Kyra's Madrigal Concert Part B

Here's Part B of Kyra's concert. This clip contains 3 numbers. The last two numbers is with all the choirs combined, so Kyra's smack dab in the middle. The very last number I only got a portion of because I ran out of disk space and it wouldn't let me record without formatting the new disk :( Kyra is playing the piano for that piece. To watch the video, click on the title and it will take you directly to YouTube. Read more!

Kyra's 1st Madrigal Concert Part A

Kyra had her first Madrigal concert at the end of October. If you'd like to view Part A, click on the title and it will direct you straight to a YouTube video of the first half of her performance. She is always on the far left or far right of the group, middle row. YouTube only allows 10 minute videos, so Part B is on the next post. Read more!

St. George Invitational Swim Meet

Adam and his swim buddies: Jared, Jessica and Samantha

Adam in mid-dive starting his 500 yard freestyle

Stroke, baby, stroke!

At the end of his lane his friends were cheering him on and posting his lap numbers underwater so he'd know how long he had to go. Trent in bathrobe, Sam posting, Jared whistling, Jessica yelling encouragement.

Adam has always been a lean kid, but now he's a lean kid with well defined muscles. He swims every day before school and every day after school.

And his coaches just advised the team that now that the "fun" St. George meet was over, they were really going to kick in the conditioning. This whole swim venture has been a wonderful, healthy thing for Adam.

Adam coming up on lap 17 getting ready to do a flip turn.

Sam showing me the welcome orange blocks, letting the swimmer know he's on his LAST lap.

Right after his 500, Adam was also slated to be the first leg of the 200 freestyle relay. I know it's hard to see, but he's the middle swimmer in mid dive.

Adam and I just got back from an invitational swim meet last weekend. On their way down to St. George, they stopped off the road a little ways to Richfield, where they had an addl swim meet with the local team there. Because our school is bigger, we had our first year swimmers compete against Richfield's varsity team. At Adam's home meets I have started to officiate -- which gets you the very best of 'seats' -- but at these other meets I have finally had the opportunity to catch him on film because I wasn't "on duty." He's been training very hard since last June and the payoffs are already beginning. He swam with the top 12 swimmers and came in 1st in his heat in the 50 yard freestyle race. Fifty yards is once up and back. He also raced for his first time in the 500 freestyle!!! It was a little overwhelming to him, but he did great. Five hundred is racing 10 times up and back. All the pictures are from the smaller Richfield meet. St. George hosted 15 schools and it was absolutely crazy. I will never attend again without some kind of ear protection. Adam raced in the 400 yard freestyle relay and the 100 yard backstroke.

If you'd like to see the video of Adam racing the 50 yard freestyle in Richfield, just click the title and it should take you straight to YouTube and his video will start.

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Halloween

I added another photo album on the right hand side. It's entitled Halloween 2008. Our days had been so full that we didn't get pumpkins until Halloween morning. The kids and I went out in the morning -- they had school off that day -- to a pumpkin patch a few minutes away. I thought for sure there would be slim pickins, but I was wrong. Acres and acres of pumpkins stretched out before us and the kids hunted and pecked and got some good ones. We came back and "slimy-ed" up to our elbows yanking out the gunk and carved without incident....except Mom. I was doing something stupid with a knife and paid for it with a gash on my finger that is still an ugly red. I didn't feel like putting together "Veggie Tales" pumpkins this year, so I opted for a snowman when I found some small pumpkins laying at my feet in the pumpkin patch. My motto was Keep It Simple Stupid. Right when the witching hour began that night it started to rain. Maybe the rain accounted for the light crowd this year, I don't know, but we didn't get more than 30 kids. Every year it's been diminishing. I used to have to plan for 500. The rain was very light and the temperature was actually balmy -- which is really strange for this time of year. So I had a relaxed evening reading on the couch with my "Halloween" music going on in the background. Jake was all pumped to roast some pumpkin seeds so I pulled a random recipe off the net. I'll share it here since it came out fantastic. 1-1/2 Tbl. butter, melted 1/2 tsp. salt 1/8 tsp. garlic salt 2 tsp. Worchestershire sauce 2 c. raw pumpkin seeds Combine all, spread in shallow baking dish. Bake @ 275 deg F for 1 hour. Yummy! Read more!

A Trumpeter in the Family

Erica just had her first band concert mid-October. She took up the trumpet in September when she started school. She had decided that Beginning Band was a lot more interesting than General Music.

Another new sound is added to the usual household noise....

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Slideshow for My Girls

What started out as a simple search for pictures, led me to make this 6-minute slideshow for the 12-13 year old girls I teach on Sunday. The lesson was on "Preparing for Change" and one thing led to another and voila! I'm going to use it as a conclusion to the lesson. Disclosure: This is not wholly mine. Some of the wording comes from a PowerPoint presentation that was forwarded to me once upon a time. Click on the title and it takes you straight to the video on YouTube. Read more!

An Afternoon in the Arena

While Grandpa & Grandma Frye were visiting, they attended one of Erica's horseback riding lessons and took pictures. First she preps the horse and saddles up.

She then "lunges" him before she rides.

Then she does her thing on the saddle. Grandma observed that she's got great posture while posting -- that thing where you go up and down with the saddle.

Wow....got a smile out of her! But of course.....she's in her element.

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A Flashback to May

I forgot to post these pictures when I first started this blog. They are from last May. This is Kyra sharing one of her art pieces from 8th Grade Art. Erica is graduating from 6th grade and elementary school.

This is her last chance to fool around with her classroom's 'toys'.

Besides graduating, she received a special citizenship certificate and a presidential award and letter from President Bush commending her on her academic levels.

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October 2008

I just added an October 2008 photo album on the right hand side of this blog. All you have to do is click on the link and it should take you directly to a slideshow on Flickr. Bill's parents came to town and most of the pictures are of some family activities. We celebrated two birthdays, Adam's and Grandma Frye's. Katie, who Bill told me years ago was Italian, taught the kids how to make homemade pasta. It turns out she has no Italian blood in her at all! We had a good visit with the two of them, and as usual they work like crazy around here. I think we get more done during their visits than any other time of the year. As a family we went to see "Scary Poppins" at Desert Star Playhouse and had a good time laughing. It was a spoof on Mary Poppins, and they did an excellent job. A few days after that we had tickets to see the school version of Les Miserables. For 16-17 year olds putting this on, they did a phenomenal job. I at first was disappointed because there were no backgrounds and very few props, but I was quickly swept away in the music and story and it ceased to bother me. This was Kyra, Adam and Jacob's first time seeing it and they seemed to like it as well. They were willing enough to give it a standing ovation at the end. I prepped Jake on the story beforehand and he was able to keep up for the most part, keeping his eye out for Gavroche. It was a sad day to take them back to the airport and drop them off. I came back to a quiet home and their missing presence was a huge void. Read more!

A Peek at my Mickey Room

Here are some peeks at my Mickey work room in the basement. This is the north view of the room. I did most of the painting this past summer. I have one more character to finish painting -- a martian from Toy Story. It's taken awhile, but I'm getting close. The bulletin board contains all the pins I've been collecting since I've been about 12.

All these picture frames contain pictures of our family at Disneyland or Disney World various times throughout their lives. The round thing is a clock Bill found for me somewhere.

More pics of family Disney stuff...

This is the east wall. I found some cute Disney drawer pulls I used on the closets. They include a Mickey head, red shorts, yellow shoe and white glove. I know, I know.... it was an extravagance and not a need.

This is the west view (window) and the south view of the room.

I love this room. You would think I would spend a lot of time here, but I don't right now. My family and Young Women service keep me pretty busy right now, so I only get down here a few times a month. Once a month I host a scrapbooking Relief Society enrichment night here, so for sure I set aside that night to work. The bed is not a permanent fixture. This room also acts as a makeshift guest room when Grandma and Grandpa Frye come to visit. Usually I have work tables in the center.

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Sparkling Gems: a Modesty Fashion Show

Kyra's Mia Maid class did a Personal Progress 10 hour project together in the Choice & Accountability section. For one part of the project they studied modesty and its impact on themselves and others, and also learned how to make current fashions more modest. As an end-all, they hosted a fashion show of modest prom & wedding dresses. So this is Kyra modeling her dress and her way of making it modest....a sparkly silver shrug for the top. All the girls were positively glowing that night. More skin might have made a man pant, but the true beauty was coming from within.

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Homecoming Dance

Adam asked Liz Miller to Viewmont's Homecoming Dance. To ask her, he created an Alvin & the Chipmunks CD for her by recording some banter between him and himself and singing a couple of songs for her with his guitar, then speeding it up. Pretty cool. It sounded like the real thing.

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Surprise Party & 5K Run

I joined these lovely ladies in Huntsville in September. Karen and Betsy -- in blue -- had been training for a 1/2 marathon for about a year. I was going as a cheerleader, then decided last minute to run the 5K that was going on at the same time. This picture was taken at 7:30am and it was still a little chilly at this hour. We are starting to stretch and loosen up. I gifted these running shirts to Betsy and Karen to celebrate this major goal of theirs. The shirts say 'Fit & Fabulous @40". We all turned 40 this year and celebrated together.

This is an AFTER shot...I can't believe they are still smiling. The race was long and hard and I was so proud of them for finishing what they set out to do. My race went well. I beat my personal time and placed 3rd in my age group. It was a phenomenal day and a perfect temperature.

This is the town of Huntsville, the beautiful place I got to run in.

Another shot of quaint Huntsville.

Karen turned 40 at the end of the month. We opted to celebrate with pink and silver and keep the mourning at a minimum. I was involved in her surprise party and we had a really good time.....planning and just hanging out with good friends.

Karen and I

The gift I made for Karen. Her daughters' pictures are all over the two mats. The saying in the middle: "There is no one way to be a perfect mother; But there are a million small ways to be a great one."

Bill and I at her party.

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Girls Camp & Savannah

Girls Camp... braids, learning the Heimlich Maneuver, making matchless fires, learning first aid, cooking with dutch ovens, running hot and cold water.... what? Oh, yeah. We had a gadget guru up there this year that set us up with running hot and cold water! Girls Camp couldn't get any better than this. This was my first time back to Girls Camp since I was a staffer, and I loved sharing it with Erica and Kyra both.

Our cousin Savannah that came out from the Sacramento area is experimenting the Heimlich maneuver on Erica. You can see the back of Erica's head with braids that were ALL the fashion! (Some things never change!) Below is Kyra's (blue cap) obsession with the matchless fire technology. She WOULD NOT leave this thing when they were going on to other requirements. I was just an observer and taking pictures, but as a Mom I wanted to kick her in the behind and tell her to be obedient and listen to her leaders!

Learning first aid. Erica is on the far left.

Our favorite shirt up there... need I say more?

Playing WAH! Erica is in the back in the white shirt. I took a ton of pictures of this game because the girls were laughing so hard and having so much fun. We are definitely going to play this for family night when Grandma and Grandpa Frye arrive this week.

Our first day the girls discovered a great way to cool off and take the pressures off of setting up their own tents.

Night after night we enjoyed beautiful sunsets and skies dripping with diamond-like stars. We were camping on private property in south-eastern Idaho.

"The Girls" -- Kyra, Savannah and Erica. We took Savannah to Salt Lake and did the tourist-y stuff. We toured the Conference Center, saw the Joseph Smith movie in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, ate lunch at the Lion House, toured Brigham Young's historic home "The Beehive House" and bought lots of beautiful pictures in the Church Museum of History and Art.

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