Union Ward Roadshow 2013

So last November I received a new calling at church.  It's title is "Young Women's Activity Specialist" which was a weird calling title because basically I was in charge of creating our wards Roadshow.  I haven't heard of a Roadshow being done for YEARS!  In fact, the last one that I was involved in was when I was 12.  I was Alice from Alice in Wonderland and I still can sing a bit of the song and do part of the dance number we did.  I won't show that to you. 
Anyway, so it hasn't been done for years.  I was a little overwhelmed with this task to say the least.  We spent Thanksgiving at Mike's mom and dad's house and it was very much on my mind.    I decided to put it out of my mind until after Christmas, but we had a roadshow meeting that put me into another Roadshow focus (or overwhelming feeling).  I had very many hours laying in bed thinking about it until I finally fell asleep.  I did come up with some great ideas in those many hours. 
We celebrated in the New Year and actually stayed up after 1am, but at 5am I woke up "bright eyed and bushy tailed" and wrote the entire roadshow in a few hours.  It was really inspiration.  I defiantly didn't do it without some help from on high. 
My challenge was utilize as many youth as possible.  Knowing that we have 40+ youth - that made it tricky, but I knew that not everyone would want to be on the stage.  We needed stage crew, sound and lighting people, someone to run the spotlight, people to help with scenery and I wanted a couple of extra directors - all this besides the actors/actresses.  Our youth stepped up.  I sent around an interest sign up sheet to see what the youth would be interested in doing.  Bishop made my job a little easier by letting them know that they would all be participating in one way or another, so they should choose what they really wanted to do. 
We ended up having 25 actors/actresses, a couple of co-directors, lights & sound people and stage hands..  It was great having so many involved, but that also meant that getting (at least) 25 schedules to coordinate for practices was a challenge.  That made me nervous about the outcome of the final performance.  But in the end, it all came together.  The youth did a fantastic job. 
I would LOVE to upload the video for your viewing pleasure, but it is over 100mb and Blogger only does 100mb, but I will attach some pics!

Jeremy and Nathan - Besties, but in different plays.

Our AWESOME backdrop!

 

Fairies & Tinkerbell!

On Stage with Peach Pod Products.

 

Brigam helps out with the making of the tutus!

Spencer doing the Harlem Shake.

 

Our Dancing Deacons

 Our shopping princesses.

 

This book comes in handy!

 

 Our dancing deacons wiping around their ties.

 

 

King Stefan and his daughter, Nelly.

 Our princesses.

 

Annanana, Random Boy from the Kingdom, One of the guards, Mrs. Hautersteinmeyerson, and the trusty side kick, Roger.

My Chandelier hanger, My HERO!

All in all, it was a great experience! 
Maybe we'll do it again - in a couple of years!

 

 

Our time at Fishhook - Camping

We had a great time camping this year at Fishhook. Usually Pam's whole family goes with us, but this year she had a surgery and after only a week of recovery, didn't feel up to going.   I was super bummed, but I remember how much I hurt after my surgery.  Yuck!  So Jeremy brought his friend, Max, and we had 2 of Pam's kids come anyhow, Devin and Rachel.  There were 8 of us all together.
We drove up on Wed afternoon and put up the tents while Mike was still at work.  I was way impressed with myself.  With just a little help from Briggy, we put up my tent faster than those three boys put up theirs.  Silly boys!  It's because they can't read directions you know.
We only forgot a few things and were happy that dad was still coming up later so he could help us out.  We did forget forks for our tin foil dinners, but Max, being the super outgoing guy that he is, wrangled us up some forks from another camping group.  Max was awesome.
Grama Anderson came up on Friday and hung out with us all day.  We had a Boat Club boat on both Thursday and Friday so we had a great time on the water.  Thursday was a little windy, but still most of the people got in the water (not me, someone needs to man the camera!)  Friday was perfect.  There was tubing and wakeboarding.  Here is some video for your viewing pleasure!

4th of July

So we spent the 4th relaxing and visiting friends.  At 2 we went to see Jared Peterson who just returned from his mission.  He was having a little backyard get together.  It was good to talk with him and his dad, Jay.  After sitting with the big people for a while, Brigam was bored and asked if he could swing on the swing set.  Of course!  So he and another girl started swinging along on the Costco, wooden swingset.  Pretty soon we hear a loud crack and as I look over, I see Brigam who looks like he is pinned under this metal beam that was hold the swings up.  The whole thing broke and the kids both fell to the ground.  I think the beam did hit him in the head, but with the way it landed and was still attached to another piece of support, it probably hit pretty softly considaring the size of the whole thing.  Shortly after that we high-tailed it out of there since Brigam had "brought the roof down", we assumed our work there was done.

After a good, 4th of July nap, we headed down to Pam's where we BBQ'd with their family and the Jensens.  Mike spent "the best $5.00 he ever spent" on dry ice and proceeded to make dry ice bombs.  Their poor dog, Zack, thought the world was about to end and was DYING to get in the house.  That was funny.  Here's some video of our epic night:

After that, we just stayed at Pam's as she moved into a new house and the previous owners said you could see all the fireworks from their house.  You could see them if you were in the middle of their street, looking though the neighbor's side yard, and cocking your head to the side.  But we did see them.  We couldn't hear them too well.  I told her next time we are going down to the river!  :)

My Surgery

So for months now I have been dealing with a true "pain in the ankle".  This isn't even the ankle that I did a wicked number to on the tennis courts last year.  This is the other one.  It's been bothering me not so much when I do my Group Ride class in the mornings, not a ton when I do BOSU, but when I just do plain walking, that's when it starts to burn like crazy.  Every night it swells up like a balloon too.  So I visited the Dr., got an xray - the doc sees nothing.  So I go to Dr. Murdock, a podiatrist and he orders an MRI - a spendy deal, but I needed to have something done!  So on we went.  Dr. Murdock found a bone chip and surgery was scheduled.  Last Thursday was the big day.  I set up my life for everyone else to run for the next two weeks since I will be laid up. 

It's been interesting living my life with basically one working leg.  Amazing, really, how difficult it is to take a shower on one leg.  And shaving on one leg?  It's a talent I am really working on. 

Today I went into Dr. Murdock for the post surgery check up.  He uncovered the incision - this was the first time I'd seen it - I wasn't going to look at it myself - ick!

 Mike just says he'll call me ZORRO from now on.  Lucky me!  :)

I'll keep you posted!

Mother's Day 2011

What a great day Mother's Day was!  My family treated me like a Queen!  I had a great homemade breakfast that I didn't have to make.  We all know what that means - it was delicious! 

Brigam made me an awesome bookmark and a magnet.  He was the only one that got to make a bookmark.  The other kids made two magnets, but he told me that he asked the teacher if he could make me a bookmark because he knew I loved to read.  Wasn't that thoughtful?

Then he made me this I heart U magnet.  See the little lines around the heart?  He told me that he made his magnet complete with "sound effects".  So dang cute!!!

Jeremy worked his little fingers to the bone (with a little help from Brigam) digging this hole and putting this pond form in for me.  Now I just need to get a ton of flat rocks, landscaping plants, water plants, an electrical cord running....blah, blah, blah....  It's something I've wanted for a long time and I was so happy that he did it.

Mykalyn made me this cute as heck box at young women's and filled it full of chocolate covered fortune cookies complete with my own "fortunes".  Very sweet.

Mother's Day was great. Oh, and one more present I got was a long ol' phone call from this incredible guy.....

It was great that all my kids made me feel so special (an my wonderful hubby too).  They are great!

Daddy Daughter Dance

So Mike and Mykalyn's professional photo came in the mail from their dance.  It looks so nice.  We've had it for a while, but Mike has now chagrined me into putting it on my blog.  He was disappointed it wasn't already there!

Our trip to Silver Mountain

So, because Mike misses Tyler so much, he couldn't stand the thought of doing the annual General Conference/Snowboarding trip to Utah. He decided that it would be better for our family to take a trip to Kellogg, Idaho and visit Silver Mountain for a little ski & swim. At the resort there they have a big indoor water park complete with 3 tubular slides, a lazy river, a surf station, a kiddies' play area and a couple of hot tubs and more. We showed up on Thursday in the late afternoon. After check-in, Mike and the boys went down to the water park while Mykalyn and I had to make a "stuff forgotten" trip to the nearest Wally World. We came back, made up Jordan River Mud Cake and threw it in the crock pot to cook while we hit the water park too. It was fun. Mike was brave enough to do the surf station and he wasn't half bad! We stayed and played for a while, but then it seemed to be a little stuffy in there and we went to the outside hot tub. It is amazing that a 15 minute gondola ride away there is a whole mountain for them to snowboard on because the weather down in the resort was pretty dang mild.

After playing we sat down to watch Tangled which was a pretty cute movie. I am glad that the kids still like Disney movies. I'll be bummed when I have no one left to buy them for but me. Maybe by the time that Brigam thinks that they are ridiculous, I will have grandkids to buy them for and watch with. It could happen, Brigam is 9, Jeremy is 16 and still watches them. I wonder what Tyler will be doing in 7 years.........

The next day was April 1st. Better known as April Fool's Day. For breakfast the kids had cereal with milk and these great bacon and egg concoctions. It was great to call them to the table for this little "surprise" and start their day off with a sugar high!

The 4 of them were so happy to come back on the gondola at lunch and eat their lunch in this great room we got. It was super nice with a full kitchen, bedroom with a king sized bed and a couch that pulled out for a queen sized bed. They were toasty and the lunch made them refuel for another round on the mountain.

When they came home for dinner, I had a crock pot chicken dish cooking all day and they said they could smell the deliciousness of that smell all the way down the hall. Their tummies were going to be happy. Little did they know that I had another April Fool's food choice on the menu. It was fish sticks (rectangular wafers covered in peanut butter and corn flakes), peas (made from Laffy Taffy) and potatoes and gravy (made from a scoop of vanilla ice cream and hard shell chocolate topping). This type of meal is a traditional April Fool's Day happening in the Nelson household.

Last year Mykalyn helped out by making a sugar cookie "pizza" with candy toppings. She was very creative. But this year she made my day when she said,  "Mom, I didn't even see the April Fool's breakfast coming. I thought, 'Maybe she'll do the dinner', but then I was like 'we're on vacation. She's not going to pack all that stuff.' Mom you are so cool." Ok, forming all 120 peas from Laffy Taffy just got "worth it" with that comment.

After dinner, we went to the hot tub again. Then they played in the water park some more.

You know, I enjoy going on vacation with everyone, but the kind of vacations that Mike likes to take - well they aren't really for me. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy being with them, I just enjoy my vacations to include at least one or more books, shopping (which includes buying stuff - not food), classes and stuff like that. Mike likes total ACTION and MOVEMENT. I enjoyed my time with all of them, but they are concerned that I didn't have fun. I did! I just like to do my own thing.