Cubs Scouts and more cub scouts....

We had back to back Cub Scout activities this week.  We did a Pinewood Derby in Kaysville on Wednesday night and then our ward had their Pack Meeting on Thursday.  It made for two fun evenings.

Liam got to join us for the set-up of the Pinewood Derby while Jessica and Elessia had an appointment.  He had a great time playing with his Aunt Jena.  He loved having a large area to crawl around and spent some time following a rolling toy around.  He would crawl to it, then bat it away and craw after it again.  However once Grandpa started rolling cars down the track he was all "eyes on the track".The combination of the sound and the movement were a big hit.  He loved watching the cars.

Liam and Jena didn't stay for the actual Pinewood Derby as Jessica and Elessia came and got them and took Jena to Wonderwood for us on their way home.

Here is the group getting ready for their races.  It is hard to tell but this is by far the most clever stage situation I have ever seen in an LDS Church.  This is an older Church in Kaysville and has a large stage.  However what makes it unusual is that the front 3 feet of the top of the stage is removable along the whole top.  That means they can take those pieces off and put them on the ground in front and it makes steps (or seating as in this case) up to the stage.  They are in about 8 ft lengths so you have many options on how to configure the steps leading up to the stage.  And it worked great as seating for the cubs and siblings with the parents enjoying the view from the stage itself.  That probably doesn't make sense unless you have seen it before, but it was very practical.

And Barber Ward's Pack Meeting on Thursday:  I am still a bit nervous about Pack Meetings because I don't know the boys and their families well.  All but two of the leaders I know well because they are from our section of the new ward but most of the boys are not. We have had our Blue and Gold and our Pinewood Derby so this was my first "basic" pack meeting.

The theme was "Strike Up the Band".  We sang the National Anthem with our flag ceremony and that went well.  I was nervous no one would sing but even the boys did.  After our awards, we divided into two teams and they were sent to separate rooms with instructions and a large black garbage bag filled with odds and ends for making music and costumes.  They had 15 minutes to develop their performance of music and dance.  Then they had to come and perform.

This was "If You're Happy and you know it, Be a Twinkie..

be a cowboy, be a clown, be a princess,,,"

The second group had two numbers-

Cole on the piano doing "Chopsticks"

and then Bryson played "Book of Mormon Stories" while the group

played their instruments to the beat and danced. 

I think they had fun!!!

The Wolves finished the night with a "follow me song"

CHICK A BOOM CHICK A BOOM

This is "cowboy style".

I was pleased how the boys and families joined in and had fun performing.  Cub Scouts are fun!

I am not worried at all about Pack Meeting next month. The theme is "Be Kind to Animals" and we are having a group called Creature Encounters come and they are bringing turtles, lizards, snakes and other animals to share with our boys.  We are combining with another ward to cover the cost.  For most boys on the planet from the ages of 8-10, this is a sure winner!

For those keeping track....

Jena has one more year on her mission.

I have two more classes to end the fifth of nine semesters for my graduate school (graduation set for August 2017).

Two more days at my internship at DCSF......

And the really important countdown is 10 DAYS until I leave for Japan for a 2-day visit in Tokyo with my friend, Kathy Siebach and then 10 days in Okinawa with Tosha, Austen and Niki.  I am so excited (even after a discussion while visiting with Vonette about jet lag.  I will be falling asleep during my first class of next semester, I am sure.)

And snow....

In between two beautiful Saturdays--

we had some rainy days and woke up on Friday morning to large snow flakes.  The dogs loved it.

Mowgli likes to try to catch the flakes in his mouth.
It is fun to watch him try.

We had rain coming down the rain chain and snow flakes hitting the ground at the same time.  At least it was hailing like in part of Texas over the past weekend.

And when I picked up my phone that morning to post a picture of the snow, Facebook showed that one year ago today, I had posted another picture of snow although that one was a couple of inches which had fallen over night. April 15th must be a good day for snow in Syracuse.

Pink Shoes

As you know, Jena's favorite color is BLUE.  She has a blue room, blue backpack, blue shirts, and always wants to wear blue jeans.  However last week after running an errand with Gary, she came home with these PINK tennis shoes and she is loving them.  Many of her friends have pink as their favorite color and they have been so excited to see Jena wearing their favorite color.  I think she likes them because they are so unexpected for her.

I think I might want a pair myself although I would rather have some bright yellow tennis shoes, personally.

Saturdays and yard work

I feel very fortunate that we have had open Saturdays to catch up on some spring yard work and the weather has be cooperative as well.  I do like doing yard work--when I have time, beautiful weather, and I am in the mood---

Jena took this picture of me wearing a hat so here is the proof I actually did some work....

You might notice the truck in that picture is sideways in our driveway.  That is because part of what we did was pull out some bushes in the front of our house.  Two between the tall bushes in front of our living room and two others on the other side.  They weren't looking good any more.  Gary was very proud of his plan and it worked great to yank them out of the ground.  Much better than my plan to clip and trim and dig out.

Yesterday was a much cooler day than the prior Saturday but by the afternoon we headed outside to start the spring cleanup in the backyard.  We got our deck cleaned and set up and started some work in the flower gardens.  Jena worked along with us and cleaned all of the weeds out of the sandbox under the swings.

With the tulips blooming around the back yard, it was great to be outside, playing in the dirt and water, and admiring the flowers.  I love spring!

Another task we did was to empty out our four 55-gal. water containers.  In doing so, we discovered that there was a hole in one of the barrels so not much water was in that container and the seals around the plugs weren't good anymore.  Luckily we have 250 gals. of water in a large container in our garage.  It is that time of year to check your water supply and make sure you have stored enough water for at least 14 days (14 gals. per person in household-minimum.)

I love the feeling of getting things done and crossed off my list.

Swimming again

We fit in some swimming with Scarlett and Liam this week.  Jessica took the train up from Salt Lake while Elessia was working and we grabbed Scarlett and headed to the Rush.

Jena

Scarlett

Jessica and Liam

For some reason, Scarlett liked laying on her back this evening.  Rarely she would actually be deep enough to float for a second but it made her excited.  Then she saw Jena swimming under the water and tried to put her face into the water.  That only lasted a second because she couldn't figure out the shutting her mouth and breathing.

Afterwards, both babies got on their striped pjs but getting a cute picture wasn't working out so well.

Even Jena and Scarlett couldn't both look and smile at the camera.

Liam was happy to smile but not Scarlett.  She wanted to brush her hair.

Student of the Month

I bet you guessed that this post is about Jena.  She is a good student.  However it is actually about me. I didn't even know that the Kaysville campus selected a student of the month each month.  They came in looking for me and handed me a blanket and said that my professors had nominated me for "representing our class and giving help to fellow students."  All it really means is that I got a free "sweatshirt-style" Aggie blanket.

It is very soft and light.....and at least it is the right color to match our "navy and white" master bedroom.

(Gary told me last night that he tried to get a picture of me sleeping under the blanket during a nap but the "A-Utah State" wasn't showing enough to make it good "blackmail" picture. He loves to tease me about going to Utah State as a BYU Cougar.)

Tuesday had one other piece of good news:  My background check for DCFS FINALLY cleared after all of this time--with about 30 hours left of my internship.  It has been a comedy of errors with wrong paperwork, lost paperwork, and my hard to scan fingerprints (they asked me if I played the piano as that often causes fingerprints to be "shallow" and hard to scan.)

Whew....

I was getting worried about my next year's internship.  Everyone was getting theirs confirmed and I was still waiting.  Part of it was my choice--I really only wanted to go to one place.  When I interviewed with them, they told me that they won't be letting me know until the end of March.  My professor was willing to let me wait but I chose not to interview other places while I waited which was making me nervous.

However on the drive down to Mesa, I got an email extending me the internship at

THE CHILDREN'S CENTER

in Salt Lake City, UT.

I am so excited.  It is just what I wanted to do at the place I wanted to do it at.  And it does have a small stipend hopefully enough to cover the gas/train rides down there.  It is about 35 minutes away. I will work 20 hours a week--full-day Monday, half day Tuesday and one other full day not decided yet.

Some history:

For almost two years before I started graduate school at BYU, I worked as a teacher in their therapeutic pre-school in Kearns. I loved it there and had a great experience with the staff I worked with and with my supervisor Paul.  Even at that time The Children's Center had two locations--Salt Lake and Kearns.  It was started by Agi Plenk, a psychologist dedicated to young children experiences difficulties with emotions and behaviors.  It has grown to be a major non-profit in the treatment of children and families in the 0-8 year age range.  They provided private and family counseling, community programs for parenting and trauma reduction, the pre-schools and other groups for children with emotional or behavioral needs, and are involved in ongoing research and training programs throughout the inter-mountain area.

When I did my interview, I thought it went well.  However they had mentioned during the interview as well as prior to it that they normally take U of U interns.  They were willing to interview me as long as I understood that. (Side note:  I found out during the waiting phase that they had taken an Utah State intern about 9 years ago and there was some problems with that placement and the supervisor who ended up being fired at the time.  That made me even more worried as I waited.) I was interviewed by three social workers--one around my age and two in the early 30s.  During one of the questions, I referenced my supervisor at The Children's Center and something he had taught me.  At the end of the interview, as we were chatting, I asked how they had connected with the Center.  The two younger social workers shared their stories--one of them had also been a teacher like me.  Then the older one commented that she had worked at the Salt Lake office from 1980-1983 (overlapped me exactly) and then stopped to have her first child and was out until 20 years later when she returned.  Then she said "And Paul and his wife are my closest friends!" What a small world!  We probably attended trainings together in Salt Lake when we were both employed by The Children's Center.

It is an awesome experience and will be a great internship.  I will get training from one of the national leaders in trauma in children.  Many of their children are in foster care or have come from international adoptions so I will be able to build on those skills as well.

I will start at the end of August and it will go until the first part of May 2017.

Spring Break Travels

This year Jena had Spring Break after the Easter holiday.  We spent Monday taking care of her heart check-up at Primary's (it is in great shape) and then we went to the Hale Theatre with Gary and saw the "Pirate Queen".  It was great.  I had never seen it before and I think it was the first time it had played in Utah.  It is based on the true story of Grace O'Malley during the conflicts between Ireland and England back in the 1500s (I think).  The music was great and the dancing was amazing.  If you have a chance to see it you should go. Now I want to read more about her and that time period but I am holding off until the end of the this semester.  No time for much reading for fun at the moment.

After Jena did her two days of service on her mission, we headed out to visit the Ipsons in Mesa, AZ. This trip was originally organized to take my dad down with us so that he, Valerie and I could have some family history days together. Karla, his wife, was going out of town to join some friends in their yearly get-away so it was perfect timing. Jena was coming to have cousin time.  Then Ben decided he wanted to go so then we were all going and bringing the motor home.  Karla then became sick for about three weeks with some virus going around and Dad soon followed her.  In the end, they stayed home to recover and Gary stayed home to manage the house and dogs, and the three of us headed down in the car.

We left about 2 hours later than planned because I ended up at the doctor's office that morning.  I had had a cold about 3 weeks earlier that had left me with a very plugged ear.  If I even tried to lay on that side my ear would plug and pop throughout the night.  When it felt plugged my hearing was very impacted.  And my ear hurt. Gary who himself had had both of his ears cleaned about 2 months ago was worried about me driving up and down the elevations without clean ears.  It had taken 45 minutes for Gary's ears to get cleaned and I wasn't looking forward to that.  But I went anyway and I also had to get both ears cleaned (in only 10 minutes however.)  I couldn't believe how much better I could hear in both ears.  And the one that hurt the least was the most impacted with wax.  Our doctor thought it was funny that we both needed our ears cleaned so close together.  So a point for Gary as he was right.  I was so glad as we traveled that my ears were working properly and popping when they were suppose to and I slept so much better.  Husbands are nice to have around.

We didn't do much family history but we had fun playing games and hanging out with family.  We watched Conference together which was nice.  They also got me hooked on the"Relative Race" which is a show about four couples racing across the US visiting unknown relatives who have been matched to them through Ancestor DNA.

Ben with Dottie (Jarom and Starla Ipson's baby)

Although the weather was definitely warm enough for swimming, cooler weather the week before had mad the water cold (65 degrees).  That didn't stop Ben and Jena but I didn't swim in it.

 Ben teaching Jena some diving skills.

A snapshot of Dance Mania on the XBox.  The girls met during the Priesthood session and had pizza and did Dance Mania.

I only got pictures of Ben holding the babies.
This is Justin and Tosha's baby Jayden.

 April 4th is Valerie's 55th birthday, so on Sunday night their kids came over and we had dinner and cake/cheesecake to celebrate.  She had lots of help blowing out her candles.

Morgan, Tamara, Evanie and Parker are there to help their Grandma.

Valerie's birthday was Monday so we took her out to breakfast to celebrate before we left to make the trip back home.

We got home in about 11 hours of driving and I had to hurry to finish and submit a homework assignment before midnight.  It was a nice little trip, beautiful weather and countryside. America has its problems but it is a privilege to live in a place which allows us freedom and safety to travel around as we wish.

It is good to be home and now (almost a week later) I can say that I have finally caught up with the laundry (which--to be fair-was behind even before we left).