Utah Voices!!!

I have had the WONDERFUL opportunity to be a part of something that I've wanted to do since I was about 17 years old. I am now an official member of a real choir. I've always wanted to be a part of something beautiful musically so when the opportunity arose for me to become a member of "Utah Voices" I jumped on the chance. If you had worked with Michael Huff in the past, then you were given the opportunity to sing n this choir. And luckily, I sang under his direction when I sang in the Tabernacle.

So far, this has been a wonderful experience for me. Michael Huff is a wonderful director and I've learned so much from him musically. We rehearse once a week for two hours and we have a Christmas concert coming up. We perform at the U of U with the Salt Lake Symphony. How cool is that? And get this, in some of the concerts people have to pay to us. People actually have to pay to see me sing. I love it. Granted the tickets are only $5-$10 but still, I love it. I feel like such a pro :)

While Brother Huff was out of town last week we had a guest conductor visit us and what an amazing experience it was. Brother Jerold Ottley (above pic) took the reins and taught us what he knew from his decades of wisdom. My friend Tania and I had to get a picture with him after practice.

Jerold Ottley was music director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir from 1974 to 1999. How cool is that? Not only was he a fountain of wisdom but he was so hilarious and such a cute old man. It was amazing to be taught by him. I'll never forget this experience. Can you tell that I just LOOOOVE music?!!!!!!

The choir is amazing; we actually have some members of our choir that actually sang in the MOTAB. We're singing the most beautiful songs from "The Messiah" and it sounds beautiful. It's a gorgeous piece of music. I can't wait to fully learn this music....but so far, it sounds beautiful.

Birthdays, Halloween decs, Scarecrow Festival and Lydia's first dance performance!

Blogger won't let me move the above picture but it kind of encompasses what Lydia's personality is all about lately...SILLY! This is her with her b-day cupcake tower, that she chose out by the way!

I just love Halloween and decorating for it. Here's our Halloween village this year. I love it.
And I love my little graveyard.

Jake did a great job making headstones from scratch this year to help withstand the crazy winds that come flying through our neighborhood.

Our little Lydia is now a 3 year old. I can't believe it. I let her pick what she wanted to do on her special day and for her morning activity she chose Kangaroo Zoo!

Thanks to Brock's example, Lydia finally went down the HUGE slide by herself. Way to go Lyd's.

For one of Lydia's b-day gifts she received a kitchen and she LOVES it. She plays with it non stop. She loves making dinner and snacks for everyone. Nice picture Lydia!

Lydia's cupcake tower, which she picked out herself.

Later that day we headed to dinner with the Clark's and Watt's families. Lydia chose pizza so we went to Firehouse then we headed off to Pack's Pumpkin Patch for our annual pumpkin hunt.

Then we headed back to the house to open all of her presents and have cupcakes. One of the gifts we got her was a little craft/school table. I'm doing my own little preschool, just her and I a few days a week so she can learn all that she needs to before she actually goes to preschool.

Here we are singing Happy Birthday to her. Love her face in this one.

Blowing out the candles. Great action shot. Thank you photographer Joey! Lydia, we love you more than you'll ever know. You are such an angel and couldn't ask for a sweeter, more precious girl to raise. We love you!

Although Larry's b-day is August 25th, we celebrated the day we brought him home (Oct 17th) this year since I was in Ireland on his actual b-day. We got him lots of presents to open.

And he enjoyed ripping them up in a matter of seconds!

Happy Birthday Bubs!!!

Yesterday was the big day...Lydia's first dance performance. I was so nervous for her it was unreal. It was at the Scarecrow Festival so Lynette thought it would be fun to go down to TP early so the girls' could have fun before their performances.

The girls' loved dancing to the chello music that the pirate was playing on the street.

Lydia's arm is getting so much better. She had great aim on all the games she played!

The weather was perfect then about 4pm it got windy, cold and miserable. But we managed to get the girls' ready for their big performances. Here's Lydia in her dance outfit. She was not happy that she was in this tiny outfit and it was freezing outside.

She kept crying to get me to stop taking pictures. Here she is yelling at me to stop. I just wanted the perfect pic. I didn't get that...

Thank you SOOO much to Rod, Sue and Melynda for braving the bad weather to come and support my little girl. You'll never know how much that meant to me. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Here's Lyd's warming up back stage with Miss Mo (who just had a baby a week ago, btw)!

Because Lydia inherited my shyness, my only goal for her was to actually make it on stage and to make it through the performance without crying. Well, she met those goals for me. She was taken on stage (you could tell she had been crying), and she just stood there shivering...so sad. I just wanted to go scoop her up and protect her from the pain she was going through being up there.

Lydia has been practicing for weeks "The Monster Mash" and in every practice she has done so good, doing all the moves. In the beginning the girls' lay on the ground and pretend to be monsters rising from the dead...Well, that's as far as Lydia got on the whole performance. Poor thing.

She just stayed in the fetal position the whole time while the other girls' danced. Then Lydia would hear the screams of the people that loved her in the audience and she'd look over in fear. She just held on to her security (fingers in her mouth) waiting for it to be over. I didn't let her see me because I knew if she did, she'd lose it and start crying.

After it was over, we all stood up and cheered for them, especially us that were there to support Lyd's. The Lydia saw me and just lost it. She ran into my arms and started bawling. It BROKE MY HEART. Then I thought to myself, did I just traumatize my daughter? Did I make a mistake putting my shy, little Lyd's in dance class? Then backstage while looking for her jacket Lydia made me realize that she had regrets. Can three yr olds have regrets. She kept repeating over and over, "I wanna do monster mash. I wanna dance with Miss Mo." Then on the car ride home she was watching playback of the video and she kept saying, "I wanna dance like her" while pointing to the girl next to her who was actually doing the dance.

She wanted to do the dance again but this time actually do it. So that gives me hope that she'll get better each time. We are SOOO proud of you Lyd's and all that you accomplished last night. You are amazing and you looked like a little dancing queen last night (minus the dancing part). We love you so much!!!!

Denver Trip 2009

I think we just went on our last family vacation of 2009. I don't like to travel in the winter...too scared. So we decided to take a trip to Denver to visit Jake's brother in Parker, CO for our last trip of the year. And what do you know, the Utes were playing there at the exact same time as our trip. How convenient. I really don't mind planning some of our vacations around Utah Football. I think of it as a great excuse to travel. It's a win-win really :)

It was an 8 hour drive and Lydia was PERFECT. She only whined a couple of times. And she didn't watch more than 2 hours of movies; she just entertained herself. It was awesome.

As soon as we walked in the door of Josh's house, Lydia and her cousin Elle just clicked. Elle asked her if she wanted to go play and off they went together. It was so cute. They got along perfectly this whole trip and I LOVED it. They didn't fight once. It was nice knowing that there wouldn't be any fights when they left to go play for two hours by themselves. It made me relax more knowing that I wouldn't have to referee at all. So that was great that they had each other on this trip.

Here they are playing games and dancing.
Lydia practicing her break dancing moves.

Playing downstairs.

On Thursday we went to the Denver Aquarium which is 1000 times cooler than the one here in Utah. They had this huge tube you go through to make it feel like you're in the water with the fish. We literally sat in this tube for more than 30 minutes; the girls' were loving it.

Then I saw a long lost buddy of mine...the Fire Bellied Toad. I had one of these growing up. Actually, my brother got one for a scouting project and when he was done he didn't want it anymore so I took over caring for him and he lived another 10 years or so. He even almost died and I nursed him back to health. We had put him in the trash and everything. We saw his foot move and I healed him from there. True story.

They had a HUGE shark tank. Here's Rodney checking out the fish.

That night we all went out to dinner for some bbq.

The next day we went to the Butterfly Pavillion. I held my first tarantula. I have fear of spiders, but apparently not that big of one if I can hold this thing. Lydia and Jake didn't want anything to do with Rosie the Tarantula.

We also got to touch some Starfish and different coruscation's.

I can't get over how well Elle and Lyd's got along. Elle brought out the silliness in Lydia as you can see in this pic below.

They had a zip line you could go on to feel what it was like to "fly like a butterfly".

Then on to the rain forest where all of the butterflies were. There were literally thousands in this huge greenhouse type place. It was really humid in there, just like the actual rain forest where these butterflies live. I was sad though because none of the butterflies landed on any of us even though they were flying all around us.

Here's the Owl Butterfly.

Elle and Lydia being so cute together. I just love it.

Then on Saturday the guys left for the Utah game. The weather was freezing, about 16 degrees and snowy. So glad us girls' didn't go. Between the four of them they had on about 24 shirts and 8 pair of pants. No joke. Layers baby!!!! Luckily the Utes won, which would make for a great drive home on Sunday.

While the guys were at the game us girls' went to "The Wildlife Experience" in Parker. And an experience it was. It was like you were actually in these animals' environments. It was really cool. Lydia was really scared at first because of all the real sounding animal noises and all of the animals that were around. It was kinda funny but she got used to it.

We also saw a 45 minute movie about African wildlife and it was so interesting. I really learned a lot. It was geared more toward older people but Lydia and Elle just sat there quietly through the whole movie. Thank goodness.

Silly Lydia.

Then we ate dinner at our new favorite place, Chick-fil-a. Jake is obsessed with it and hopes they get one in SLC soon.

In the kids meals they had different "experiences" (as Elle called them) that you could do. The experiments were actually really cool. They put on their aprons and scientists they became. It was so cute.

Lydia was perfect once again on the car ride home. Due to bad weather/snow/horrible wind drifts it took us a lot longer to get home that we liked. But we made it in one piece and that's what's important. But 8 hours is just too long to drive for me. Flying from here on out!

Thank you so much Josh and Danni for your hospitality and letting us all invade your house. We had a great time.