Wednesday, February 23, 2011

First church dance

 With Ethan turning 14, another big milestone had occurred--he is now old enough to go to church stake dances. Honestly, I think Ethan couldn't have cared less. Girls definitely get more excited. Case in point, that weekend, Josee (my niece, on the left) and Sheridan (my cousin's daughter, on the right) excitedly decided to come with Ethan for their first church dance too. Living in Utah means it isn't just one stake, its a multi stake dance with 500-600 kids, at least.
 Jared and I gave Ethan a challenge to actually ask girls to dance, including buying him a container of "Tic Tacs" that he could only share with those girls he danced with. Jared tried to get him to commit to coming home with an empty container, but seeing that was a deal-breaker and this was his first dance, we decided to not go that far.

Part of the night that I thought was particularly hilarious was listening to my brother give his daughter instructions on staying with her cousins. He was really nervous. He kept telling me to waiting until it was Rachel going to the dance, its different when its a girl...
I was the designated driver to pick the three teenagers up. Boy were they talkative! Luckily all of them had a great time. The girls informed me that they had to dance with a boy that had bad breath, so score one for Ethan having the tic tacs. During the fast songs, everyone just dances in a big group. Ethan informed me that they had 7 slow dances and he asked/danced with 5 girls. Way to go, that's my boy!

Igloo Snow Castle

 Chris and the kids came to stay with us over President's Day weekend and we had a great time. Saturday was filled with swimming at the indoor pool/rec center, yummy dinner cooked by Chris for all of us and Cousin Glenn and family, and the dance later on for the teens. We had snow here and there and Monday rolled around with beautiful sunshine. The snow was melting but Lizzie was begging Chris to help her make an igloo.
 At first it was just him and Lizzie, but soon Rachel and Evelyn wanted to get in on the fun. Brady rounded out the construction crew complete with goggles (of course, you totally need goggles on a beautiful sunny day, right!?!)
 As you can see, Chris (for over 2 hrs) dutifully was on shovel duty and with the help of the construction crew ended up with more of a castle, complete with doorway and peep holes. Actually I think the holes were made for snowball fights.


As I post this, it is a couple days later with more sunshine, but the Igloo Castle is standing strong!