Just Wondering

The other night my husband made me promise that when anyone contacts him about his next high school reunion that I won’t  make him go because he doesn’t know any of those people anymore.  This happened right after my Mom was telling me that her 40th class reunion is coming up and that she is excited to go.  At first I chalked it up to my husbands general anti-socialness, but then I was thinking about my own class reunion a few years ago and how I probably won’t go to the next one either because I didn’t really feel like I belonged at the last one. 

That got me thinking about the recommended friends on my Facebook page.  You know that little place on your page that says “you might know these people”?  Well, every once in awhile someone will be on there that I knew well at some point in my life, but most of them are people that I knew their names once upon a time, but didn’t know them well.  I don’t know about you, but I’m probably not going to friend them.  There are even some people on there that I went to church with or knew a little better than an acquaintance, but I still wouldn’t friend them on Facebook because I don’t think they will know who I am. 

My Mom on the other hand would probably Facebook friend request anyone she has known even remotely at any point in her life.  She’s looking forward to going to a class reunion with people she hasn’t been friends with or even talked to outside of other reunions in 40 years!  I know a few other people like this that just feel comfortable assuming that everyone they have ever met is now their friend.  For some reason I’m not like this.  Actually, I would probably say I’m the opposite of this since I mostly assume that people just don’t remember me at all unless we were really close friends at some point—and even then it takes me awhile to get the guts to ask them if they remember me.

How do you feel about it?  Do you look forward to seeing people you haven’t seen in years even if they weren’t close friends?  Do you assume everyone is your friend?

I’m curious if you think this is a personality difference or if you think that it is more of a generational difference—something that has changed over the years with the population in general?  Maybe it’s a little of both…

Band and Orchestra and Choir, Oh my!

The end of the school year means that we get to enjoy concerts galore from our musically talented kids.  I’ll start with band.  Emily plays the clarinet and she does a pretty good job of it.  She was going to skip to advanced band, but a combination of a personality conflict with one of the other clarinets in that band and her schedule made her decide to do intermediate band this year.  They had a concert last week and then on Saturday combined with the advanced band at a competition in Ogden and then they went to Lagoon for the rest of the day.  She had a blast.  She will probably be mad that I put this picture on here.  It’s hard not to look a little funny when you are playing a wind instrument. 

Jason is in Orchestra and they had their concert last night.  At the end of April, they traveled to Colorado to participate in a competition there.  They did FABULOUS and sounded great.  I had the privilege of going down with them on the bus as a chaperone.  Boy, did that bring back memories. 

It was odd to have him on this side of the stage playing.  He’s usually on the other side.  They played really well and got straight superior ratings once they finally got to play.  There was some sort of miscommunication about the location of the competition and we ended up at the wrong place and missed our assigned time so we had to wait until they had an opening where they could squeeze us in.  Thankfully that wasn’t too late, but it was still three hours later than we had planned.  It made for a long day, but those kids are a ton of fun.    After the competition before we left for the 4 hour bus ride home.  The boys tossing around a rugby ball to get out some energy. 

The orchestra on stage last night. 

It is virtually impossible to get a picture of Jason during an orchestra concert because of all the people and stands between him and the audience.  He did a great job playing and the orchestra sounded great. 

It just so happened that Jason’s choir concert was also last night.  I thought after the Christmas concerts were on the same day that the directors would think to check with one another, but they didn’t and so we were running like crazy to get Jason from his choir concert to his orchestra concert in time.  Thankfully both directors were very understanding. 

Jason sang wonderfully and he even had a solo last night that he did REALLY well on.  He has learned a lot and is becoming a great singer.  This is during the vocal premier part of the concert. 

This is for the part where the concert choir combines with vocal premier (so they actually have some boys in the choir)

His solo—I wish I had recorded it!

Whew!  Now we can be done for a few months until next year.  It’s nice to have kids in music, but it sure makes for a lot of concerts to attend.  Way to go Em and Jason!

Field Trip

A few weeks ago Liam got to go on a fun field Trip with his preschool.  I went to help drive and it was lots of fun.  I had four little guys in my group including Liam so it wasn’t too hard.  We went to the Dinosaur Museum at Thanksgiving point and then we went to Farm country there after we ate lunch.  My camera died after the museum and I can’t get the cord to my cell phone to work to get the picture that I took off of it so I don’t have too many pictures. 

The first room at the museum changes every once in awhile and right now they have some exhibits on loan from the Exploratorium in San Francisco.  I’ve been there as a kid and the twins and I went when they were younger and it is a really cool place to go where everything is hands on for kids and they can explore all kinds of concepts.  The exhibits on loan were no exception.  They raced different sized wheels.

They made plumes of smokethey played with the wind and tested what it did with this fabric and lots of other things I didn’t get pictures of. 

This is in the dinosaur part of the museum.  This was my little group of boys.  They were all really well behaved—except none of them wanted their picture taken. 

The sand table was a huge hit.  Liam could stay playing there all day long.  his bridgeThat’s a huge turtle skeleton behind them.

The requisite shark picture.Unearthing the bones in this sand quarry is another surefire hit when it comes to kids.  They all loved it. 

After this we ate lunch and then went to look at the animals.  We got some food to feed them.  Most of the kids were too scared to feed them off of their hands.  I did it to try to show them and it really is disgusting because they slobber all over your hands when they get the food off of your palm!  It totally grossed me out.  Most of the kids just chucked the food through the bars of the pens and hoped the animals would lick it up off the ground. 

All the kids that wanted to got to ride the ponies and Liam loved it this time.  He chose the biggest horse there to ride and he was beaming the whole time.  I wish I had a picture!  I think his teacher got one though so hopefully she will send it to me. 

The last thing we did was go on a hayride as a class.  I was glad we got the horses instead of the tractor so the kids could see them in action.  On the way home the boys in my car were so tired they hardly talked at all and one of them came really close to falling asleep.  I’m so happy I got to go with them and see the excitement and discoveries they made!

Spring Break

This is going to be a picture less post for now because I can’t seem to get my computer to recognize my cell phone so I can get the pictures I took off of it!  (if anyone is smarter than me and has a suggestion how to make it work I’m listening!)

We didn’t go out of town for Spring Break so I tried to make sure to do a few fun things during the week with the kids. 

We went to Trafalga in Lehi to use our pass of all passes.  I thought it would be super busy, but it wasn’t too bad at all.  The favorites for the day were laser tag and go cart racing (if you can call two go carts on a tiny track a race).  We will be sure to go back when more of their stuff is open—I heard the bumper boats are fun! 

We also went ice skating.  This WAS as crazy busy as I thought it might be over spring break, but we still had lots of fun.  We were a little late for the session so we stayed until the end and by the end it was nice and empty so we had more room to skate.  Afterwards we went to the Creamery which was also super busy because everyone was out of school.  Liam liked sitting at the counter so he could see them making all the food. 

I wish I had my pictures!  The twins did lots of hanging out with friends and Liam and I spent lots of time outside in the sunshine playing too.  It was a nice and relaxing week. 

Em and Jason had a science olympiad competition the Saturday after spring break so they spent a couple days at school (I know…who are these kids??) preparing for it. 

So, there you have it.  Spring Break

Easter

This is totally late because I’m a huge blog slacker lately.  I don’t know why, but I just haven’t felt like blogging lately.  I’m going to try to catch up a little bit now though.  Feel free to comment so I don’t feel like I’m talking to myself! 

We had a pretty laid back Easter this year.  We decorated eggs on Saturday with the kids.  Liam chose the egg decorating kit with his Dad so we ended up with a Spiderman kit.  Liam loved it…at least once he decided to join in the fun instead of throwing a fit. 

Spiderman!Dad even joined in the fun.With their works of art.I sure have cute kids. 

Sunday the Easter bunny waited to come until after church to come hide our baskets.  He’s really good at hiding them and the kids had to work to find his hiding spots!

Liam was the first to find his basket.

He was pretty excitedJason found his nextEmily’s was hidden in “plain sight” and it took her awhile to find it, but she finally did. 

After the baskets we hunted eggs and the kids had a blast doing it.  They even found all of them this year!  I didn’t get any pictures of that hunt because they were all way too fast.  The candy was gone in an amazingly fast amount of time too…so much for saving it for a rainy day!

We watched a video about the resurrection to remind us of the real reason we celebrate Easter.  This was the first year we didn’t have dinner with any of our extended family.  So, we had a nice family dinner on our own.  We had stuffed crepes for dinner and nutella, strawberries, and cream crepes for dessert.  It was super delicious.