Trapeze BeReal

Not much to say here, but I wanted to share this awesome BeReal that Kaylin and I took at trapeze tonight. It's just about perfect! This fire pit (and our heated vests) have sure come in handy this winter. 

Ava's 8th grade picture

I haven't shared school pictures on here for awhile. I don't know if Tyler even showed us his from 11th grade, which is kind of a bummer because we have all the rest of them over the years. We do have Ava's 8th grade picture from fall, but even in the short time since then, she looks so much more grown up! This is just a photo of the photo, so excuse the poor quality. It's a great photo Ava! 

Ava loves her mom!

Ava probably wouldn't love that I'm posting this, but I'm doing it in case one day in the near future, she does what some teenaged girls do and start thinking their moms are the worst. Ava has a TikTok account, but she doesn't post much. I happened to see this post that she made recently and screenshotted it for my own memory. The first slide of the post said "I'm a girl who loves...."

...and look, "my mom" is one of the things she loves! It's fun to see the other things she lists as well, but I'm especially excited to see that I made the list. I love you Ava, and I hope you always know that. There may be times when you think I'm weird or annoying or mean, but that won't last forever. I hope we can always be good friends. I'll always be here for you! 

Ava's School Dance

Ava had a semi-formal school dance tonight, and she looked so beautiful! She and Lexi got ready at Lexi's house, so I am happy that her mom sent me these pictures of the girls before they headed out for the night. They have grown up so much this year! It's interesting that Ava likes to wear dresses now. She was adamant just a few months ago that she didn't like dresses, and ever since she dressed up for Lexi's birthday party a few months ago, she has been more open to the idea. Good thing too, dresses are the way to go in Arizona! The look these days is definitely dresses and high top sneakers. I definitely don't think I could pull off this look, but the girls definitely can. 

One more picture before I end this--gotta make sure to include one with their kissy faces! I think they had fun at the dance. Just a couple more months until she's all done at the Academy. Trust me, she's counting down the days. 

 

Tyler's new room

How many cords and monitors does it take to set up Tyler's computer station? This many. And this is just some of it. Why is it scattered all over our living room, you ask? Well, we finally agreed to let Tyler move his computer into his room. 

More accurately, we moved Tyler into what used to be Dave's office. All these years, we've had Tyler's computer out in the living room for a few different reasons. First of all, we had the perfect little nook for it in a space that is essentially a built in desk. Secondly, experts say you should't let your kids have their computers in their rooms. It's the reason that for a long time, we required that the kids leave their phones charging in the living rooms instead of in their bedrooms at night. Tyler would occasionally complain about having his computer in the living room where he was constantly getting interrupted by us. We put it off for quite awhile, but the kind of work Tyler is doing really does give him a pretty good reason to have some privacy. He's regularly having meetings with his VRML production team, in addition to his casting work he does. It was a pretty big project though, it wasn't as easy as just moving furniture around. This was Dave's office, so it's where the router and modem were set up. Dave had to run some cables and move things around, and they also painted Tyler's new room. Turns out this room is actually a little bit smaller than Tyler's previous bedroom, so that isn't ideal, but he liked that it had higher ceilings. They set up the desk in the closet to leave more room. This isn't the final product (that's Daves monitor on the desk), but it gives you an idea. Dave ended up getting a new desk for himself too, which takes up less space in his office. 

Long story short, we never see Tyler anymore. The only reason we saw him before was because his computer was in eyesight. Now he's in his room the majority of the day, which was what we sort of expected would happen. I guess that's life when you do the work Tyler does! 

Thorsday BBQ #2

It was Red Mountain's turn to host our Thorsday BBQ, but we didn't have quite as nice of day for ours. It was a little cold and windy, which is never ideal for outdoor events. It's been hard to have these bigger events at Red Mountain in recent semesters. We just don't have the number of students we used to, and participation in campus events and clubs is down significantly. It can make it tough to do my job, but I keep trying! There may be less people there, but those who come still seem to enjoy our events. Hopefully our enrollment will turn around in the near future. 

Our goal in having our event a week after the event at Dobson was that departments and clubs would be expected to have a table at both campuses. We had more Dobson tables than usual, but there definitely was a significantly smaller turn out at Red. I appreciated those who were there though, both the staff who volunteered to help (from my department and others), and to those who staffed tables for the event. And of course, we love having Thor there--he can't exactly miss his own BBQ. 

Here is the Student Life team, including our Dobson colleagues. I guess that's a benefit of me going over to help them--they come to help us! 

We had a food truck, which was free to students if they visited a certain number of tables or participated in activities. We definitely didn't pay for enough food vouchers ahead of time though, so not enough students were able to get free food. We'll know for next time. 

This was meant to be a club recruitment event, but we don't have many clubs at Red these days. Our Game Club is the most active (and one of the only), so they had some of their games on display. I hope we can build up our clubs again, it really was an unfortunate casualty of the semesters we had to do everything remotely. 

Selfies with Thor!

We had the reverse tie-dye t-shirts at our event too, but we didn't have quite the crowd that we saw at Dobson. They were so much fun though, we'll definitely have to try this again. 

We had a DJ at our event, which always makes it fun. This isn't the first time this particular DJ has come to events at Red. James was actually a student here years ago, and hosted a fun booth at our Halloween event a couple years in a row. He set up a dance party for the kids with lights, music, and dancing video games. He's towards the end of this post in a photo (in a Superman shirt) from the 2016 Halloween event. I think he was there in 2017 too. He's now involved with MCC's DJ program.  

It wasn't quite as big and well attended as some of our previous events back when we had more students on campus, but it was still a fun day. I love to see our Thorsday concept take off and grow in to more and more. Thanks to all who made it happen!

A visit from FLOTUS

We had an exciting guest come to visit our campus today, Dr. Jill Biden, FLOTUS! The college only learned of her visit on Thursday, so our Marketing and Public Safety teams needed to scramble to get everything ready. It included meetings with the White House communication team, Secret Service, and security checks of our campus. When this high of profile guest visits campus, it's a really big deal. There was a select audience of students who would be invited to attend the event, and only a small group of college staff would be allowed in the room. There were also a few other high profile guests speaking, including the Mayor of Mesa, Governor of AZ, Congressman Stanton, the Secretary of Education, and of course our District Chancellor and College President. 

I, of course, was not one of the people invited into the room, but fortunately I have a friend who was. I ended up going over there for the day, just to see what campus looked like when there were Secret Service roaming around. They had the place pretty locked down, with entire buildings sealed off and the employees of those buildings working from home for the day. It was all very exciting, even from the outside. These photos were all sent to me "from the inside," but it helped me to feel like I was there. 

Here is a link to a news story highlighting the visit. All of the high profile guests spoke for a few minutes before Dr. Biden took to the podium. Our Governor has taught adjunct at PVCC, so it was fitting that she also spoke at our event as well. 

It's always great to see Congressman Stanton out there doing great things. After all, we go way back....to 2018, and now we've done 4 fundraisers for him.

Here's a short video of her speech. 

After she was done, we ran outside to see if we could get a glimpse of her getting into her vehicle. She actually walked past the SUVs and walked over to a group of people sitting in one of the outdoor courtyards. She shook hands and visited for a few minutes before walking to the vehicle. I'm not sure if that was scripted or not, but it didn't seem like it was. Makes me wish I would have been sitting over there, but the Secret Service wasn't letting people get very close at this point. 

It was an exciting day, and definitely an honor for MCC. I'm happy for those who had to the opportunity to be part of this event, and to be in the room with FLOTUS and so many other dignitaries. Thanks for visiting, Dr. Jilly Bean! 

January pull-up challenge

I mentioned the other day that I was doing a pull-up challenge during the month of January. I started on January 2, with no real goal other than to do pull-ups every day that month. Some days I did 60+ (if I did a P90X Challenge), most were more like 20-30, and a few days while I was in Vegas I only did 5-10. But, all in all, I did 675 pull-ups in the month of January. Not only that, about 70 of them were done with additional weight. I would put a 10, 25, 40, and ultimately 45 pound weight on a belt around my waist and do a few here and there. Not a bad way to start 2023! I didn't really do a before and after picture, but I did take this one on January 4. Honestly though, I'm not seeing a huge difference in my muscle definition after the month of work. I don't really know how to pose to show my muscles, which is something I might need to work on. Also, Ali said I really should be doing these back photos topless so the straps of my bra don't cover the muscles I'm trying to see. It's nice to have a goal like this to give me some accountability during the month. 

Remember when I did a pull-up challenge in April of 2020? I did 850 pull-ups that month! Looking back, I can't believe I did that! I guess it was during Covid and I wasn't flying for a couple weeks that month. I wonder how many pull-ups I've done since I started doing trapeze--thousands. Never did I imagine I'd be a woman who could do pull-ups like this. I must say, I'm pretty proud of myself, and feel like a bit of a badass when I'm knocking out sets of 8-10 at the gym. Strong is the new pretty, right?

Saturdays are for trapeze

Not much to say here, other than that I love my Saturday mornings with my trapeze friends. I especially love them this time of year when the sun is out, the sky is blue and the temperature is just about perfect. As long as I live in Arizona, I don't know that I'll ever stop appreciating the beautiful winter days we have here. Another thing I won't stop appreciating are the people who make up my trapeze family. Here I am with two Ashleys and a George. It's an Ashley sandwich, you might say. 

I'm not sure what's happening here, looks like Ashley is picking something off of other Ashley's shirt. I was just smiling for the photo. 

Now we have two Branchs making a George sandwich, with a side of Leo. Clearly I'm running out of things to say about my trapeze friends if I'm turning them into sandwiches. 

I'll end this somewhat pointless post with a great video of me sending Ali on a layout round trip. Nice work! I still get nervous about catching this trick, but we're getting some consistency, which will only make it better. She's so fun to catch!

Thorsday BBQ #1

Ever since the premiere of our Thorsday film back in November, we've been doing quite a few different events and activities to promote the concept. We always do a club recruitment event at the start of each semester, and this time, Beth Ann suggested having a Thorsday BBQ as our spring club event. We'd have them on two different Thorsdays in February so that people could participate at both campuses. This is something new, and it really worked well. It allowed our Student Life team to help with both events, instead of each campus doing it ourselves on the same day. I was in charge of the reverse tie-dye Thorsday shirts, which were a big hit. Michaela and I ran that activity at the Dobson campus, and students really seemed to enjoy it. We made our shirts ahead of time so we could show people what they would look like. It was cool to see how unique every shirt ended up. Here I am with my "sister" Cara. 

I will say, it was quite different to see a big event like this at Dobson compared to what they are like at Red. There are just so many many more students there, it was quite overwhelming at times. In all my years working here, I rarely go over and help with their big campus events. I enjoyed it though, and I will try to make more of an effort moving forward

This is some of the Dobson Student Life team, joined by me and Michaela (my assistant at Red). They have quite a few more staff members in their office (understandably), and even though we're both MCC, it's a much different place. I've always been pretty adamant that I'm Red Mountain only, but I'm trying to be better about helping to support my colleagues at the other campus. I guess it's not so bad over there....

After all, I get to work with some pretty great people! I've loved my job at MCC for almost 16 years now, and I feel very fortunate to be able to say that. It really is the people (and my campus) that make it so special. Happy Thorsday, everyone!

Volleyball at BBP

We had our first tournament at the massive Legacy Park facility today. This is a new sports complex out in east Mesa that has facilities for practically every sport--volleyball (57 indoor courts), basketball, softball (Dave plays there once a week), baseball, soccer, pickleball, gymnastics, cheer, and several others. It's an unbelievable place. The best part as a parent who may be spending an entire day there, is that there is a sports bar with great food and drinks. There's also another smaller restaurant that serves drinks. There are several things about this place that aren't ideal (the parking and the internet connection), but the bar makes up for it. 

We had a good view of the games today, sitting on the top of the pushed-in bleachers. Look at that height Ava is getting off the ground!

 

This is one of the fun things Ava's team does during the game. They have a few different chants and cheers they do for an ace, a time out, etc, but they also do this little move when someone gets a kill (don't ask me what that is, I'm still learning volleyball). Whoever gets the kill mimics shooting their team, and they all fall to the ground. It's super cute, and a fun way for the team to celebrate a good play. 

Look at how high she is above the net! Her vertical is getting pretty impressive. If she's jumping like this at age 13 in her first season of club, I'm excited to see where her high school volleyball career takes her. 

They're definitely having fun out there, which is so great to see. This team has bonded well in a short period of time, so the rest of the season is going to be even more fun to watch. I love her smile here! Win or lose, these girls seem to have fun out there. 

Super random photo Dave took of Ava on the sidelines. I'm sure she loves this one....

At some point during the day (and maybe even a couple different times), we went over to the GOAT and had lunch and/or drinks. It really is a nice bonus of this place. Again, since I'm writing this a few months past when these games actually happened, I have no idea if they won or lost. But really though, does it matter? Great job out there, VOS! 

Sunset walk

Ava wanted to walk over to the school in our neighborhood to practice her serves. You would think we'd go to the sand volleyball court in our neighborhood, but the net is high and it's hard to do anything in sand. Instead, she likes to practice serving against the side of the school building. We just happened to have a gorgeous sunset on our walk over to the park, and if you know Ava, she loves a good sunset picture. Look, she even gave me a normal smile!

As well as a couple more that were somewhat normal, well, one of them at least. Either way, she is beautiful and so is the sunset. 

Sunset selfies....

This is how she practices on the wall of the school. I'm not sure they'd like it much, but no one has caught her and told her to stop yet. She has another tournament this weekend, so she's getting ready to kill it out there! We're excited to watch Club VOS play again.