Halloween 2015

The 5th annual RM Halloween Extravaganza is in the books. I've wrote before about my love/hate relationship relationship with this event. It's the single biggest, and most popular event we do every year, and it always blows me away how successful it is. We had over 1600 people there this year! My mixed feelings stem from the fact that since implementing this uber popular event, I've had to work every single Halloween. I love seeing how our entire campus comes together to make it happen, but I wouldn't mind having a Halloween where I could just be with my own kids. For now, this is how it is, and we'll all have fun with it while it lasts. Here are some pictures from this year.

Darrel's critter table is always a big hit. He always has a few snakes, some scorpions, spiders, crickets--all the creepy crawlies that fit in with Halloween. He usually has a pretty great costume too.

Ava was Princess Elsa from Frozen this year, along with about 237 other little girls.  She was definitely the sweetest, prettiest, most kind one of all.

Students, clubs, and departments all host various themed booths. Most of them have an activity of some kind. Here is Ava reaching into a mystery box.

Our family, Halloween 2015--Captain America, Elvis, a baseball player and Princess Elsa.

My friend Ashley works with me, so her kids were there for the fun. Ava and Harper are the same age, believe it or not. Harper is just a couple months younger. Aside from the difference in height, they have the same matching 'missing tooth, first grade smile.'

The crowd was huge again this year--bigger than ever.

Beth Ann has been a big help with this event since she started at MCC. Even though she's in Student Life at our main campus now, she still comes out to help us from time to time.

The other fun thing about this event is that most of the kids' cousins come every year. Here is Ava with Lacy and their second (or third?) cousin, Taytum.

This is Ashley and her kids on the left, and some of my student workers/co-workers from Red Mountain.  We definitely couldn't do this event without this huge team of people who help make it happen. It's always amazing to me how it all just comes together.

Here are all the kids with Thor the Thunderbird, our MCC mascot.

Here are the cousins who were able to make it this year--Josh, Matt, Tyler, Braden, Lacy, Ava, Sydney, and Taytum.

In the 5 years we've been hosting this event, nearly 6000 people have come to our campus to celebrate Halloween. When this event was proposed to me over 5 years ago, I had no idea how big it would become, and all that would go into it. It's clearly the signature event for our campus, and the single biggest community event that MCC (all of MCC, although some at the "main" campus may deny it) holds every year. We should all be proud of this great event we've created for the community, and of all the students, faculty, and staff who make it happen.

But, I won't shed any tears if this is the last one. See, love/hate relationship....so it goes every year.

MEC Fall Mercado

One of the highlights of the kids' school year is the twice yearly Mercado. I've written about it many times before, but it's a "market" where the kids are in charge of setting up their booth and selling their products. It's not real money, but the kids get a chance to budget their money and participate in as many things as they want. The kindergartners are the only ones who don't run booths, so this was the first year Ava got to be part of a group. 

Tyler's group sold "booritos" and chips and salsa. 

Dave and I both got to eat one of their delicious bean and cheese burritos. 

Since the fall Mercado is around Halloween, the kids and teachers all dress up. Here are all the teachers posing for a group picture as "apps."

Ava's group did a bakery. They baked a bunch of different things in class--twinkies, doughnuts, cake balls, little cookies, and some kids brought baked goods from home. She was very excited to share all of their goodies.

Here is Ava with her good friend, Rowan. Ava was Cinderella and Rowan was a ninja.

Good job kids! We always love seeing you at Mercado!

Flying Grandma and Halloween trapeze

My mom was able to come with me to trapeze on one of her last nights in town. She ended up changing the return date of her flight twice because of the various things we had going on. I'm so glad she did. On Tuesday, there weren't too many of us at trapeze, so I suggested it'd be a good time for her to strap on a belt and climb up that ladder. She's always seemed open to the idea, and this was her chance! I don't think she was even that nervous. After signing her life away, getting a little lesson on what to do, and tightening up her belt, she was ready to fly!

Mom did great! She didn't even hesitate when they said "ready, hup!" She hung there and swung back and forth a couple times, kicked her legs a little bit, and then dropped safely to the net. It was awesome! I'm so proud of you for trying it Mom! I bet you see now why I'm so totally addicted to this amazing sport. Isn't it the greatest feeling to swing through the air? How many 65 year old grandmas do you know that have tried flying trapeze?

Thursday was supposed to be "fly in your Halloween costume" night, but it didn't really go as planned. Terri, Ashley, and I were the only ones who came in costume. It was a cold and windy night, and there was a storm brewing. I took two swings as a Flying Elvis before the lightning got too close. Once they called us down from the board, it was a matter of moments before the rain started. We rushed to get everything put away and headed home. So much for Halloween trapeze! You'll have to look back to Halloween flying a couple years ago instead. That was a fun night. Crazy how much darker it is when we start at 6 instead of 5:30.

Well, here are a few pictures of us before the rain spoiled our fun.

"Elvis," Jen and April, who look like they dressed like each other, "Bones" Terri, and the Ringmaster Ashley.

Book of Mormon-the Musical

One of the reasons Mom changed her plane ticket for a second time was so she could go with me to the musical "The Book of Mormon" at Gammage. I had bought the tickets awhile back, not knowing for sure if she'd be here to go with me. My friend Jen also went with us, along with her boyfriend. 

It.Was.HILARIOUS.

It was horrible, and wrong, and raunchy, and vulgar, and totally inappropriate in every possible way, but it had us rolling the entire time. It's by the creators of the tv show, Southpark, so it was completely over the top. The general premise, without getting into all of the nastiness, is that two Mormon missionaries are sent to Uganda to serve their mission. The one is a super popular guy who had his heart set on serving his mission in Orlando, his dream destination. He thought that since he was a good Mormon, and prayed really hard, Heavenly Father would grant him this prayer. Nope. He got sent to Uganda with a socially awkward and slightly "special" companion missionary. It's the nightmare you'd expect a mission to Uganda to be. They manage to convert a bunch of the Africans, but it's only after the less knowledgable missionary spins quite a few lies into the stories from the Book of Mormon to convince them to join. It was hilarious. Here is a clip of the first song of the musical. It's pretty much the only one you can find online because all the rest are too inappropriate to share!

My review: one of the 2 best musicals I've seen at Gammage (ok, so I've only seen about 5-6). Absolutely side splittingly funny. There is a caveat though--if you're easily offended by cursing, the mocking of religion, more cursing, jokes about AIDS, even more vulgarity, or pretty much anything else--or if you're Mormon....you might not want to go. I would see it again in a heartbeat. Thanks for going with Mom and Jen!

A moment for silliness

Ava is so silly sometimes! Selfies with mom's phone...

...a headband over the top of a beanie.

How's this for style?! We call this look "CinderElvis."

Garth Brooks concert

Time to break out the cowboy boots--we're headed to the Garth Brooks concert! They announced a two date concert sometime in September. I was online and ready to book my tickets as soon as they went on sale. The two shows sold out almost immediately. They added about 6 more shows shortly after the others sold out, and I managed to get us two tickets from a 3rd party vendor. When the time came, we hopped on the light rail (genius idea) and headed downtown. The tickets I managed to get were for a 10:30 pm show on Friday night. He was playing a 7:00 show too, so I knew parking was going to be a mess (and probably really expensive). The light rail is free when you're going to an event downtown. We could tell that everyone else on the train was going to the concert too because they all looked like they had taken their boots out of a box just like I did. 

We had to wait outside while we waited for the first show to get over. They didn't let us in until after 10 pm, so we knew he probably wasn't going to be starting on time. Our seats were ok, and the place was completely packed.

All I have to say is that this guy can really put on a show! I always heard back in the day about how great Garth Brooks concerts were, but I had no idea that they'd still be that good--20 years later. He sang all of the old favorites from the 90s, and it was like a total flashback to high school. His wife, Trisha Yearwood was also there, and they sang a couple songs together and she did a few on her own.

He played for almost 2 1/2 hours non-stop. The crowd went wild for every song, and he seemed to just eat it up. What an amazing performer.

After the show was over, we managed to get out of there pretty quickly, and were at front of the line to get on the light rail. It was after 3:30 am before we got home, so it was a very long night. I'm so glad we got to see him in concert. It will go down as one of the best live shows I have ever seen. Here's a short video of the last song he sang. I have some longer videos of some of my favorite songs, but they're too long to load on the blog. Such a great show--totally worth the money and the late, late night!

A wax museum and a piano recital

During the month of October, Tyler's class was assigned a research project that they called the Living Wax Museum. They had to pick a person (currently alive) who has made a difference in our world. After some discussion about scientists who he might be interested in researching, we came up with Stephen Hawking. Tyler did all the research on his own using library books, and wrote several drafts of his report. He also had to try to dress like his character. The first thing he wanted to do was to find a pair of glasses that resembled Stephen Hawking's. Little did we know when we ordered that $6 pair of aviator glasses that Tyler would wear them every single day for about a month. On one of the first nights, he had put them up on his nightstand when he went to bed. We went in to have him try on a pair of pants before he went to bed, and before he would get up, he had to put on his glasses! We borrowed a suit jacket, and his teacher had a wheel chair he could use. He did a great job on his report! Parents and guests were invited to come to school to check out their work. It was fun to walk around and see all the different people they chose. I may be biased, but Tyler's was one of the best ones there. His board looked really nice with the black and yellow, and he typed up all of his headlines and his report. It was very well done. Nice job Ty!

Now is a good time to mention that one of the things that was happening while he was going through his "wearing fake glasses" phase was school pictures. He insisted on wearing his glasses, and also said he didn't want to get a hair cut. It was about as long as his hair has ever been, and now we have school pictures with long (puffy) hair and glasses. That should be interesting....

While we were on vacation, Grandma Jean worked with Ava to learn some songs on the keyboard. We borrowed it from Tina because Tyler wants to write the theme music for a movie he's planning to make. Ava really enjoyed learning the songs, and was very excited to put on a recital for us when we got home. She made us each a ticket, got dressed up in her finest gown and played her little heart out.

She did a great job!

Here's the order of songs that she did. Can you see what they are? She also played the happy birthday song, except she played it for our anniversary. She had Grandma Jean sing "happy anniversary to you..." while she played the song. It was the sweetest thing!

We're so proud of both of our kids. They love to learn new things and always do their best. We are very lucky parents!

Happy 11th anniversary to us!

Eleven years. It had been eleven years since this beautiful October day when Dave and I were married. It blows my mind to think that it's been that long. The best part about it is that it just keeps getting better. WE keep getting better. I can't imagine living my life with anyone else, and am grateful every single day for the strong relationship we have. 

We have definitely found a way to balance all of the things that are important, and I think that is so good for our relationship. We find time to do things together as well as fun things as a family. We respect each other's time for our hobbies and our fitness, and we balance the responsibilities around the house (although, I think Dave does more than I do!). We are so fortunate to have been able to take those two trips to Turks in the last two years. Very few couples can make something like that happen, and I realize how lucky we are to have the support around us to allow that to happen. As much as that trip is simply a great vacation, it is also so good for Dave and I to have that time together just to be a couple. We came back from that trip so totally in love with each other that it makes me want to go every single year just to keep that going. It's easy to forget some of that when we get busy with kids and life and reality. It may not be possible every year, unless we continue to get free flights, but I want to try to make it happen (a trip with just us) at least every other year. 

So much has happened in eleven years, yet it seems like the time has just flown by. Our kids are getting older, and I'm loving the independent stage of life they're entering in to. I have several friends with new babies, and as much as I love when my kids were babies, there is no part of me that would want to go back to that place in life. I couldn't ask for a more amazing partner to raise these kids with me, and I definitely realize how extremely lucky I am. 

Happy 11th anniversary Dave. I love you forever. Thank you for this great life. 

We were pretty good looking then, but our 25/26 year old selves have got NOTHING on us at 36/37. We just keep getting better--stronger bodies, and a stronger relationship. How awesome are we?!