Washington trip-part 1

Todd's oldest son, Jared turned 8 in August, so he was getting baptized the first weekend of September. Lucky for us it was Labor Day weekend, so we decided to take advantage of the day off of school and work (and take a couple more days off) and head to Seattle for his baptism.

 The kids had a backpack with their clothes and most important things for the weekend. Megan's most important thing to bring was obviously Baby Sasha. :) Part of the fun of the trip was riding on things they don't usually get to ride on. A shuttle bus at the airport (above). The airplane (obviously).

A train between terminals at the Seattle airport.

 And a SUPER crowded bus to the car rental place in Seattle. There wasn't any room for even one more person on that bus. Labor Day weekend is a busy day to travel.

After we got our rental car and got lost a little, we made it to Google headquarters where Todd took us on a tour. We couldn't take pictures inside, but the garden on the roof was pretty cool.

And the relaxed atmosphere inside made it seem more like a rec center than a place people go to work. But the banana chips in their snack room was nasty. If you ever visit Google opt for any snack except banana chips. And probably rice cakes. They taste about the same.

 After we had seen enough of the Google campus, we headed to Todd and Savannah's house for dinner and a show.

Movie night with cousins we only see a couple times a year--can't beat that!

Frog Trouble

The other items of note in August were the solar eclipse and the ward talent show. The kids' school had solar glasses for the kids to use, so they all got to go out and see the partial eclipse.

Annie is third from the left.

I was at home without eclipse glasses, so I used my phone and while you couldn't see any difference in the sun, you can see the shape of the eclipse in the lens flare.

 I also used a collander to create lots of shadows on the ground and you could see the shape of the eclipse in a bunch of tiny sun shadows on the ground. It was pretty cool. Maybe next time we'll make a road trip of it and head to Texas since we'll have teenagers then and it'd probably be a good family trip.

For the ward talent show Annie really wanted to do something, and we had checked out a book with a CD in it by Sandra Boynton that had silly songs they liked. The kids decided to do a lip sync to Frog Trouble. It was really cute. Rachel played the guitar (a miniature guitar from the dollar store), Annie sang (with Rachel as backup), and Ryan and Megan were the frogs.

 They sure make cute cowboys. They all rode stick horses during the intro of the song while Rachel "played" the guitar, so they all just had to have their own cowboy hats. Luckily they were at the 99 cent store, so now we're set for Rodeo Days in February, too. :)

At the end of the song the frogs come onto the stage. Megan didn't want to wear green, so she just carried the big Kermit pillow for her "costume." 

 And Ryan the frog showed everyone what "Frog Trouble" consisted of: stealing your hats.

  The number was a big hit all around. I'm really proud of the kids for pulling it all together on their own with me hardly doing anything except helping with costumes and running the music. Performance is not my thing, so it's a good thing they're driven to do it on their own or it just wouldn't happen. :)

 

Ylena's baptism

We have had a very full last couple of months. We'll try and get up to date on all the fun we've been having...

The kids' cousin, Ylena, got baptized 2 days before the cultural celebration. Jacob did a super quick trip, flying up Thursday morning, straight into Provo (yay, Allegiant Air!), then back home Friday morning in order to be home in time to watch the kids while I went to the dress rehearsal that afternoon/evening. I told Jacob he should take the older two girls with him, but the idea of dragging them out of bed at 3am for just a day's trip didn't appeal to him, but he came back saying he wished he had taken the girls with him since they would have had so much fun.

Jacob chilling with Christian.

 Mark was in Provo for a few short days to pick up his family who had been there for the summer while he worked and got a little settled in their new home in Kansas. They planned the baptism to happen before the whole family headed back with him the next day so more family members could attend.

 The whole family:

 Heidi and Andrew's baby Joy also was blessed after the baptism. It was a fun family affair, and we're sad we couldn't all make it up there.

 Rachel sent this to Dad and Cari via text.

 (Cute girl with her baby doll who has a matching hat.)

 Jacob and Cari sent this back. :)

Date night pictures

A few weeks ago Jacob and I went on a nice date to a trail that runs along the train tracks just as the sun was setting to take some pictures and have a nice walk. We got both.

A cholla was blooming.

 A tarantula was on the move.

 And the scenery and clouds and setting sun made for a pretty evening.

 The moon was mostly full.

 Here you can see a microburst dumping rain on just a very small area of town. Those happen a lot in monsoon season and are pretty exciting when you're in one.

 I love this guy. :)

Tucson Temple Cultural Celebration

I was lucky enough to get to be involved in the Cultural Celebration for the Tucson Temple on Saturday, August 12th. I was a captain of 10, so I had a group of youth (8 youth, not 10) that I was in charge of making sure got to where they were supposed to be, when they were supposed to be there, in the right costumes. It was super busy and the kids got tired of me leaving to go to practices for the cultural celebration, but it was a privilege to be involved, and we were all relieved and happy when it was over. Partially because our temple was dedicated, and partly because life could finally return to normal. 

The week before the celebration we had a full day Super Saturday practice. One of the stake leaders made special cookies for all the youth and leaders in our stake. They were so cool.

The following week we had our dress rehearsal Friday night for 4-5 hours in the heat, then the day of the celebration we ran through it twice in the afternoon, had dinner, then put on the real thing that night. We were sweating like dogs, but at least the weather held out for us.

With this celebration being outside in the middle of a Tucson summer, and monsoon season we had some precautuions we had to take so people wouldn't be dropping from dehydration. We checked up with the kids all the week before reminding them to drink lots of water, and when we were out at practices we had sprayers to serve as portable swamp coolers, basically, spraying the kids down, and letting the evaporation help cool. Of course the humidity of monsoon season made it a little less effective, but it was still better than nothing. 

One of the photographers for the event caught me spraying the youth down. I look like I should be on Ghostbusters.

 All the participants got enough tickets for their families to be able to attend. Since it would be during Megan's bedtime and she wouldn't sit still well anyway, Jacob opted to sit it out at home with her, and let my mom take the other kids to the celebration. I found them before the show started to say hi.

 With Grandma picking up all the kids except for Megan, she was pretty bummed. So she and Jacob went on a daddy-daughter date to Baskin Robbins. It seems to have cheered her up well enough.

The theme for the show was The Time is Now. Some awesome artists made this awesome background.

During the opening numbers of the Cultural Celebration we had a great sunset going on behind the audience. It was so fitting that as the youth sang the song, "I love you Arizona" talking about our beautiful sunsets, there was one going on in the sky.

 The view in the other direction, however, right then was of some clouds moving in with lightning. We were praying that it would hold off until after the show was done, and it did. The rain didn't start falling until 90% of the sets had been taken down and most everyone was gone, and most everything packed up. What a blessing! Then the clouds let loose that night and there was some good, loud thunder for quite a while in the wee hours of the night.

Our stake participated in the opening numbers, I Love to See the Temple (in English and Spanish), I Love You Arizona, and It's My Time, then had a nice long break while the other stakes performed. They finished up with our stake and one other stake combining to dance to "Good Friends." This is some of our ward waiting to go on the field for their turn:

All the 2100 youth in the temple district did a dance to a hip hop version of "I Hope they Call Me on a Mission" and finished up the night with an awesome song, "I Will."

It was so cool. And during It's My Time at the beginning, and I Will at the end I felt very strongly how much God loves these youth. I'm glad they were able to be involved and feel the spirit of sacrifice and the excitement of the temple.

Here's a time lapse video of the whole thing that someone from our stake did. Pretty cool. :)

And now we are so happy to have the temple closer. It is still 45 minutes away, a full hour during high traffic times, but today I was able to drop off Megan at preschool, drive up there, do initiatories, and get back before she was done with preschool.

Haircuts and birthday

Apparently the rest of July and all of August flew by with tons of activities, but no blogging. Annie had been holding off on cutting her hair until after she started first grade. I got a haircut and she decided that it was a good time to join the fun. Her hair had gotten long, so we cut a lot off.

 She was happy with it. We were haircutting twins:

 I guess over the summer I had taken a break from meal planning and making snacks for the kids. I usually have homemade peanut butter balls or granola bars or both available for good, filling snacks, but apparently not since about April or May. Rachel was so excited to come home to find I had finally made peanut butter balls she wanted a picture with one.

 Grandpa Knight went in for his 4th back surgery. We had a family fast and had been praying that it went better than his last 2 surgeries, and our prayers were answered. The kids were super excited to see their prayers answered and Grandpa recovering so well so quickly.

 They were also super excited to ride the elevator, see the cool couch that turns into a bed in his hospital room, and get the pixy stix that Grandpa always has for his grandkids.

Rachel decided to dress up like Dad, so Megan ran off to get her favorite dress up on, too.

 Wierdos. ;)

A little while after Annie's haircut, Megan decided she wanted a haircut, too.

 She's not the best at sitting still, but I managed to get a mostly straight haircut. Good enough for her tastes, anyway.

 The big excitement in August (besides the temple cultural celebration and dedication, and the eclipse) was that Jacob had a BIG birthday.

I sent a co-worker of Jacob's on a mission to post this sign and string up some black crepe paper on his office to surprise him on his actual birthday, since we had celebrated as a family a couple of days earlier.
The kids were super in to making cards for Jacob. Ryan had this one ready a week or two ahead of time:

 And the back:

 (The rainbow was fitting since it appeared after it had rained 40 days in the times of Noah's Ark, much like Jacob survived 40 years of life, thus far. ;)

We gave Jacob a list that the kids compiled of 40 reasons they love Dad.

 They included things like how he drags them around "dust-mopping" as they hang onto his feet, he helps them jump super high, plays monster with them and tickles them, and brings home the bacon (figuratively), and shares his bacon (literally). He's a great dad and an awesome husband and we are all blessed to have him in our lives. Even if he is OLD now.