Conferences, Concerts and Marathons in Clogs

Photos by Gérard Schachmès

Life has been crazy, but it has been good. We had a wonderful loooong weekend with Neville* home for five days in a row! We could definitely get used to that. When I finally got to the girls' "goal setting conferences" (parent/teacher/student conferences) - mentioned in the earlier post - they went very well. I loved meeting with their teachers and hearing about how great the girls are doing. I am very proud of them both.

I was especially happy to see that Natalie scored high on her assessment. This is so great because she was just starting to learn her letters a year ago. We did lots of reading lessons over the summer and she is doing awesome! It was fun for her to get that extra "good job" from her teacher. Natalie is so cute and only struggles with finishing tasks in a timely manner. She is such a carefree little spirit that she takes her sweet time on everything, even eating her lunch. So we set a goal to help light a fire under her a bit! (o: So to speak. She has already blossomed so much in just a few weeks at school.

Just a funny side note, speaking of her free-spirited nature... Natalie really struggled with losing things for the first couple weeks. In just one week, she left her coat on the bus, her headband at the reading corner and her socks in the play/pretend area at school. Her teacher sent home a note reminding us, as parents, to make sure we put names on all the kid's items, even socks. She was kidding, originally, about the socks. We had a good laugh when I asked her at Back to School night if she'd seen Natalie's socks. We did eventually get all these items back and Natalie has gotten better about not taking things off wherever she is and just leaving them in random places. (like she does at home!) I love my Natalie.

Sarah was so cute during her conferences. Her teacher just praised her the whole time and Sarah had this cute embarrassed smile and shy look the entire time. She really is a good girl and such a people pleaser like I was in school. I loved to be loved by my teachers. Yes, I was teacher's pet and liked it. (o: Annoying, I know. It was fun to see where Sarah was at in her reading assessments, I've been curious. She actually plateaued a bit at the fourth grade level. Not bad for a second grader. (o: She's made a goal to read some more challenging books so she can keep moving up. She already discovered a new series that she is excited about - Animorphs. They are about these kids that can "morph" into animals. She LOVES the one she is reading right now. I love to see her excited about reading.

As for other good things... I got to have a great girls night last week thanks to a couple good friends and husband. A while back we planned a double date with some friends who had tickets to see Celine Dion. Unfortunately, those friends had a business trip come up and couldn't come. They told us to use the tickets anyway. It would be just Melvin* and I. Then Angela got sick and having a babysitter care for her was not a good idea so Melvin* suggested that I go with a friend. Luckily, Tina was up for an adventure and we headed for a fun girls' night around 5:30 Thursday night. We had a lovely dinner at Pasta Pronto. It was fun to just sit and chat without interruption. We then had an hour and 20 minutes to drive downtown and find our seats. The drive took 2 hours from Tannesbourne! (usually a 30 minute drive) We got to downtown Portland in about 15 minutes and about a mile away from the exit we hit a parking lot. Portland traffic can be soooo irritating. I don't understand how it can get so bad, but it does. There are just not enough lanes on all the bridges around town and the price to expand must be too astronomical. ??? The roads are not well planned either. So we sat in the parking lot - we could see the Rose Garden arena from the car for a good hour. It was frustrating, but we still had fun joking about it and still talking the whole way.

We FINALLY got off the freeway and stuck the car in the first place we could find that didn't look too scary. Thank heavens Tina had some coins to stick in the meter! Then we sprinted. Oh how I wish I didn't wear clogs. My shins are still sore from the run in those dumb shoes. Tina and I work out at the gym often - running side by side on the treadmills. This was very similar except for we had to weave around people and my feet were dying in the shoes I was wearing! Other than that, we had fun jogging the whole way and laughing at how we made up for missing the gym that morning. We sat in our seats at 8:59 p.m. The concert started at 8:00. Thank heavens for opening acts. Who knows who it was, we didn't much care. We were in our seats literally one minute before Celine came out. And it was worth the insanity of getting there! What an amazing performer. That woman can SING! Plus she looks amazing and she can move in high heels like nobody's business. She puts on quite a show and every song was beautiful. I especially loved her duet with one of her backup singers and a number with this guy that played the violin so beautifully it made me want to cry. And she did her song, "The Prayer" with Andrea Bocelli (he wasn't really there - just a digital version of him) WOW - it was amazing. I think I held my breath through the whole song. And for one of the encores she came out singing one of my favorite Erasure songs "River Deep Mountain High". I LOVED it and couldn't help but sing along. What an amazing show - go Celine! You're a little kooky, but what AMAZING talent! WAHOO!

Okay, so at some point during this amazing concert the thought crossed both Tina's and my mind, "Do we know where we parked???" After the show we both asked this question aloud and neither of us knew the answer for sure. Whoa Nelly. We decided not to panic, but to look for familiar landmarks and relive those last crazy moments before our race into the concert. After walking around in circles until most of the crowds were gone, passing some unsavory characters in dark places and asking for directions from some more trustworthy-looking people, we FINALLY found the car and I wanted to kiss it! We had avoided riding the MAX because there are sometimes scary people on it. After our experience, that would be WAY safer and WAY easier than driving any day!! We treated ourselves to a Frostie at the Wendy's we parked next to - to celebrate that we didn't get mugged and that we found the car. I think I put a good mile and a half in my dumb clogs! Then Tina called her husband to help us navigate our way back to the freeway! How sad! But at least we were in a locked car with Frosties!! (o:

Thanks for the fun night Tina - the good, the bad and the ugly!! It's nice to have someone to laugh with when you're scared to death! (o: And thanks for the tickets Stacy - every bit of the night was worth the awesome show!! The whole night was unforgettable!

Pssst - Utah family and friends . . . Celine is coming to Salt Lake Nov. 21st - FYI!

LIFE goes on...

I love blogging, but it often takes a back seat when life gets crazy. Speaking of life, I had to pull together a huge real life LIFE game for our 40 or so young men and young women in our ward last week. It was a huge stress for me. More than it probably needed to be - I am still learning how to be "in charge" and lead big events like this, so I am not the most efficient. I'm sure it did not need to be so stressful, but the idea that was presented to me just a little over a month ago was a pretty tall order and I wanted to do my best.

The goal was for the youth to get some kind of picture of what finances are like when you are a grown up. Each youth was given a job/salary and family situation - single, married with kids, etc. They were also given a check register and had to travel throughout the church building to get insurance, visit a car lot, real estate, the Cornell Acres Mall (Cornell is the name of our ward), college, the bank and mom and dad's house. There were also random events people handing out car wrecks, medical emergencies, inheritance money and even babies! The concept was so huge and involved recruiting over 20 adults to play various roles, that not everything went the way I imagined. Some of the leaders did their own spin with their roles - for better and worse, some of the $$ amounts were way too generous (we had one youth buy a Ferrari with cash - not much learned in being thrifty there!) and we were shocked at how unfamiliar and difficult using the check registers was for most of the youth. This alone was a huge speed bump for the first 20 minutes of the game.

On the other hand, the church looked pretty cool - I like how our "mall" turned out. (We had a big screen TV/all kinds of electronics boxes, huge 5' tall American Eagle mall poster displays, lights, etc.) Several of the leaders who helped out went the extra mile making it really cool and fun. The real life insurance agent we asked to help "play" the insurance agent had an awesome idea for his pretend insurance agency, "AllSaints - You're in God's Hands" rather than Allstate - You're in Good Hands. I thought that was clever. The car salesmen were hilarious and dressed the part. Fat Matt and Skinny Jim played their parts so well I think they deserved an Academy award. And the kids really got into our Burger King crown gimmick. Whenever they purchased something that would be considered "cool" or keeping up with the Jones' - they got a Burger King hat. If they bought more "cool" stuff, they got "cool" stickers to put on the crowns. Some started thinking that's how you win. So they spent like crazy. Some were heard through the halls, "I am starting to think these crowns are not so good" another said back, "No they're good, they're definitely good." The salesmen at the mall were so good it was scary - they pushed those crowns on the kids and said all kinds of, if I may say, crap to get them to buy. (o: It was sometimes painful to listen to, but sooo real to life. One of the young women refused to go near one of the sales people and told him directly, "You scare me!" Smart girl! In fact, this same "salesman" told me later that the guys were way easier to suck into his gimmicks. Interesting.

So all in all, things were a little chaotic, not perfect, but I am confident that everyone - even the Ferrari guy - learned something about finances and spending. That was the goal. In the end, the kids were surprised to hear that the Burger King crowns were a trick and definitely not how to win. We emphasized that this is what the "world" would like us to believe. Everyone who played the game got a bowl of vanilla ice cream. Those who remembered to pay their 10% to tithing got a brownie, those who bought insurance before an emergency occurred got chocolate syrup and caramel (for several youth insurance was an afterthought when they got into a car wreck or had a baby), and those who were not carrying a brick (which they had to carry if they took out a loan for anything but a home or college) got toppings.

It was a fun night. Unfortunately, I was so burned out and so busy before it, that many things including blogging were neglected. And wouldn't you know - we have Young Women in Excellence night in just two weeks! That will be a cake walk compared to the LIFE game, but still...there's always something to plan!! I love it though - I am really enjoying my calling, the young women are FABULOUS and I love all the ladies I work with. So dependable and so much fun - a great combo!

Although my life felt consumed with this LIFE game, my real life continued and even felt like it was spinning out of control around me. Angela was sick the day before and the day of my big activity, the kids were out of school for parent teacher conferences, the house was progressively getting more and more out of order. (Will it ever be in order???) and getting meals on the table was ridiculously overwhelming. The night after my big activity, Angela's fever got so bad that around 4 a.m. Harry* made an emergency trip for Advil (to supplement the Tylenol) and I bathed her and gave her a Popsicle to try and break it. We found out the next day that she had Strep. I am so grateful that Harry* happened to have Wed., Thurs. and Fri off of work since he's been working shifts temporarily. He was a huge lifesaver and so supportive. He was even the one who made the appointment and took Angela to the doctor and got the medication.

Meanwhile that day, on Thursday, I was winding down from the crazy night before (LIFE game and being up with Angela) and busy forgetting to go to Sarah and Natalie's teacher conferences!! EEEK! Sarah's teacher called when we were 15 minutes late wondering if we were coming. We had already missed Natalie's by that time. I honestly cannot say how long it would have taken me to remember that I forgot if she hadn't called. It was 11:15 - Sarah and Natalie were in the tub, I'm pretty sure I was still in my pajamas and I had no car seats since Jays had taken Angela to the doctor in the van. That was sooo embarrassing. Luckily, I was forgiven after several "so sorry's" and a "this isn't like me". We were able to reschedule with both teachers. And HOORAY, I didn't forget the second time! I usually really look forward to those conferences, but I guess last week it just ended up being one more thing for my over saturated brain.

Why does it feel like all of my entries are like this lately?? Will life ever slow down?