so she had to pull out because her partner couldn't come anymore (she couldn't miss the concert because of her grade). If it had worked out it would have added another layer of cool to the concert.

I came home from the concert to find Adam randomly reorganizing the music room.  He gets sidetracked sometimes and starts projects at the most interesting times.  It makes me laugh.  He had to pause to get the boys to bed, but he did get it done and it looks much better.

AJ in a box, even though he is more of a "outside of the box" kind of kid.

The kids and I look forward to Family Discovery Day at Roots Tech every year. It was yesterday and  I knew Jenna was going to have a mandatory ballroom practice in the morning, but planned to have Adam bring her down once she finished at 11:30 so she would still catch most of it.  For her birthday I gave her tickets to the Broadway play "The Sound of Music" at the new Eccles theater on the same day as Roots Tech so we could combine our trips.  Our plan was to have Adam bring Jenna down at 1 p.m. and then do something fun with the boys and take Britton and Korinne home around 5 p.m. and then Jenna and I would stay for the play and come home later that night.  It was the perfect plan, until it started to fall apart.  Jenna's mandatory practice was moved from 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. and didn't end until 2:30. Then Britton made the high school soccer team this week and found out at their first practice on Friday that the coach was doing a day long team building thing all day the next day(Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.) so that meant Britton would no longer be able to go with us, The weather didn't cooperate either as a winter storm warning was issued for all day Saturday and into the night.  In the end it was just Korinne and me for a day of fun at Roots Tech.  Because of the snow warning we decided that Korinne would take Jenna's ticket to the play so we didn't have to drive more than necessary, and Jenna would go to another show sometime in the future.  Korinne was more than happy to "take one for the team". Ha!

At Roots Tech waiting for President Oaks.

Roots tech is the only place where you clap after a General Authority speaks. Is is kind of funny actually, but appropriate for the setting.

We went to The Blue Lemon for dinner and spent some time at City Creek and Temple Square until it was time for the play to start.

Nice bunny glasses

We loved the play. It was our first time at this new theater downtown and we thought it was awesome. It wasn't snowing when we left so we made the decision to go home instead of staying in Murray, but snow started while we were driving and we had a nail bitter through the canyon. Fortunately I was in the Sequoia and there wasn't a lot of traffic because of the hour so we arrived home without any problems.  I questioned my decision to drive that night until I woke up the next morning and saw that the weather was much worse than the night before. I would definitely have had even more trouble if we had stayed the night in Murray so I was happy we were already home safe and sound.

Adam took the boys to Jump Zone while the rest of us were away so in the end they still got to do something fun with Dad. 😊

As you can see I got glasses last week. It was time. I was tired of not being able to see very well and my eyes were always fatigued. I guess I've come full circle--I wore glasses as a kid and now I'm back to wearing glasses.

No More Paperwork!

I kept Jameson home from school on Valentines Day since I knew it was going to be a red dye fest in his classroom.  He was more than happy to go to McDonald's for breakfast and watch a red box with Mom instead of going to school.  I even got him some chocolate treats to replace the red dye valentines candy he would have gotten at school. This may be a tradition for us until he finally grows out of his sensitivity to red dye.  I wish I could say it all went perfectly, however, but in the days following Valentines Day he got quite a bit of contraband candy from his friends and we still had a rough few days.

These two boys are double trouble. I don't know who took this picture, but when I saw it on my camera it made me smile.

AJ loves to play with playdough but it doesn't last very long in his care. He opens it up, smooshes all of the colors together and then has a hard time getting it back in containers so he can use it again.

About 2 months after AJ arrived home we received his Certificate of Citizenship in the mail with this picture of him on it.  It was taken before we went to Ethiopia to get him so we had never seen it.

With his CoC and his adoption decree from Ethiopia I went to the courthouse and filed to have his adoption recognized in our state and legally change his name.  After the judge signed off on his name change the court sent an order to the state vital records office and they issued him a court ordered delayed certificate of live birth which will be the birth certificate he will use throughout his life.  Once we had his birth certificate we applied for a social security card which took forever and was initially issued in his old name. After a visit to the Social Security office over an hour away we got things worked out and this last week we finally received his social security card in his new legal name.  On Friday I finished the last bit of paperwork I will ever have to do for his adoption.  Because we changed his name we need the government to re-issue his Certificate of Citizenship with his new name so that all of his paperwork will match and he won't run into immigration problems when he is older.  After almost 5 years of running all over town getting documents, having everything notarized and then doing it all over again the next year I am finally done!! Yeah, it's a good feeling.  The amount of paperwork involved in international adoptions is INSANE!  

I had to take AJ to get passport pictures to send in with his new CoC form and in true AJ fashion once the camera came out he started pulling faces and laughing. We tried and tried to have him look into the camera with a neutral expression but he was having none of it.  The guy finally got one of him with a little grin and we went with it.

He has grown up a lot considering these 2 pictures were taken less than a year apart.

When you don't follow weather forecasts big winter storms come out of nowhere.  When I woke up this morning I had absolutely no idea that the biggest storm of the year was coming. 

When Adam left for church this morning it hadn't started snowing yet, when he got home he had over a foot of snow on the roof of his car and there is no sign of the snow stopping anytime soon. Apparently the local farmers have a lot of faith because this storm is going to be a doozy when all is said and done.

Birthday Boy

Johnny, Ace, Jameson, Beckett

Every Monday afternoon Jameson and 3 of his friends have swimming lessons together at an indoor pool. He has improved greatly and I'm excited to have him finally be proficient in the water this summer.

AJ had his 3rd birthday this week!  We thought a lot about him on his 1st birthday and again on his 2nd birthday wondering how he was doing and how long it would take to bring him home, but this year we got to celebrate with him.  It was also his first time celebrating since they didn't recognize birthdays at his orphanage.

These pictures were taken around his 1st birthday. We originally thought he would be home by his 1st birthday, but clearly that didn't happen.

This was the first picture we saw of him with any kind of a smile on his face.

These pictures were taken around his 2nd birthday.

I think of all of the pictures we received of him over a 2 year period this one is my favorite.  Look at that twinkle in his eye!

February 6th is AJ's legal birthday, but we have no way of knowing his actual birthdate.  He was found on April 6th and they estimated his age to be about 2 months old so February 6th became his birthday.  It's perfect for us because Jameson's birthday is also on the 6th of the month so now they are birthday twinners.

He has grown up in the last year, especially in the last 7 months of being home! He was wearing 18 mo clothes when we brought him home in June and now some of his 2T clothes are starting to get small. He is also our first child to be fully potty trained before his 3rd birthday. On his big day we took AJ and Jameson to the Fun Park to play in the soft play area.

And then it was home for pizza, cake, ice cream and presents with the older kids.  AJ is a ham so when I say "Smile for a picture", this is what we get.

He loved everything about his birthday.  I did learn however, that we will need to be prepared in future years for AJ to have a hard time on Jameson's birthday and for Jameson to have a hard time on AJ's birthday since that was our experience this year.

Britton was asked to Sweethearts by Kayla and they had a great time at the dance last night.

For Christmas I got tickets for the girls to see Alex Boye in concert with the American Festival Chorus (Directed by Craig Jessop), but then Alex bailed when he got an opportunity to sing at the Olympics.  They replaced him with a group that we had never heard of, but we already had the tickets so we decided to just go and be surprised with whatever we got.

I haven't been to Kent Concert Hall in a few years and was more than a little surprised to show up and see that it had been completely redone and had a new name. Wow. I'm really out of that loop!

The choir was like a mini-Motab with Craig Jessop at the helm (in fact they sang at Jon Huntsman's funeral earlier that day at the request of his family) so their music was great, but we really loved the group Take 6 who replaced Alex Boye in the concert.

They are an American a capella gospel music group who I found out is the most decorated a capalla group of all time with a slew of awards including 10 Grammy's. We thought they were fantastic and had a great time at the concert.  They did one song where they had people take out their cell phone lights and I got such a kick out of watching some very mature people who were swaying with their phones to the music. There was one gentlemen who had to be in his 80's standing in the aisle dancing with his cell phone light.  It was the cutest thing ever.

I spent 4 hours on Friday trying to get tickets to the Broadway musical Hamilton coming to SLC, but so was everyone else in the state and in the end I was part of the unlucky majority who didn't score tickets. What a bummer.

January Wrap Up

January got away from me in the blog department, but only because it was a low key month and I didn't have any pictures on my phone to blog about.  I found this one of AJ digging into the sour cream and enjoying every minute of it.  Considering they don't have sour cream in Ethiopia, I'd say that his tastes are very American these days.

And then there was the time that Korinne put one of her dresses on AJ and he was more than happy to cheese it up for a photo.

The weather this winter has been very atypical.  Yes, we did have a winter storm in January, but the rest of the month was unseasonably warm and felt a bit like March or April rather than January.  I know everyone starts to worry about water when we don't have a lot of snow, but I have really been enjoying the winter weather this year!

Yesterday was Jenna's first ballroom dance competition of the season down at Thanksgiving Point.  It's hard for me to get any pictures that aren't blurry but here is one where you can kind of see Jenna dancing.

I loved my yummy lunch at Zupas.

Jenna, on the other hand, didn't like anything there. I know! Her tastes still haven't moved past preschool so I had to enjoy this deliciousness solo.

Jenna's coach did the girls hair in this fancy bun thing for the competition.  When Jenna took it out that night there was so much product in her hair that it didn't even move.

The schedule was different this year so instead of leaving at 10:30 p.m., Jenna's team was done around 5:30 pm so we made it home plenty early. Ahh, it was awesome.