The Short Version

I think I am the President of the Procrastinator's Club.  Of course, I wouldn't know, because procrastinators would just put off having their meetings, wouldn't they?

Anyway, I've been gone WWWWAAAAAYYYYYY too long from my blog.  And so much has happened!  But I'm afraid if I try to do super detailed posts of everything, then I won't get around to doing any posting at all, because I'll just fall further behind.  So, I'm going to do the highlights, and you can fill in the details in your mind.  I trust you to make up awesome things.

So, without further ado...

Pete had his birthday.  He got a computer mouse, and then some drawings done by the kiddos.  It was very chill.

I started a chore chart for my kids. Jakob had been doing bathrooms with me for forever, and the other kids didn't have any chores.  I revamped it, and now we have a rotation of several chores.  My kids have been really great about doing chores-eager, even.

I have to supervise them, but for the most part they do pretty well.  A couple of weeks ago Troy was on dusting, and I didn't know that he was trying to do it by himself.  Needless to say, I had to scrape off oodles of dust stuff off of my dresser.  But he tried, and I guess that's what counts.

I also got a laundry basket for each of my kids, and now they fold their own clothes.  I have to help Ivy a lot, but they do well folding their own clothes.  I'm not quite ready to have them try and run the washing machine by themselves, but it's helped me a lot to divvy out their clothes for them.

Brock lost his two top teeth in the last little bit.  I love the toothless smile.

We spent mother's day with my parents.  It was really fun.  My mom is a spaz.  She's so cute!

My cute friend Sara got some free tickets to a show called "Handsome Little Devils", so she invited me and our other friend Anna to go. The actors do a lot of juggling tricks-that kind of thing.  It was really impressive. And I got pulled up on the stage!  The actor next to me had me hold some roses out in front of me, and he whipped the tops of them off while balancing on a ladder!  It was really cool.

We had an Easter egg hunt at my parents' house, in the 400 mile-an-hour wind.  Idaho "spring" is very, very windy.

Ivy had her third birthday.  For some reason, I always space on the candles for cakes.  Also for some reason, I had a brand new "1" candle, but that's it-no others.  Awesome.  So that's how we ended up with two matches as the other candles.

She got some clothes, and some hair things, a Tinkerbell doll, and the movie Bambie.

I was outside on a Saturday, and Troy ran out to be with me.  His hands were in his jacket.  He tripped, and fell flat on his face on the driveway.  I saw the whole thing and couldn't do anything to stop it.  So very sad.

A few days later, Troy graduated from preschool.  He loved preschool, but he is so ready to go to kindergarten in the fall.

And speaking of graduations, Brock graduated from kindergarten.  Their program was really cute, and I thought I would cry a lot, but I didn't.

(Okay, so here is where I tried to insert a video of Jakob's piano songs, but it wouldn't load.  Good job, blogger!  So, maybe someday I'll get it to load, but until then, just pretend that you can watch that video here.)

I had my piano recital.  I've been teaching Jakob this year as well.  He did an awesome job!  He was all, "My legs were shaking a lot!"  And I don't know why he decided to stand while playing, but whatever.  He did great, as did my other students.  I played as well, and did pretty good, but botched the end of my last song.  Oh well, though.  It's not the first time I've messed up a performance, nor will it be the last, I'm sure.

Also, I look like Beaker when I play the piano: my eyes are really wide, and my mouth turns down at the corners.  It's neat.

Right after school got out, I got sick, for a week!  It was way super awesome.  I love being sick.

We took a quick jaunt to Utah for Pete's mission reunion.  I was a little bored but I think Pete enjoyed seeing some of the people from his mission.  We hung out with family, and went to Thanksgiving point, to the dinosaur museum there.  I had no idea why Ivy is crying in the above picture.

They have a digging spot at the museum, where you can uncover "bones".  All my kids enjoyed that part.

All of my boys have individually told me that they want to either study or dig up dinosaur bones.

We ate at Benihana on the way back home.  The kids' menus folded up into hats.  Troy zonked out with his hat still on.

And, this last Sunday, Ivy decided to take some scissors to her own hair.  The pile of hair she chopped off is in her hands in this pic.

She did a very thorough job on both sides of her head.  It was very mullet-esque.  It's kind of hard to see in the pictures of it.  Needless to say, we needed to get it fixed up.  I figured a cute little pixie hair cut would work.  And, of course, all this happened before I got her 3-year-old picture taken.  Because I've been really on top of things lately.  (Pres. of the Procrastinator's Club, remember?)

Here it is, all fixed up.  Pete thinks it's kind of boy-ish, but I think if I keep a barrette in it then it will be feminine enough.

Well, that pretty much catches us up to speed.  Sorry it's not heavy on the details, but I just wanted to get 'er done, you know?  So that maybe, someday, I can step down as the President of the Procrastinator's Club.  You know, when I get around to it.

Roadshow Rocks!

Well, it's over.  You know, the thing that's been at the front of my mind, on the tip of my tongue, and the thing that has given me some sleepless nights for the last few months.

Our roadshow.

Sweat, tears, time, energy, effort, heart, and soul went into this show.  It was hard.  It was fun.  It was entertaining.  It was faith-building (for me, anyway).  It was challenging.  It was rewarding.

We loosely retold the story of Alma the Younger and the sons of Mosiah from The Book of Mormon.  We used the parts found in Mosiah 27-28, and Alma 17-19.  Basically, Alma and the sons of Mosiah are tearing down the church and spreading lies.  An angel comes, and the guys repent, and then they all go on missions in their enemy's territory (the Lamanites).  We also told the story of Ammon's mission: he becomes a servant to King Lamoni, and saves Lamoni's sheep from some other Lamanites by chopping off their arms.  Then Lamoni and a lot of his kingdom become converted.

It's a very cool story.

While studying this story again, I came across a really cool scripture.  It's Alma 26: 12-Yea, I know that I am nothing; as to my strength I am weak; therefore I will not boast of myself, but I will boast of my God, for in his strength I can do all things; yea, behold, many mighty miracles we have wrought in this land, for which we will praise his name forever.

I just love that scripture.

I honestly don't think I can pick a favorite part of our roadshow.  We called it CSI: Zarahemla.  We had these CSI guys investigate the crimes that the brothers were doing, including chopping off the arms.  Just, every little bit was awesome, and funny, and amazing. 

Our CSI guys were perfect (and imitated David Caruso in CSI: Miami).  Our brothers each had their own style of picking on the citizens.  The brothers each had a great style and were so awesome in their own way.  Our citizens actually looked like they got hurt by the brothers.  The dancing was amazing.  My set boys were crazy fast at taking off our sets.  Our Alma the Elder rapped!  Our angel wore stilts.  Our Lamoni wore a glittery crown with pride.  We had cute little kids be our sheep.  Our bad Lamanites parodied "The Three Amigos", and sang and danced to My Little Buttercup with fake arms that got cut off by a light saber.  They even threw their fake arms (as they were being cut off) at the stake president who was sitting on the front row.  Awesome.

Everyone in our show did an amazing job.  I was so impressed, and grateful.

Well, right now I don't have a copy of our show, so pictures in a fabulous slide show will have to suffice.  I tried to put them in show order, but I don't know if the slide show thingy cooperated with that idea.  And someday I'll get a copy, but who knows if I'll be able to load it onto a blog-it might break blogger because of its size (25-ish minutes).  Or because of its awesomeness.

Post-roadshow: my body decided to shut down.  Feeling sick, and SUPER tired, and achy.  I've been sleeping a lot, and have been to the chiropractor a few times (my back has been out a long time).  I have much to catch up on, and much to do still.  The end of school is ramping up, with so many things to do and accomplish.  I'm excited for summer and the laziness it (somewhat) promises.  I do promise to blog all about the past, present, and future!

Memory Monday: Roadshow

Sorry I've been hit-and-miss on Memory Monday lately.  I'll try to do better.  However, one of the reasons I've been so sporadic with posting at all (and, in turn, reading and/or commenting on others' blogs) is because of my current church assignment-our ward's roadshow.  It's a lot more time consuming than I originally thought it would be.

But more about that later.  This is MEMORY Monday.  So I'm going to write about one of the roadshows I was in when in Young Women's.

The year: 1996.  Me: in high school drama, thinking that I knew everything there was to know about acting, and writing a script, and all that jazz.

Somehow, the Laurel class got put in charge of writing our ward's roadshow this time.  For whoever doesn't know what a roadshow is, it's essentially a play that a group of people perform in different locations, like three different church buildings. We had roadshows in our stake every other year, so this one was my third.  Anyway, because I thought I was all that and a bag of chips, I kind of took over writing the roadshow.

Our theme had to do with time lines, or something, and it was our stake's 50th...anniversary?  It had been 50 years since its creation, so whatever that would be called.  So we chose doing a Back to the Future theme.  The main plot was that Biff (guy in the middle in the picture, who I dated for a while, actually) went back in time and ruined some roadshows, so Marty (guy on the right) and Doc (that was me, if you couldn't tell from the costume) had to go and fix them.  We went to the 50s, and the 70s, and...is that all?  That's all I'm remembering.  Our youth group was really big, and we had them do some dance/singing numbers with the words changed to songs that were from the different eras.

Yes, it was cute.  But, I was really selfish with it, and because I was so full of my drama self, I thought that my ideas were the best, so I kind of ended up writing it myself.  Also, the lady that they chose as director wanted the guy on the right to be Doc.  But because the script was my baby I wanted to be Doc.  So I kind of forced her hand.  Which, now, if a youth were to try to do that to me, I'd be like, step down, punk.  I don't know why she didn't do that to me, but oh well.
So, very fun.  Well, I had fun, anyway; I have no idea if anyone else had as much fun.  But the other roadshows we did as youth were fun for me as well.
Fast forward to January of this year.  Our 1st counselor pulled me and Pete aside and asked if we would be in charge of our roadshow.  And we gladly accepted.  We wrote our script in about a week, and we've been full steam ahead ever since. 

We've had a couple of dance practices with the youth, which has been fun, and it looks so great.  Of course, we have a lady in our ward who does choreography at a dance studio all the time, so she's made it look great. 

The biggest obstacle we've come across right now has been music.  We picked some different songs, and some of them don't have instrumental versions available.  So I've been trying to write in some accompaniment to one of the songs on the piano, and then I'm going to have to figure out how to record it.  (My piano can record, but for some reason I can't find the cords that connect it to a computer to get it off the piano.  Neat, huh?)  But it's worth it for this specific song.

I want to write more about our show, but I don't want to give anything away (in case there are roadshow spies out there that may come across my blog and steal our ideas or something).  I can tell you that each ward got an assigned time period (ours is Book of Mormon) and a theme (ours is missionary work).

There is still SO much to do, and SO much to think about.  And the show is at the end of April, so YIKES!  BIKES!  Hopefully it just all comes together, and ends up being as cute and as funny as I am envisioning.  I mean, just because I think it's funny, doesn't mean it necessarily is funny, you know?

So, that's my current time-sucker.  Like I said, way more time-consuming than I thought it was going to be.  But it's been fun.  And I'm sure you'll hear all about it in a couple of months!  In the meantime, I'll try to keep up with my blog.  For real, yo.

Hurt Feelings

Our ward had a talent show on Tuesday. So, because Pete and I are sooo talented, we signed up to sing a song by Flight of the Conchords, "Hurt Feelings". My amazingly talented sister (but she has actual talent) Lex, and her amazingly talented friend Mark (him too) recorded the song for us, so that it was kind of like us doing karaoke, except fancier. I don't know how it's fancier, but it IS.

In case you didn't get to see it the first time around, it's your lucky day, because my sister recorded it for us. Or if you did get to see it the first time, and are dying to watch it again, here it is, for your viewing pleasure. (Oh, and I totally know I'm a nerd. It just goes without saying, really.)

So without further ado...