Tchaikovsky and Willam Christensen. Perfect.

I just got home from a wonderful evening at the ballet with my daughters. It was beautiful and dreamy and so fine. All three of us loved it. I was transported back to the early 70's... a little girl seeing the Nutcracker at Ballet West for the first time. Magical.

I've stolen a few pictures from Ballet West's blog. Tres convenient. I've also grabbed a little bio of Willam F Christensen, the founder of Ballet West, from Wikipedia.

Snow Queen and her Cavalier. The girls want her tiara.

Willam F Christensen (1902 – 2001) was an American ballet dancer, choreographer and founder of the San Francisco Ballet and Ballet West in Salt Lake City, Utah. He is known for bringing the complete version of the Russian ballet The Nutcracker to the United States, as well as staging the first American performances of Swan Lake and Coppélia. Christensen's Nutcracker was first staged in 1944 in San Francisco, where the ballet remains an annual tradition, though the production now staged there is not necessarily the Christensen version. (Ballet West's Nutcracker is the original Christensen version and it is in my opinion, the best)

Christensen left the San Francisco Ballet in the care of his brother, Harold, to help choreograph a stage production at the University of Utah in the summer of 1948. While there, he was asked to stay on and help the University create a department of ballet. He agreed, and spent the remainder of his life working in Utah and the Intermountain West. The University of Utah was the first accredited University to have a ballet department in the United States. While in Utah, Christensen also founded Ballet West.



Sugar Plum Fairy and her Cavalier.



Sugar Plum Fairy en pointe with rockin extension.



Waltz of the Flowers. Yum.




More chicas from the Waltz of the Flowers.

As a little girl, I dreamed of being Clara; dancing with the handsome prince, being whisked away to a magical kingdom. I don't dream of being Clara anymore. I have a handsome prince who loves me and our amazing daughters and treats us like royalty. Thanks Rich for the curbside taxi service and thank you Sarah and Emily for wanting to go tonight. Thank you to my mom for helping me love ballet and carting me to dance lessons all those years.

The everyday stuff makes me happy.

I walked by Em's room the other day and found her nestled in bed, enjoying a good book.  Don't we all want to throw convention to the wind, put on a tiara and a pair of warm gloves and just read?


The following scenario took place in mid November.  Emily was doing some homework (note the turkey) whilst sporting her light-up Christmas antlers. 


Emily's justification for wearing the fabulous headpiece was that the radio stations were playing Christmas music before Thanksgiving and  she could start celebrating too.    Excited much?



She wore them for several days. All day.

What does Sarah do for fun these days?  Sadly, no exotic headwear.  She does have her darling girlfriends over to watch flicks and make cookies every now and then.

Kristine, Michelle and Sarah with Wasatch Mountain Ranger Cookies. 

Yum.

St. George Springtime - Part III

I know, I know... enough already with the vacation pics.  I can't help myself.
Here are some pics from the pool in Green Valley.


Emily, Sarah and cousin Hillary










I'm watchin' you. 



Rich was on dive toy duty.  He has a better throwing arm than me.


A gaggle of goggled girls.



After some fun in the lap pool, it was time to move over to the diving pool.  The deep, unheated pool.


The plan:  "Let's hold hands and jump in together!"






Not so much according to plan. Sarah's name was mud for a while.


This child cracks me up.  Esther Williams  just rolled over in her grave.


Complete and total abandon.  Check out that smile.




I love water.  I took this one when we were at Sand Hollow Aquatic Center in Santa Clara.  The girls had a great time there as well but its an indoor pool and the pics of them were  grainy.

School Pics

Emily - 5th Grade

Sarah - 8th Grade

I could swear I was just taking pictures of these little girls at their preschool Halloween programs. The annual school photo shoot sure makes the growing up of my babies  seem more  real. Dang.

Serene

I nabbed this glorious photo of Sarah off facebook.

I saw it for the first time today.

It took my breath away.  Then it made me feel  peaceful.

She looks serene and regal. 

Sunset at the Bountiful Temple...  a great idea for a YW activity.

Sarah was a great idea too.

St. George in the Springtime - Part II

For our little family,  a trip to St. George means taking it easy. Mellow is what we're after.  One of our favorite places to go have fun these days is a new park on Dixie Drive called Cottonwood Cove.

There are fun swings and spinning things...  In fact there's one aparatus you can sit on while someone else spins you.  It was Hillary's first time at the park.  She's a gamer and sat right down and let me spin her but good. 

She got dizzy and laughed and then fell off.  Love it.

The rain came and we ran for cover.


We felt shortchanged by the weather so we came back a few days later.



Hillary:   "Sup home dawg?"

Fabulous hanging recliners under the play structure.

A good spot for cousins to hang out and be in the shade.



Things to know in case you go: 
1. The toys will support adult sized peeps.
2. Bring dramamine for motion sickness if you're over 40 or
3. Avoid the spinning gizmos if you're over 40.
4. You'll have more fun if you don't act your age.  Trust me.

St. George in the Springtime - Part I

Last spring, we loaded the car and took a roadtrip down south. And the really great thing about this particular roadtrip is that we stole my niece Hillary and took her with us!
Location: uncomfortable minivan bench, somewhere on I-15


We jumped at the chance to go to Zion's on Thursday. We're not going to play tourist and go to the park on the weekend. No sir. You can keep all those tour buses full of gawking Europeans. We don't care if its going to be nice weather all weekend. A frosty Thursday is better than a crowded Saturday. Thats how we roll.


Even though it was cloudy and chilly... the scenery was still breathtaking.

Out came the cameras.

We hiked just long enough to find a spot where we could take a picture of Hillary in the clouds.




Soon it was time for the mandatory grossing out of the children.

Going in for the kiss. Listen to 'em squeal! Its a simple pleasure.

The spring rain  adds to the splendor.  We don't usually see this in July.

My handsome husband and our lovely girls.

Such a beautiful place to be.

More Southern Utah pics coming.

Red

Emily's favorite team color is red. For sure.


Last Saturday she went to her first college football game with Grandpa Darrell.
Very wet and very fun.
It rained and rained yet her enthusiasm wasn't dampened.
This closeup gives a great view of her stylin new frames. Em's motto is 'go bold or go home'.



This girl could potentially be a future Crimson Club member.

My only regrets about this event are that I wasn't actually at the game where I could observe Em's instruction in the finer points of football and that I didn't get a shot of her date picking her up. I was off delivering Sarah to an activity with friends.

Emily reports she had a great time in spite of the rain. It helps that her sweet Grandpa stood in a very long line to get her a hot chocolate and then took her out to the Training Table for dinner afterwards. (This is how to be treated on a date Em!)

Thanks Dad for loving my girls. oxox

Happiness

Last week our family participated in a truly happy event.

We welcomed my wonderful nephew Chase home from his mission in Chile. (There are 8 names on the banner because 8 missionaries from Chile were on the plane and we're proud of all of them)


These are just a few of the welcoming committee. There were grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, friends, siblings... it was a big group.


Chase hugging Sarah. Two years is a long time!

There were a lot of happy tears last Wednesday at the Salt Lake International airport. So much love and joy concentrated in one small space- I wish everyone could have even a little sample of that every now and then. I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

What a blessing my family is to me.

I am rich and life is very good.

What I've been doing lately.

So, I've received some heat lately for neglecting my little blog:

"Um... you know you haven't blogged in 3 months don't you?"
"How about a post Mom?"
"I can't keep up with your family if you don't update your blog!"
"Are you guys okay? Helloooo?"

Apparently I have some 'splaining to do.

It started with me being completely wrapped up in Stake Girls Camp this summer. I have to say that this was a mighty big church calling for me. Very time consuming and stressful and in the end, absolutely wonderful. I loved it. It just took a huge amount of time. Blogging had to take a back seat for a spell. Well, the blogging sabbatical went on a little longer than planned and then I was just embarrassed at being such a slacker. Now I can barely remember how to do this and I'm relearning. Goody.

Many happy times have been had in recent months (And not so recent. I have trips from spring that need posting) so I'll be catching up. But before I do, I'll tell you what I did last weekend.

In honor of Halloween, I made a little purchase.

My sweet Emily is a Halloween enthusiast. She talks about Halloween for months beforehand. We have detailed discussions about costume possibilities and new decorating ideas for the front porch, yard, back porch, various rooms in the house, etc. She'd paint bats on the car if I let her. Sadly, she has a mother who has never been all that jazzed about decorating for Halloween. Oh... she also thinks it would be swell if I wore a costume to hand out candy. Dang.

Because I'm trying to support her interests and not be such a lame mom, I made some new decorating purchases and got her daddy to help her make some tombstones to go out in the yard. I also thought it would be fun to buy a spooky movie to watch at Halloween. Why not Poltergeist? I remembered it (vaguely... it was made in 1982) as a good scary movie with a lovely/haunting theme song. Since I have a very underdeveloped sense of delayed gratification, I offered the movie to the girls last Saturday rather than waiting till Halloween proper.

We were all enjoying the show, about 2/3 through the movie when I had to run over to my parents' house. I left the girls watching the movie, in broad daylight mind you, and hopped in the car. Fifteen minutes later they were calling my folks' house wanting to know when I was coming home. "We're not watching any more till you get home!"

5 or 10 minutes later I walked into the house to find this:

Really. Squealing and screaming. I thought it was a show for me.

Nope. They really were a little freaked out.

I laughed, they laughed and then we started up the movie again. Right after they've recovered Carol Ann and are getting ready for bed. The kids are tucked in. Remember the scarey clown? Emily completely and totally freaked out.

Not a little. All. The. Way.

Sarah was scared but wanted to watch the rest of it. Emily wanted us to break the DVD and throw it out of the house. She went outside and waited for the movie to end. I went outside after the movie ended and found my Emily- my baby- sitting under a tree with tears streaming down her face. Very upset. Thats me... the good mother. I thought she was just being dramatic. Not so much. Just scared senseless and scarred for life. Thats what she told me.

Em has been sleeping with the lights on since Saturday.

That being said... please leave your contact info in the comments section if you would like me to discuss some of my tried and true parenting techniques with your church or PTA groups. I'm available on short notice.