Into the Wild Blue Yonder

Kevin’s dad was in the Air Force, so as he was growing up, things were all about the airplanes in his family. As such, it seemed perfectly appropriate that I should be initiated into the grand event that is an air show several months after Kev and I got married. Having no real idea what I was in for, I happily agreed to go. That evening, I returned home with one of the worst sunburns I’ve ever gotten and a massive headache from the heat. Needless to say, I have never attended another air show. I am glad that I experienced one though, so I have a frame of reference for the many that my boys have attended. I just don’t love planes enough to risk the misery that a long, hot day in the burning sun brings me.

With that bit of history noted, I once again introduce a guest blogger to report on an event I did not attend. This time Matthew has shared a few thoughts and just a few of the hundreds of amazing pictures he took today:

This airshow was my first experience with the Air Force Demonstration Team, the Thunderbirds. I've seen the Blue Angels numerous times, but never the Thunderbirds. It was a wonderful show of force from the aviation of this country, and it was quite the perspective seeing the shift from the Japanese A6M Zeros and the P-40, all the way to the F-16's, and the F-35's. I was able to bring my best friend Alex, and she had a wonderful time as well. It was a joy to be there with the people I enjoy being with. It ended up being hot and I got mildly sunburned, but overall it was totally worth it. At the end of the day my right eye was red right in the place where I squinted to look through the camera's viewfinder. It was quite the time, and I enjoyed it, and would go again with the same people.

No Regrets

Malia got back from girls camp this morning. She was smelly and tired and happy about being smelly and tired. 😂 She has kindly accepted my offer to be a guest blogger as I was definitely enjoying my soft bed and my indoor plumbing while she was experiencing the joys of sleeping on the ground and using a port-a-potty. (I did tell her that she lucked out with the port-a-potty. All of my girls’ camp experiences were accompanied by the…aroma…of an old-fashioned pit potty. 😜)

 I was a little hesitant at first about Girls Camp, but after I didn’t regret my decision at all. The drive up was pretty boring, ‘nuff said. When we first got there, we got fed lunch, then we went to the amphitheater for our welcoming devotional. The Stake leaders then told all the wards where we were going for rotations, and we all headed off to our respective locations around the camp. Our ward started off with Archery, which I super duper enjoyed! The Archery set up was within walking distance, and so all us girls sang a whole bunch of camp songs on the walk there (including but not limited to: Boom Chicka Boom, Milk, Noah, The Moose Song, and Princess Pat). The bow I started off with was really hard to pull, and so I had to have some help- After I got pulling back the string, I did good! (I only broke one arrow…But it wasn’t in half, It was the top fletching.) Afterwards, we went back to our camp and had ward time. We worked on our secret sister bags, and I made a couple of bracelets for a couple of the older girls. We went to dinner, and had our first evening devotional. We then had a ‘Jesus Walk’ along the trail up by the old archery station. It was dark out, and so they set up fairy lights around paintings of Jesus. After we went back to camp, we all went to bed because we were all so tired.

 On Wednesday, we woke up, had breakfast, and went to the morning devotional. We went to the lake (which was really just a puddle…) before lunch, then went back to camp, and straight to lunch. After lunch, we went to the zip line. I opted not to do the zip line, because it had broken a couple of times previously. (It did once while we were there too.) It was still fun watching the others girls though! Following the zip line, we went back to camp and had ward time. One of the girls put beads in my hair, and of course the beads were green! Green is the best color. *Nudge Nudge, Wink* After ward time, we went off to dinner, and the evening devotional. Following the devotional, we had a whole dance party, in which the boys from another stake, who were camping by the archery, intruded on our party because they were silly gooses and didn’t realize the fact that there was a road for travel, and therefore climbed down and back up the mountain. Needless to say, none of the leaders were happy that they intruded on our GIRLS camp. After the dance party, all the wards chose a primary song of some sort, and we sang it to each other from our camp sites. After this, we all went off to bed.

 Thursday was the last full day we had. We woke up, and had breakfast, as well as the morning devotional. We went to our rotations, and we started with an obstacle course. There was a 7 foot wall…I may or may not had maybe kind of gotten stuck, but it was okay…the other girls were really cool about it. After that, we went to the crafting station at the pavilion. I made a bracelet, and then went back up to camp to get my lunch. After lunch, a couple girls and I went to the hammocks and met with a couple girls from a different ward, and then we went and spent the rest of the afternoon at Archery again. One girl found a lizard, and it was a little bit chunky…because it was chunky and found at Archery, she named it “Fatness Everdeen”. We all laughed about that… After Archery, we went back to camp and had ward time, in which we all started packing and stuff. After dinner, we had testimony meeting, and everyone but me and one of the leaders started crying… I felt so out of place not crying ;) The sunset during testimony meeting was amazing, and there was a rainbow on the other side of the sky as well. There was a storm way off yonder, which we didn’t think much about. UNTIIIIILL….That night was the first night my tent and a few other girls decided to actually stay up and play games. And then, that storm from way off yonder I mentioned came right on top of us, and we all had a freak out. We all ran to the leaders cars, and finished freaking out there. In the car I was in, we all jammed to Frozen… It was quite entertaining. After it stopped raining, we all went to bed. It was that moment, in which my tent and I created most of our inside jokes.

 Friday morning, we woke up, finished packing, and then did camp awards. I got the award of “Crafty Comedian”. After that, we went to our last devotional, and went back to our camps. After checking around and packing our last things, we got on the road headed back to the church.

It was a very very good week, but needless to say I was glad to be back home.😁👍🏼

Performance High

It’s the end of the school year which means our calendar has been full of year end concerts and activities. This evening was the last of the performances. Matthew’s wind symphony concert was last week, and this evening was his end of year jazz band concert. It was originally scheduled for just over a week ago, which would have been during the time that both Daniel and Nathan were here, but there was a scheduling snafu and the date and location needed to change. As such, Nathan was unable to attend tonight, but Daniel was able to drive down. Kevin’s parents also came, as well as Corynn and Aliese, two of Kevin’s nieces. 

Matthew’s heart is in the jazz music. This is his second year as lead trumpet, and he takes that role very seriously. Not only has been put in the practice time to get his playing where he wants it to be, but he has worked with his section all year and things have really gelled for them, as evidenced by their “best trumpet section” award at the Essentially Ellington competition back in February. All their work was evident this evening. The kids did a great job. I didn’t necessarily love all the music as sometimes modern jazz is too atonal for my liking, but they performed it well. Matthew came away with that performance high, the one that comes when your adrenaline gets pumping, you give it your all, and you are pleased with how you performed. It was good to see.

Three of the five members of Matthew’s section are graduating this year, and he has concerns about how next year will go. Hopefully with some time together he will be able to help the newbies come together like his section has this year. In the meantime, he has a few months to play for joy before marching band kicks up again later in the summer.

Butterflies Flutter By

There is a fairly new butterfly biosphere at Thanksgiving Point. We have been planning to visit for a while now, but scheduling has been tricky what with two teenagers going two different directions all the time. Kevin and I got to visit a butterfly habitat while we were in Texas, but the last one Matthew and Malia experienced was on our Seattle trip in 2016. Amazingly, we had no conflicts today, probably because it is a holiday and not a Saturday, so we bought our tickets last week and put our outing on the calendar. Matthew actually got there before this excursion as he and his friend Alex had a bounce back pass and visited last week, but he spent the whole time wishing he had the big camera and not just his phone camera, so he was more than happy to go again, the better camera in tow.

The traveling part of the exhibit featured beetles, and honestly, that was a bit creepy for me. I just don’t feel comfortable with the thought of beetles as big as my hand crawling around. Yes, I know that makes me kind of a wimp, but they give me the heebie jeebies. Not as badly as spiders do, but they still make my skin crawl. And yes, I purposely averted my eyes when we came across the exhibits containing black widows and tarantulas. 

I greatly enjoyed the butterfly portion though. There were some different ones than we saw in Texas, and I got to watch several butterflies emerge from their cocoons which was super cool. Matthew was in seventh heaven, taking pictures like crazy and experimenting with the camera to see how to capture the images he wanted.  On the other hand, Malia was a bit weirded out by the “flying bugs.’ She didn’t want them landing on her and she most certainly didn’t want to try to hold one on purpose. It kind of surprised me that she was so creeped out since I don’t have any adverse feelings where butterflies are concerned, but people are terrified of clowns too and I also don’t get that. To each their own aversions, I guess. 😂

P is for Pudding

P is also for purple which leads to some awesome alliteration because there was definitely purple pudding at our house this evening. Let me explain. Malia had a hankering for some pudding. Remember her deconstructed pie a few days back? She decided to up her not-pie game and wanted pudding as the newest vehicle for bananas. I don’t keep boxed pudding around as I rarely use it, so I taught her to make pudding from scratch. It’s not hard. She does mac and cheese, and pudding really isn’t any more complicated than that if you have a couple basic skills under your belt. Dairy and egg free pudding is even easier than standard pudding and since that is what works for Matthew, that is what we usually make. The one downside to going Matthew friendly is that without egg yolks or butter, vanilla pudding doesn’t have the traditional color of normal pudding. It doesn’t affect the flavor at all, but just for aesthetics, I usually put in a drop of yellow food coloring. Malia, being the free spirit that she is (or more likely just because she is my kid and I have a fondness for food coloring) decided yellow was boring and opted to tint her pudding purple. It ended up looking a little weird, but it was tasty, and she enjoyed the results of her first endeavor into pudding making. 

She assures me that there will be more pudding in the future.

Pie Deconstructed

It is Malia’s turn to choose our family home evening treat for tomorrow and she requested banana cream pie. I always make our pies the day before we want to eat them so that they have plenty of time to set up, so I made the pie after church today. Malia, however, just couldn’t wait to enjoy her chosen treat so she topped a few leftover cookies from the crust with nice, big slices of banana. I have seen Oreos consumed in a multitude of ways over the years, but this is definitely the first time I’ve seen them used as a vehicle for plain fruit. Usually, the cookie is the focus, and the healthy stuff is just the mode of delivery and not the other way around. LAUGHING WITH TEARS SMILEY

Team Choir

This evening was Malia’s end of year choir concert. With one performance under her belt and a better idea of what to expect this time, she was not as nervous. She also really likes their music this time around and that makes a big difference. She actually looked like she was having fun! Next year she will have a full year of choir instead of half a year and she has started referring to herself as a choir kid rather than a band kid. I have always been perfectly happy with whatever kind of music or art my kids enjoy and have willingly supported them wherever their talent takes them, but I have to admit that having another choir kid kind of makes me feel like we are finding a balance between choir and all the band!

Malia was extra excited that Daniel and Nathan were both able to attend her concert. With their semester over, they were able to come down for a few days which has been super nice. Matthew’s end of year wind symphony concert was last night, and Nathan scheduled several appointments for these few days, so the timing worked out great! Malia misses her older brothers, so I know that she was very glad they were able to be there tonight. 

All Jazzed Up

Last year a number of professional jazz musicians established the Jazz Mentors Foundation based in Salt Lake City. The purpose of this new non-profit is to encourage jr. high, high school, and university band students to appreciate and learn to play jazz music, to encourage the appreciation of jazz music in the community, and to provide student musicians with opportunities to participate in free clinics so they can learn from a variety of nationally recognized jazz musicians. After each clinic, there is a concert held and students who participate can attend the concert free of charge. There have been a number of clinics held throughout the school year and Matthew has attended all of them, finding some more helpful than others depending on who the visiting clinician is and what instrument is their specialty. 

This evening’s clinic and concert is one Matthew has long anticipated as the visiting musician was Benny Benack, a trumpet player and vocalist who happens to be Matthew’s favorite jazz musician at this point. He was extra excited because his jazz band was invited to provide the lobby music for the event. Not only did Matthew get to show off his skills a bit, but he also participated in the clinic, got to meet Benny and got to play with him. He was super excited about the whole thing and came home grinning from ear to ear!