April

I'm officially a month behind so it is time to get caught up. Near the end of March Jenna and I were in Idaho for Gem State, the last Ballroom competition of the season. Jenna's team spent most of their time preparing for Nationals which only allowed medley routines with 3 or more songs put together.  Gem State doesn't let you do medley routines, they only allow showcase routines with 1 song so Jenna's team had 2 weeks to learn 2 new routines and perform them.  Because of the lack of rehearsal it wasn't their best competition, but for so little preparation they were amazing.

Jenna and partner compete in a syllabus competition

Jenna's last team picture for the season.

We stayed with Heather and Aaron and family and had a great time, but of course none of us thought to take a picture. Oops.

Spring break was the first week of April and Adam took the kids to St. George.  I stayed home to work on things that I never have time to work on so it was a dream come true. The kids loved being in St. George and seeing Grandparents and cousins, and I loved getting things D-O-N-E. It was a win-win.

Coloring Easter Eggs

AJ's first Easter

Jenna and Britton showing their egg hunt spoils.

Korinne crafting

AJ LOVED swimming in Aunt Bethany's pool.  He turns into a crazy person around water.  He stayed in a full hour after everyone else got out and even then it was a struggle to get him to stop jumping into the pool.

They hit up a splash pad, but the water was still quite chilly.

Cccccold water.

Cousins lined up on a bench.

Jenna, Britton, Gramma, Korinne

They got home from St. George on Wednesday evening and we headed out to Lagoon for the first time this season on April 7th.  We got super lucky in that the weather was absolutely terrible for our first day.  That means NO LINES. I always say if it's pouring rain grab a poncho and head to Lagoon! Bad weather days definitely make the best Lagoon days.

I had a feeling AJ would like the rides at Lagoon and I was right.  AJ is a little boy who has a need for speed  When Adam is pushing AJ on a swing at the park and he is going as high as he can go, he will still cry that it isn't high enough.  When he wants to ride down our cul-de-sac on a bike, he will go up the Huntsman's driveway first just to get that extra lift so he can go even faster.

The only problem we encountered with AJ at Lagoon was that at the end of each ride he would refuse to get off the ride and I would have to go in and pull him off kicking and screaming.  Since there were no lines he could get right back on, but he felt it was a waste of his time. True, but still not allowed at Lagoon.

Adam and AJ

Britton, Korinne, Jameson and Jenna

This was the first time Jameson was able to go on all of the big rides so as soon as we got through the gates he took Adam and marched straight to Cannibal which is the biggest ride in the park.  He loved it and rode on it about 5 more times before the day was over. He loves being able to go on all of the big rides.

That night a friend of Britton's gave him 3 tickets to the RSL game so Adam took Britton and his friend Duncan down to the game.  

It was a little rainy, but our ponchos came through again!

I left for a quick trip China on April 14th and Britton went to Prom that night.

Ready to leave. They had already had a huge nerf gun war earlier in the day.

The boys: Duncan, Britton, Jayden, Ryan, Collin, Tavyn and Quinn

Britton and his date Kimberly

I traveled to China to help Jen and her 3 kids on the long flight home but was able to enjoy a few days there before heading home again on Wednesday.

First stop on Monday morning after Will and June went to school was JB's (Jamaican Blue). I got the almond croissant with some hot chocolate.  I liked the croissant so much I went back each day to get one and even got one for my flight home!

Lunch with Taylor.  It's a good thing he was around to order for us.😊

This was a noodle house Taylor recently found and liked.

That night Jen, June, and Preston were jet-lagged and sleeping when dinner rolled around, so Taylor and Will took me to a restaurant with a lot of yummy fresh foods.  As luck would have it the salads were buy one get one on Monday nights.

Tuesday morning on a quick tour of Taylor's office we saw the actual bike that was used to win the 2014 Tour de France.

Taylor's office

Jen and I came up with a spontaneous plan to go to Shanghai Disneyland Tuesday.  We left a bit late because we needed Jen's passport and Taylor had taken it to his office the day before because they need to work on renewing it. By the time we got to Taylor's office and retrieved it we were about 2 hours off schedule, but in the end it didn't really matter anyway.

Hilary and Jen with the Disney castle

We had Preston with us and thought we would be able to just switch back and forth using fast passes and single rider lines, but it didn't really work out because pretty much every Chinese person in the country decided to go to Shanghai Disney on the same day we did.

Jen and Preson

So basically it went down like this.  We finally got into the parkaround 10 a.m. and went straight to Soarin'. Preston was hungry so Jen told me to hurry and get in the line and she'd go when I was done.  I waited for 3 HOURS and then found Jen who was ready to go home because Preston wasn't as excited about our plan as we were.  I didn't have a phone so it wasn't worth having me stick around and wait for hours to ride anything else so we left. Yup, that was our Shanghai Disney experience. I rode on 1 ride and Jen didn't go on a single ride.  It's a good thing it's a lot less expensive than Disneyland in CA.  We came, we saw, we almost conquered. 😜

You can see the castle as we walked back to our car.

That night Taylor and June me to a delicious Thai food place while we waited for Will to get done with soccer practice.

The Pad Thai was delish and the sticky mango rice was awesome.

And that brings me to the end of my trip.  It was a quick one, but I really enjoyed seeing where they live and catching a glimpse of the expat life inside a pretty dreamy foreigner bubble in Shanghai.

June, Preston, Me and Will

Just before I left for the airport we hit JB's one more time.  You can get anywhere you need to be on a bike and I loved that everything they needed was so close.

On the bikes in front of their building inside the complex.

I caught the 11:40 a.m. flight to Seoul where I couldn't help but be entertained by the signs in the bathroom.

I went to San Francisco from Seoul and then caught a small plane to SLC. It has been awhile since I've had to go out to the tarmac to board a flight.

I made it home safe and sound on Wednesday night. Adam did a great job keeping the "circus" going at home without me.  

With Prom over Britton lost no time in asking someone to Senior Ball.  Britton is funny, when he started talking about Senior Ball I asked, "Are you going to Senior Ball?" (In my high school only Seniors actually went to Senior Ball) His response, "Why wouldn't I go to Senior Ball?" That is Britton,  He is like the dance date doctor.  He is the one that makes sure all of his friends are asking girls to the dances and if they don't know who to ask he helps them figure it out. If they are wishy washy about going he will make sure they commit and ask a girl that really wants to go. There are a lot of girls that have Britton to thank for being asked to a dance. I've decided every class needs a Britton to get things going.  

He asked Eliza to Senior Ball on Thursday night and she responded on Friday night with "Not even an army could keep me from saying Yes!"  It must have taken her quite a bit of time to set up all the army figures in our driveway. She left a trail of army figures from our front door so he would know where to find the answer. Cute.

Britton has had a great soccer season which is quickly coming to a close.  They have their last 2 games this week.

This last week Britton ran for Junior Class Officer.  After he made the primaries he had to make 3 posters to hang around school.  Here are 2 of them:

On Friday it was announced that he had made it and was the Junior Class Secretary for next school year. He is pretty excited.

So that is what has been going on around here the last month or so, or at least what we had pictures of.  There is never a dull moment with so many moving parts, but we do our best to keep up.

"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.