Bragging Rights!

So I'm the mom, I gave birth to them, so I get to blog about their accomplishments, right?
That's what I thought you'd say, so here I go:
First, Kyra!
She'd been chosen to represent her school at the regional drama competition in the pantomime category. She and her partner had done quite a bit of practice and prep, and the competition was Tuesday afternoon. Unfortunately, it isn't something parents get to go to - they are just performing in a small room before a panel of judges.
But she got an overall superior rating and will advance to the state competition! YAY KYRA!
Here is the medal she won:

Being a typical teenager, she wouldn't even reenact the pantomime for me to take blog pictures, sorry!
And now, CALLIE!
She had the Central Utah Science and Engineering Fair today. And THIS I got to go to! And you know what that means, right? PICTURES!

She had worked very hard to improve her project, conducting 2 follow-up experiments, revising the display, practicing for the interview, etc.
The judging was in the morning. She was interviewed 3 times by 3 different judges, including one who was a physics professor at BYU, which really WOWed Callie. When I arrived, she was just finishing the last interview, so I snuck a picture:

Then Callie got some lunch and we wandered around looking at other projects. They had some people standing in the hallway with a contraption that made bubbles filled with the fog from dry ice. The kids were all crowded around getting the bubbles dropped on their hands or head. When the bubbles popped, the fog went everywhere!



Then we watched a "mad scientist" show. They made lots of bubbly foam, played around with ph and air pressure, blew smoke rings, etc. I got a few pictures, but the lighting was really bad!


And then she asked for a volunteer and picked Callie:

She had Callie sit on a flat wooden board with handles. It had a hole where she attached a leaf blower and it forced air under the board and made Callie hover over the floor. The first pictures I took were really blurry. For some reason I like this one anyway:

But then I turned on the flash and got one where you don't feel dizzy looking at it:

After that show, we hiked clear across campus (from the Harman Building to the JSB) for the awards ceremony. Callie had been considered for a special award for "Best Use of the Metric System" but did not win that one. She did get a 4th place award for the Physics category! She got a certificate, a trophy, and a check for $15! She was happy. I was happy. It was a great day.

And Brynn? Her greatest accomplishment this week was talking me into a pair of cute pink church shoes she didn't really need. But they match her Easter dress, so I caved. You'll have to wait until Easter for pictures of that!

Our weekend

Saturday we had the chance to go to the Draper Temple Dedication. We had tickets to be inside the temple, which was a LOOOOOOONG drwan out process. It was over 7 hours between the time we left home and the time we got back. We had to wait at the chapel where we parked, get on a bus, wait at another chapel near the temple, wait over an hour in a tent tunnel, and wait in our seats. Then wait for a bus back to our parking area.
We drove to the place where we would park to take a shuttle over to the temple. The Draper temple is a small temple, not a full-size, so there is very little parking on site. We all had to park at church parking lots in the area and take a bus to the temple. Darrin had said that the last bus would leave at 2, so we got there at about 1:40. Turns out that the FIRST bus was at 2, so we were on it. They had 4 church parking lots and each was designated with a color. The color of your parking lot was also the color of your ticket. You had to make sure to get on a bus with the right color to get back to the right parking lot. Well, it just so happened that the blue parking lot where we were was also the place where the white ticket people were meeting. The white ticket people are the VIPs who get to sit in the celestial room. The white ticket people had to be on the first bus.
Soooo we ended up being the first people entering the temple behind the white ticket people, and that meant we got to be in the celestial room!
It was amazing. There was a small choir that was incredible. I enjoyed watching Callie and Kyra's faces as they saw the prophet for the first time.
No pictures since I couldn't take my camera.
Spending Saturday doing that meant no church for us on Sunday. Regular meetings were canceled so people who didn't have tickets could go watch it by satellite. It was SO odd to not have church on Sunday. It was a cold, windy day, so Darrin and Brynn tried flying a kite in our backyard:




But the winds were so gusty and swirly that they kites couldn't stay up and would come crashing down with no warning:


We also hung up our new bird feeder, to replace the one that broke. And spent some time bird watching:



I made a big turkey dinner. Last fall we got a free turkey but never needed it for a holiday, so it has just been taking up room in our freezer ever since. I never had time to make it. But yesterday was a whole free day, so I went for it!




It was really nice to spend a whole day together at home!
And finally, spring in Utah can be so unpredictable. Saturday was lovely and warm, in the 70s. I wore capris and went barefoot most of the time we were at home. Today I woke up to THIS:



Yes, that is about 6 inches of new snow. And it is still coming down!

Hiking!

We went hiking near our house tonight just around sunset. It was beautiful! Some pictures:









(Kyra had a babysitting job, so she wasn't included in the hiking)

Red Rocks

We went to the U of U Gymnastics Meet tonight. I had fun taking pictures. Kyra brought a book. Callie was bored after the first half hour. Brynn and Darrin took lots of walks around the Huntsman Center. Our seats were rather nosebleedish:



See where the portals are? We were between the portals a few rows from the walkway. I brought my biggest zoom.

Some of the other pictures: (Arizona is in maroon and gold. Utah is in black and white.)