Jr. Prom

First high school dance!  I had a really fun time at Prom and was super glad I was able to go.

A boy in my ward, Matthew Slack, asked me to prom.  We were in a group with his brother, Hyrum, and a group of kids from band.  They were a super fun group to go with and they were all super nice.

Matthew asked me a couple weeks before prom on Brooklyn's birthday.  After Brooklyn's birthday party, my dad gets a text and asks if I've been asked to prom. I told him I haven't and asked him who asked.  He told my our neighbors the Slacks asked.  I then thought oh boy.

Later that night, while I was in the backyard, Logan yelled from the house that the door was for me.  I opened the front door and found a poster with a box of noodles on the porch.  The poster said, "Emily-  What's the 'pasta-bility' you'd go prom with me? Find my name in the pasta."  In the pasta I found the name Matthew Slack.  I then sent my response a couple days later.  My poster said, "There's a big 'pasta-bility' I'd go to prom with you. Find my answer in the pasta."  I made a bowl of pasta and hid my answer in the pasta.  The answer of course was yes!

On the day of the dance for the day date, our group went and played laser tag at the fun park in town. It was lots of fun.  We then got some ice cream at Macey's.

That evening Matthew picked me up for dinner, pictures, and the dance.  When he picked me gave me a really pretty corsage and I gave him his boutonniere.   We then went with Matthew's brother to go pick up his date.  When Matthew's brother, Hyrum, went to the door to pick up his date, the first thing his date noticed was that he wearing the wrong color tie. I think he did it on purpose because, when we went back to Matthew's house to get Hyrum a better tie, we found out that the boys had prepared dinner there.  We had a delicious dinner at Matthew's house.  The boys were such gentlemen and served us dinner that they made, pasta, chicken, bread sticks, and salad. We also has Martinelli's.  It was super fancy.  After dinner we did pictures.

We took the picture up at the USU campus.  A lady in our ward took them and did a really good job.  The pictures were fun and they turned out really good.  Matthew is super tall and I am short and the pictures definitely showed that.  We took lots of different pictures, ones of the whole group, couples pictures, and girls and boys pictures.  I liked the ones we took outside.

We took a spinning picture that was fun to do.  

We took a lot of pictures. My favorite pictures are the one of Matthew and I outside, the group pictures we took outside and on the stairs, the ones with just the girls, and the pretty picture of all the girls' corsages together.

In our group starting at the top left was, Hyrum and his date Megan,  Matthew and me, middle row, Karston and his date Tyler, Miles and his date Rachel, and in the front, Zack and his date Ashley.  I don't know them too well but they were all really fun.

After some fun pictures it was time for the dance. Almost... When we got done with pictures, the dance had just started and all the girls did not want to get to the dance early.  We wanted to be fashionably late.  So we all had the boys drive around a bit before we finally decided what the group wanted to do.  We then decided to got to Macey's again and get some more ice cream.  At Macey's we ate our ice cream and hung out. We saw our bishop and his daughter. We also saw a girl from our ward who as working there that night.  While we ate our ice cream, Matthew and I talked about marching band other things.  Finally when we all were done with our ice cream we were ready to go to the dance.

The dance was super fun and there were a lot of people.  I saw lot of my friends there and said hi to them.  There was only one slow song and then a lot of the songs I didn't really know.  But is was still fun.  We were at the dance for about a hour and a half and then we went back to Matthew's house. The dance was super fun and I can't wait to go to another one.

At Matthew's house we had some mini cheese cakes.  We were all really tired.  We went downstairs to watch a movie but we just ended up hanging out and talking.  Hyrum then turned on the kid show, Bluey, for fun and we watched that for a few minutes.  It was then time to go home. Since I just lived down the street, Matthew walked me home. By that time it was about close to midnight and we were both really tired from a long fun day.

Prom was super fun and I am glad that Matthew asked me to the dance.  It was a great first dance experience and I can't wait to go to another one.  Matthew was a really fun and super nice date.  It was a really fun time.

Baby Animal Days

The American West Heritage Center Baby Animal Days has been a family tradition for many years. This year Tiffany, Emily, and Colby worked there during the festival. Colby was able to hang out for a few hours before he went to work at his first job at the concession stand. Emily also worked at the concession stand and the gift shop while Tiffany sold tickets all day.  

The kids love going and seeing all the different types of animals. They have the baby bears every year, but every time we see them they are sleeping and just lying around. This year, though, the bears were actually up and moving around and growling. The kids loved it. There was a guy who had turkeys and a chicken that were as tame as pets. The kids loved taking turns holding the chicken.  

We had to go back a few times to get to see everything due to it being so busy. Brooklyn was bound and determine to ride the train and ponies. We came back on Saturday early to get in line before it opened and got on both really quick. Brooklyn was happy we were able to ride the train and ponies.  Charlotte is also still able to ride the ponies and she loved it as well.

The next best thing at the end of the day was panning for gold. Logan and Charlotte were able to find little pieces of fool's gold. Brooklyn looked like she peeped her pants because she got so wet from the river water.

 The kids saw the buffalo and asked if we could take a wagon ride and see them. We have never done the Bison Tour before so we thought this would be interesting. We were able to get our hook up with tickets because I knew a cute ticket lady. It was fun seeing the buffalo. They came up and sniffed our hands!

It was pretty cool to learn more about the bison and see them up close.  We love going to Baby Animal Days.

Ogden Dinosaur Park

This year for Christmas the kids got free passes to the Ogden Dinosaur Park. We have never been before, so we took a day during Spring Break and had a fun adventure. 

It was quite impressive for how small the building was. Inside there were life size skeletons of ancient dinosaurs and prehistoric animals. They were quite impressive. There were also many fossils and life sized animatronics of dinosaurs. One room was full of rocks, gems, and geodes. Colby loved the huge geode that was the size of his body.  

Throughout the whole outside of the park, there were life sized dinosaurs replicas. It was a little chilly but we made it through the whole thing. We have been to at least 4 of the dinosaur attractions throughout the state and each one has their own unique way to show off these amazing creatures. 

Of course we had to take some fun pictures of the dinosaurs getting us and being scared. 

The kids had a great time and once we were done we were off to the next adventure, Scheels.

We also had free passes to the Ferris Wheel at Scheels. This was really fun to take the kids on. Brooklyn and Charlotte were a little scared and didn’t want us to rock the seat while we were up at the top. I was okay with this because I was a little scared too. But overall it was fun and they liked it.

We also like wandering the whole store making wish lists. As you can see, Brooklyn wants the little weights so she can get stronger!  It was a great day for everyone.

Room Switch-a-Roo

The kids have been wanting a room switch for a little over a year and Tiff and I we kept telling them no not yet. Our problem was we didn’t know what to do with all of the toys, we didn’t want the boys bugging and fighting with the girls over the downstairs bathroom and we didn’t want to do all of the work! Then the question came up again this Spring Break and we made a bargain: either move rooms during Spring Break or have fun doing other plans. They all agreed to use Spring Break to move rooms. The deal was sealed when they found a place for the air hockey table and sold the recliner. They all understood what it would take to get it done and the project began. We got rid of lots of junk, toys and other things that were old. We painted rooms and deep cleaning inches of dust around the bed and dressers. Everyone did a great job pitching in. 

We decided to move the two girls downstairs to the toy room since most of the toys were theirs anyway. So all three girls are downstairs now.  Then we separated Colby and Logan into the two rooms upstairs. Logan helped me paint his room. The youngest girls helped with going through all their old toys and books. Colby was the most excited to help get the ball rolling. He wanted his own room so bad. He had it all laid out on how his room was going to be. 

Emily had detachment issues with some of the things we were throwing out. She was getting mad and saying, "Why do we need to throw out things and the toys we still play with." I laughed and said, "You are 16 and crying over little kids toys." It was fun to see her sentimental feeling of her old toys. Tiff was in charge of going through all of the kids stuff and keeping it or throwing it. I was the muscle of the project, and painter extraordinary. 

It took us about 4 days but we made it to the end and everyone was moved and ready to sleep in their new beds and bedrooms. Brooklyn was so excited to sleep downstairs in her new bunk bed. She told us she would not get scared sleeping downstairs. It was fun but long days. But it was worth getting all the girls downstairs and boys upstairs.     

The only problem now is that Colby doesn’t have a bed. He just has a mattress on the floor of his room. We have plans to make a bed frame because we have a head board and foot board but no side rails. He doesn’t seem to mind sleeping on the floor but he does need a bed…

Everyone loves their new rooms and surprisingly they have all stayed clean! Maybe we should have done this sooner.

Last week Emily competed in the State FCCLA Competition. Her project got a bronze ribbon at regional so she qualified for state. Over the last few weeks, she has been working on improving her project according to what the region judges suggested. All the improvements really paid off because she earned a gold ribbon at State!

Not only did she earn Gold, she placed third overall in her category. Unfortunately they only take the top two to Nationals but she is the alternate. Nationals is in Florida so bummer for us…. Good job!

During Literacy Night at the elementary school, Charlotte was able to recite a poem during her class presentation.

She did so well giving her poem about building a snowman in the snow. 

Now that the rooms are split, maybe we can have some more fun with the remaining days of Spring Break.

Pine View Invitational

Emily was very excited to be able to run at the Pine View Invitational Varsity Track Meet this weekend. She ran the 800 meter race and did amazingly.

 

She was in the 7th heat of girls running the race and she said this heat was pretty fast. That was good for her though because it really pushed her to run faster than she has before. For most of the race she was in the top four. In the end, this fast pace helped her get her personal record (PR) in the 800 with a time of 2:47!  She was so excited about that.

We were also happy she was able to go to Pine View because we got to go down to St. George and enjoy the warm weather and family. Colby and I brought down our bikes. I was able to ride 25 miles and loved the warm weather. Colby and the other kids enjoyed the skate park and the playground. They were very happy to see the sun and not have to wear coats. We were sad to leave…

Earlier in the week, Colby, Logan, and Charlotte had their AIM piano recital. All three of them performed very well!

Logan and Charlotte each passed off a level of AIM and received their scores for all of their piano tests. This is Charlottes first year and Logan’s fourth year doing AIM. Colby decided not to do AIM this year but still learned a fun song, The Entertainer,” for the recital. They are all so talented!

Track Meet, Band, & Nerf Wars

Track season is now in full force and Emily had her first track meet this week.  She has been running a lot throughout the winter and her goal is to qualify for the Varsity Invitationals this year.  During the track meet this week she ran the 3200 meter and the 1600 meter races (or 2 mile and 1 mile).

She did great in both events.  In the 3200 M, she was able to place second overall in girls with a time of 14:10.  She said she felt slow though because the boys and girls raced together and the boys kept passing her.  She said it was hard to keep track of 8 laps so she was glad she had her watch to tell her when she was close to the two mile mark.  In the mile she ran a 6:45.  It was not her best time but still really good.  She is hoping her performance in the 3200 will enable her to go to the Pine View Invitational next week.

Right after the track meet we had to rush over to Sky View so she could perform with her percussion group in the Region Solo & Ensemble.  The song they performed was "Escape from a Nightmare."  It was a pretty intense song and it sounded really great to me.  Unfortunately they scored a I- so they are not moving on to State.  Dumb judges...

On Tuesday the boys had an Ultimate Nerf Gun War for Young Mens inside a $35 million house!  They said it was amazing!

The owner of this house is the father-in-law of one of the YM leaders so he was able to let the boys go inside.  Underneath the house are many tunnels and passageways where the boys played and ran around.  This house is huge and every room is decorated and designed as a different Disney theme.  He built the house so that all of his family, kids and grandkids, could live there in case of some big emergency.  It is on 150 acres with ponds and waterfalls and a hobbit village and even an airplane runway.  Needless to say all of the boys were in awe.  They had a blast playing Nerf Wars.

Our ward got split last week so there are a lot of changes going on right now.  We stayed in the same ward but now it is just the old original ward again without the townhouses.  Because of this change, Russell just got called to be the Elder's Quorum President.  This will be a big calling for him and effect us a lot but it will be good.  I am still a Primary Teacher which I am really liking so far.

Leadership Conferences & Band Concerts

This week was pretty eventful.  It all began with Colby's birthday and ended with a packed Leadership Conference for the Youth Council.  Thrown in the middle was a couple band concerts for Colby and Emily and Parent Teacher Conferences for Charlotte and Logan.  Along with the PTC, I put together a meal for the teachers and staff.  I cooked sweet pork and we had delicious nachos. Yum....

Thursday night after the band concert Emily and I headed over to our Youth Council's rented AirBnb and spent the night so we could be ready for the Utah Youth Council's Leadership Conference.  I spent the next 2 days with these awesome kids from the Hyrum Youth Council as we were trained and encouraged to be better leaders in our community.

We spent a lot of time in break out sessions learning about overcoming trials, networking with others, encouraging personal growth, and learning from each other through Legos.  We also listened to a speaker talk about how to get out dreams and goals off the ground right now.

 

Along with the classes, we also had a lot of fun.  There were a bunch of Minute-To-Win-It games, a wild Goose Chase competition, a formal banquet with our city dignitaries, and we finished the night off with an exciting dance!

During our council free time, we got together with the Amalga Youth Council and went to Angie's to clean the sink.  It was delicious!

I hope the kids had a good time and learned a lot of good information to take back to the council.  It was very informative for me as well as I participated in the advisor training.  

Along with the two band concerts, the younger kids also had a music performance this week.  Charlotte and Logan participated in their AIM music performance on Saturday.  This was the final evaluation for the AIM program this year.  They had to memorize two songs and perform them for a judge.  They both felt like they did pretty well so that is great.