Choir and Band

Weston had one last band performance the end of May at a festival.   Owen and Weston had their spring choir concert in May.  Some of the songs are repeat performances.  Owen took a picture with all his senior choir friends, which he'll miss a lot next year.  He got to know the choir people really well and enjoyed hanging out with them.  He and Weston also got to take a choir trip to Universal Studios.

One of my favorite performances of the year was Owen and Ollie's song and dance of Napoleon Dynamite.  They sent in their audition to the choir teacher and she selected them to perform in the end-of-the-year show in front of everyone.  I did not realize that Owen had it in him, but he did really well on the dance.  After the show, he went out to eat and ordered as Napoleon Dynamite.  Although the cashier didn't know how to spell it right, we got a kick out of the receipt.  

Weston also sang a couple songs in the show.  Owen was in several songs, with quite a bit of dancing involved.  He was one of the guys in the light saber duel in one of the Star Wars songs.  

 

School Trips

Weston went to New Orleans with the jazz band.  He had a pretty good trip, although his bag and trombone didn't make it until evening of the 2nd day of the trip.  Luckily it did show up and Weston had concert clothes and an instrument to play by the 3rd day.  It didn't bother him too much.  In fact, he forgot to mention it to us when he first messaged that he had arrived.  It was the next day when he casually mentioned that his luggage was lost.  If anyone can do a trip without extra clothes, it's Weston... 

The band got 2nd place out of 6 bands. 

Owen got to go to Hawaii with the elite choir.  He also loved his trip, although there was a power outage for half of the trip.  They sang without microphones and in a room where they could just let light in.  So they had to adjust a little bit.  Despite the rain, they still hung out at the beach and wandered around.  They were back home before most of the flooding happened. They got to eat lots of good food, sing karaoke, and learn the hula dance. The choir received a score of 96 out of 100 on their performance.

 

March Music

Weston had a jazz band concert in February and a jazz festival in March.  They won best jazz band at the festival and best sections in rhythm, trumpets, and trombones.  

Owen and Weston also participated in a choir festival and received top scores. 

 

School Choir

Owen made it in the elite choir this year.  He sang the National Anthem with the choir before every home football game.  He had a couple of concerts.  He also had several caroling gigs throughout December at various events.  Weston also sang in the boys choir.  He and Owen sang a couple of songs together. We really enjoyed listening to them sing.  

 

 

October Misc

It hasn't rained much this year, but one day we got a random hail storm.  The little ice pellets looked like snow on the ground as they piled in one spot as they fell off the roof.  

Owen and Weston had their first choir concert.  

Savannah painted some poster boards for one of the booths at a youth activity.  Our friend Nathan came home from his 2-year mission to Columbia.  We got to help welcome him home.  

We went to a Halloween party at a friend's house.  At the last minute, we decided to wear simple M&M costumes.  Owen taped the M's on different colored shirts.  

High School Choir

 Owen had a couple of concerts in May and June.  I only recorded a couple snippets from the formal choir.  Their more casual fun concert was 1980's theme.  I missed half of the concert (and Owen's small group songs) because Weston's band concert was the same evening, but I recorded a couple of the whole choir songs.

December Music

Weston got to participate in marching band with the school.  They spent one morning playing at several local elementary schools.  They also marched and played in a parade downtown.  He enjoyed that, but unfortunately the parade was the same time as the church Christmas party.  Since Alex is the Bishop, he needed to be at the party, so I got to go stand out at the parade for 3 hours.  There were some pretty cool cars in the parade, but it wasn't too exciting standing out there by myself.  My plan was to be near the start of the parade, so that when Weston went by I could go back to the car and get over to the end of the parade for pick up.  However, Weston didn't play until near the end of the parade, so I had to watch almost the whole thing.  And that didn't give me enough time to navigate to the end, so his band teacher was waiting for me for a bit.  Oh well.  

Owen had a choir concert for school in December.  I recorded just a few snippets from that. 

Owen also sang with a small group of 6 at church.  His friend Ollie from school sang with them.  I didn't record them visually but recorded the audio from some of their rehearsal.  They sounded better for the actual performance, but I didn't want to record during sacrament meeting.

Band and Choir

Weston had a band concert in October.  He plays in the advanced and jazz band this year.  He played 4 songs during the concert.  He also got to play along with the High School band during the homecoming football game.  They didn't get to go on the field, but he got to sit in the stands and play in uniform.  He loved it!

Owen also participated in the homecoming football game, singing the National Anthem before the game.  He also sang in a couple of concerts. Owen's church friends Becca, Taylee, and Cruz were soloists in the first concert piece. 

Choir and Band

 Owen and Weston had some band and choir concerts this spring.  I didn't get great video of the choir singing but got one song and a few good clips of the band at one of Weston's concerts.  Owen got to go to Six Flags for a choir trip.  Owen's choir got 1st place overall out of the 25 or so choirs.  

End of School

Well, it's almost time for school to start again... but here's the end of last school year.  Owen had a couple of concerts, one in May and another in June.  Owen sang another solo in the spring concert.  He sang Knee Deep by Zach Brown Band.  A few of his friends joined in for a little choreography.  The choir also sang at the 8th grade promotion. It was sad to see him say good-bye to friends who would be going to different high schools the next year.  His choir teacher also was not returning, so she wrote a song about the things they had taught her and sang it at the last concert. 

Owen had fun at his 8th grade party.  He won a fish, named him Mike, and then gave him to Savannah to take care of.  It actually lasted quite a while.  His friends' fishes died within about a week, but this fish lasted all summer.  

Weston also had a promotion ceremony, graduating from elementary school on to 7th grade.  He had to say a favorite thing about school, which had to do with kickball of course.  He had to learn a couple of songs as well for the ceremony, which was hilarious listening to him practice.  He had a hard time getting the beat - we'll see how that goes for band next year... We loved his happy dance at the end of the ceremony.  Funny kid!

Jared didn't graduate this year, but there was an end-of-year seminary breakfast.  He finished his 3rd year of seminary. Kat and Julie were his teachers, and they were amazing.  They shared a little bit about each of the students.  They said that Jared "talks prophetically" and shared something that Jared said: "It's easy to have faith when things are going well, but it's more important to have faith when things are not going well because that's when you need it the most.  Even though there is uncertainty, you can have faith that everything will be okay."

I organized gifts for the 4 teachers (flowers, chocolates, and gift cards collected from families) - two individual teachers and one couple who taught the younger class. I also made 2 pans of overnight French toast for the breakfast. 

It was sad to watch Weston and Savannah walk off to their last day of school - their last day walking to school together.  (Savannah had a pajama day on the last day.)  Weston called me mid-morning.  I missed the call, but the message was to bring a kickball.  I didn't know what he wanted it for, but assumed maybe they were going to play kickball one last time.  However, he came home with a signed kickball.  Apparently, he wanted all his classmates to sign the ball.  That was a fitting keepsake for elementary school since he loved playing kickball.

As a family, we went out for lunch on the last day of school. 

This last picture is just a few random things for the first week of June.  Bike riding, flowers in bloom, teacher gifts, and graduation leis.  We had 5 graduating seniors in our church congregation this year.  We did a little celebration to honor them, and we were all supposed to bring some kind of lei for them.  We decided to do candy leis. 

March 2023

Savannah was Sally Ride for the 4th grade wax museum.  She had one of the best costumes (even though I put in together the night before).  I ended up finding a pair of pants and shirt at the thrift store that matched each other and loosely stitching some paper labels on the shirt.  A friend of ours happened to have an astronaut helmet.  Savannah has been doing a bracelet club with a couple of friends.  She wants to start a "fun club" at our house for crafts and baking.

Alex and I had a date night one evening since we drove Jared, Owen, and a couple of the young women to a church dance an hour and 30 minutes away.  We went out to eat and then found a cookie place where we split a large ice cream sandwich.  We've actually been doing a lot of driving lately.  Alex and I got asked to be in charge of training the Mas and Pas for our upcoming 5-Stake Youth Pioneer Trek, so we had to drive to 5 different areas to do trek presentations.  We'll do 3 training sessions later in April and May when the Mas and Pas have been selected.  The presentations were essentially recruitment talks.  

We got our March temple visit in - still raining.  

Savannah had a play date with friends.  She hurt her hand while playing on a Ninja jungle gym structure.  We actually had it x-rayed later in the week because she couldn't bend her finger.  It wasn't broken, but some of the cartilage was swollen and sore.  

We put together a puzzle, inspired by a talk at church that compared indexing to a puzzle piece of temple and family history work.  

Savannah had a couple friends over to our house - it was raining, but they still wanted to jump on the trampoline.  Fun, but they were soaked!

We did our festive St. Patrick's Day meal with green Alfredo sauce on noodles, green rolls, peas, broccoli, key lime pie, and sugar cookies.  The boys left right after dinner to go camping on the beach with some of the young men.  Savannah went with me to a young women night put on by one of the other young woman leaders.  The girls painted rocks, had festive snacks, and played some games such as shaking ping pong balls out of a box strapped to them. 

 

Jared and the priests group put on a youth activity which turned out to be a lot of fun.  Groups had previously prepared and submitted short videos of different movie genres of their choosing.  Some of them were pretty good and others were interesting... everyone had fun making their videos.  Our boys are pretty talented with the video editing and background music and things.  Jared's group made a "Jailbreak" video, which won best video.  Owen and Weston did a "Dog's Way Home" video starring Kai.  The video starts off showing Weston and Kai doing their normal activities - going for a run, watching the news, and playing.  Then Kai gets dog-napped, but she escapes and finds her way home.  It's pretty cute.  It was hilarious trying to get Kai to do what we wanted though.  She doesn't like leaving anyone behind, so it was hard to get the video of her walking by herself (having to leave Weston behind and walking towards Owen with the camera).  She also wouldn't get up on the "wall" that she jumps off of to escape.  I thought she was going to bite Owen as he tried to pick her up and put her on the storage bench.  

The activity was a success, with popcorn, brownies, and short videos.  Judges selected the best videos, although each group got a "top banana award".  One of the young men leaders handed out the awards and did great on the spot about defining each award given.  

Owen got to participate in a Musical Theatre Competition of America (MTCA) for 2 days in Anaheim.  He got up at 3:00am to get ready to go.  We left at 3:50am to arrive at the school by 4:00am... except the gate was still closed... we backed out and waited for 30 minutes.  The actual time to arrive was 4:30am.  Anyway, they got on a bus and headed there.  Their first event of the day was at 8:30am.  They had a full day of singing, dancing, auditions, and hanging out at the mall.  He had to sing some solo lines to audition for a song and also perform a dance number.  He wasn't excited about the (required) auditions which were late that night when he was exhausted.  He also didn't like the song (that everyone had to sing for the audition).  He didn't go to bed until midnight, so it was a long day!  The next day started at 6:00am with more competitions and classes.   He learned how to do some stage make-up (the wounded arm).  After the singing and competitions were over, they had some free time in the evening hanging around a fancy hotel.  Several kids went to a dance, but Owen was kind and hung out with a girl who had an injury and couldn't dance.  (That's the girl he's with in the picture.)  He had so much fun that it was hard to leave, but I drove to pick him up late Saturday night (easily the most dangerous thing of the week driving in the crazy LA traffic - I saw a tire that had just fallen off of a big truck in the lane beside me and cars swerving to miss it).  I did make it there, and I went so he could be home for Sunday.  He gave up going to Disneyland on Sunday so he could keep the Sabbath Day holy.  He also missed the awards ceremony on Sunday, but he found out they won 1st place in one category and 2nd in another.  There were groups there from other states, such as UT, TX, OH, and FL, so it was a big accomplishment.  He really had a great time and enjoyed hanging out with his friends.  He was a good missionary and example to those classmates.  He had to explain to all of them why he wouldn't be there on Sunday.  Then he also shared his testimony in church on Sunday morning about his decision to keep the Sabbath Day holy, so he was a shining example to his peers at church too. 

Here's a few videos from the song they won 1st place for (the videos aren't great quality - just a recording from one of the parent chaperones).  Good luck finding Owen - he's often in the back. 

Alex missed out on the fun driving to LA... because he was on a work trip to Scotland.  He would live there if he could.

The kids had Spring Break this past week.  When Dad is gone, that means Spring Break isn't very exciting because the rest of us just stayed home.  I really needed a break from driving to various activities and from our busy schedule, so we didn't do much at all.  The "fun things" for the week were getting Blenders smoothies, getting hamburgers at The Habit, one day of shoe and toy shopping (not fun for me...), and making homemade pizzas.  Savannah had two friends over one day, which partially fulfilled her need for social interaction.  We did some spring cleaning too and the normal grocery shopping (but obviously that's not part of the "fun things").  

Why do these kids always have to eat?! 😀  They are better at helping with the chores these days.

We had some other sports this month, but I'll save those for a later post.