Fun and Games

The other day after school, the kids all ended up outside to play a game. They were out there for a long time and I enjoyed hearing their laughter and chatter while I prepared dinner. It seemed so relaxed. One of those moments that should be bottled up. I love this picture of Jessica when she landed the ball and was so excited.

Stephanie is still in the kitchen. I was getting ready to start dinner (skillet pasta carbonara) and she offered to cook the bacon for me. She did a fabulous job and looks so good in my apron. She made banana bread last night while I made dinner. She will have no fear of the kitchen when she is grown up.

Making Tracks

This morning was Hershey Track. This is the first place we've been that participates in it and Stephanie went for it. She has had practice 2-3 times a week for the last couple of months. She chose to run the 400 meter race because you have longer to run and have time to catch up and pass people. She did really well. When they staggered the runners, Stephanie was second from last. They were about a third of the way around the track and she was in last place. I was thinking that perhaps this wasn't her forte. She continued for the next little bit in last place and then it was the last part of the race and she put some pep in her step. She passed one girl and caught up to a classmate and then passed her. She took third for the heat with a time of 1:38. She did better than her best time by 3 seconds. Awesome!

There's Music in the Air

Above is a picture of all the students and their teacher. It was kind of neat that the students were as young as 6 and as old 78. They all played awesome. Our kids are one quarter of her students. Jessica was the first to play, which I thought would be a little intimidating. She did really well, starting off with a fabulous introduction, "Hello, I'm Jessica Robb and I'll be playing We Thank Thee, Oh God, For a Prophet." This is what they played, in the order they performed.

Jessica - We Thank Thee, Oh God, For a Prophet
Becca - Owl in the Woods by Ferdinand Beyer
Ben - Loxodanta Africana by N. Faber
Stephanie - Laughing Song

Becca & Ben filmed the girls and each other so Rad could see when he returns home from his trip tonight.



I took the next picture after a game of Scrabble. When I was in Jessica's class a week or so ago, the kids had some extra time at the end of the day and the teacher let them play games. I noted that she has 4 or 5 Scrabble games and they were flying off the shelf to be played. Jessica is pretty hot on the game and it is being played often here.

Hollywood Studios

We went to Hollywood Studios yesterday. It was a lot better than I expected it to be. I really don't know what I expected but I wasn't looking forward to it other than having the time to spend together as a family. Some pictures are a little blurry because I would forget to change my settings. Reasons why I should stick with a point and shoot or perhaps more reason why I need to take a photography class or two.Our first stop was the first show of the day for American Idol. This was a favorite for a couple of the kids. They had 3 contestants that apparently had tried out that day and the winner of each show would return for the final show that day to compete for the dream pass to the front of the line of an AI audition. The judges were funny with their comments. My favorite was the final show where a judge said to a contestant that he feels about her singing like her father feels about her shorts, he wishes it were longer.Later we went to see Muppet Vision. It was an entertaining show. Like most 3D shows, you get sprayed with some water. There were some bubbles too, which was fun to see the kids (mine & others) stop watching the show and try to catch the bubbles around them.
The Magic of Disney Animation was good. I got so wrapped in watching the clip they had that I would forget there was a guide there and was surprised a couple of times when he spoke. They showed a clip on how Mushu from Mulan came to be. Then we went into another room where they had photo ops with the cast from Up, The Incredibles, we saw Chip & Dale there at one point. They had a computer to find out which character you were. If you wanted to, you could take a sketch class, which we wanted to. Some of us wanted to as many as four times. We now have sketches of Tigger, Goofy, Mickey, and Donald Duck.We took a new approach to this park. Lets not run ahead to get a fast pass and then come back here, we'll just get one when we get over to that side. Um, yeah. The fast passes where shut down just after noon because they gave them all out. We went by the Toy Story Mania ride . . . a 90 minute wait. We thought we'd come back later when some of the little kids went home. A couple of hours later there was a 70 min. wait. We had time to run by again after our sketch and before the Fantasmic show. It said 40 min. We could do that. It wasn't that long of a wait but one of the kids said they would wait an hour to go on that ride. It was awesome! I'll leave it up to you to ask any one of else and we'll fill you in.

The Tinker Toy picture was taken while we were in line for the ride.We also went to the:
Little Mermaid Show - a 15 min. show that went through the story and some favorite songs
Journey Into Narnia, Prince Caspian - a walk through taking you behind the scenes and there was a gallery.
Indiana Jones Stunt Show - I'm thinking you know what this is from the name of it.
Star Tours Ride - took you on a ride into the universe. I'm not a Star Wars fan so I couldn't tell you who was shooting/fighting and what it was about but we flew through it.
Great Movie Ride - scenes from various movies and then at the end they played a bunch of clips from old and modern musicFantasmic - water/light show
Honey, I Shrunk the Kids Movie Set - more of a playground for younger kids but they went down the slide.

The girls were asked as we went into The Little Mermaid show to say "Welcome to the Little Mermaid". They were funny as we waited practicing saying it together.On our way home I asked everyone what their top 3 things were for the day. In no particular order, the answers were:
Sketching
American Idol
Toy Story Mania
Fantasmic

Coloring Eggs

The girls colored eggs while Rad and Ben went to the PH session of General Conference. There isn't much to say on this. We have a couple dozen colored eggs now.

Art of Sand Festival

A lot of you have seen a lot more pictures than this on Facebook but I'm sharing a few here with more information than I put on FB. This is the first sand art festival for the county. If they have good attendance, they will make it an annual event. First off, I expected it to be on the beach, after all, that is where the sand is. It was held across from the beach on some land they blocked off. They had the sand shipped in from a quarry in Winterhaven.When we got there, I was a little disappointed to see piles of sand and a handful of sculpture. I thought there would be more, a lot more. Every weekend there are other challenges, so I expect this sand is for the upcoming challenges. Becca will be going on a field trip and talking with some artists. I look forward to the pictures she takes of what is new.

After you started to look at the sculptures, it was impressive. Half of them were sculpted all around. Very impressive. The details are amazing.

The favorite for the kids was the "castle". I was impressed when I uploaded the photos of illusion of height due to the angle of the sculpture. Awesome!I was torn between two for my favorite. First being the one below which focused on art.

My second favorite was Jules Verne. I thought it was impressive all that they included.