Temple Jazz

That's right. This Tuesday, December 7th at the Mesa, AZ Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints there will be a performance by Yeah Man Jazz from 7:00-7:30pm. Jazz at the Temple. What could be cooler? I'll tell you what--Christmas Jazz at the Temple. Now that is fully awesome!

Enjoy your Christmas favorites delivered fresh in a deep, swingin' groove. The program will feature Coy Johnston on saxophone, Paul Anderson on drums, Jeff VanDusen on bass, and Julie Peterson and Erica Soelberg on vocals. And even though I will be on the piano this is gonna be a great show.

If you do miss the show you can still check out Yeah Man Jazz Christmas CDs at www.yamanjazz.com.

Hello Ladies

How are you?Fantastic!

Seeing that this blog has sadly fallen into disrepair I have taken it upon myself to repair the dis-repairedness. After all, it's nothing that a power drill and an endless supply of duct tape can't fix.

As my first contribution I offer the coolest thing I've seen this week:

So cool.

Second, you will witness the fate of those who corrupt perfectly good art forms; who confuse the general public into thinking that elevator music should be called "jazz"; who shamelessly douse us with endless pentatonic scales and cheap turn/mordent riffs. In this video metaphor the chick with the poofy hair represents Kenny G, while the bear plays the role of Cosmic Justice. Enjoy.



Good Bobo.

A Busy Day

Saturday, yesterday, was a busy day for us.  Mark and I woke up around 5:30 to get ready to go to the race.  We woke the kids up around 6am and helped them change their clothes then we all got in the car with some granola bars for breakfast.  You see, back in January for a family night we had all come up with goals.  Now, it's November and everyone else had long-since accomplished theirs.

Owen--sit up all by himself
Adam--button his own pants
Dallin--read a book all by himself

Mark--100% home teaching (many of the men in our church are assigned to visit families once a month to share a spiritual message and check and see how they are doing)

Marily--Run a 5k.

Spring went by and I didn't sign up for a race.  Of course there are no races going on in the valley in the summer and so when fall rolled around it was on my mind to accomplish what I said I would do.  I pulled down our goals list from time to time and Dallin noticed that I was the only one who hadn't accomplished my goal.  When my good friend Kathryn decided to do a 5k I knew this was my chance so I signed up and trained.  My friend Becca trained diligently with me for over a month.  She was patient with me and nice enough to go at my speed and endurance.  The last couple of weeks I did some running with a few other neighbors too.  I've never been a runner or done much running (or exercise sadly) so this was a big deal for me.

As I was running the race Saturday morning and was feeling tired and wondering why I was doing this I remembered my kids and I knew that I had to run the whole thing because that is what I intended to do and I wanted them to see that Mom accomplished her goal.  I ended up even getting 3rd in my age division, with a time of 28:28.  Not stellar, but still pretty good for my first race.  Mark stood by the finish line with the boys and they got to cheer me on as I ran in.

After the race we stayed at the event for a while and the boys got a chance to play and enjoy some free food.  I am definitely wanting to do Shun the Sun again next year.  My neighbor Monica is trying to get me to do a 10k with her in January.  We'll see.  I'm still trying to decide if I'm a runner.

We let the time get away from us a bit and we had to rush home and change for a baptism for a sweet girl named Eryn in our ward.  Mark played the piano for the service so he ran off while I got myself and the boys ready to go.  Eryn and her sister had taken some photos of our boys a couple of months ago and so the boys knew her too.  Baptisms are some of the best meetings in the church.  By the way, you might want to click on that link above because the photos are worth seeing.  Also, here's their photography website and blog if you are looking for someone who is fabulous with kids.  Both sisters had their cameras and were shooting from different angles.  At another time they each took one of the boys and got individual shots done in double time.  Plus, they were so complimentary to Dallin and Adam that they behaved extra well to please the pretty girls behind the camera.  Anyway, we love Eryn and her sister Rosemary is our neighbor and is also fabulous.

So, after the baptism we came home, changed our clothes, then went to the Fall Festival at Dallin's school.  They had a bunch of fun stuff to do--lots of bouncy things, carnival games, and some really loud techno pop.  Justin Bieber, anyone? 

The boys stood in line at jousting like this.  This is why you don't need to stand right next to your kids.  Because I am sure if we were standing right next to them they wouldn't have been doing this.

Fall photo op gone "decent enough"

Daddy and Owen

I don't normally take pictures of strangers (or post pictures of strangers for that matter), but the highlight of the Fall Festival for Mark and I was seeing the Weasley twins.  These kids looked and acted so much like them (in the early movies) it was awesome.  I don't even think they were actually twins, but they dressed like the Weasleys, had the same hairdo and goofed off like the Weasleys too.

Not great shots, but here's twin #1

And twin #2

So, after the Fall Festival we went home.  I made Mark a list for the grocery store and sent him off so I could get a little nap in before our next activity.  Remember I ran a 5k that morning?  Plus, I hadn't gotten so much sleep the night before and I was feeling quite useless.  When Mark got home we whipped up a fruit platter and rushed over to my sister's for our little niece Heidi's 2nd birthday party.  Heidi is the cutest little thing and talks and talks.  It is hilarious to hear someone so tiny saying stuff like "could I get some ketchup?" 

Then, we went home and got everyone to bed.  I fell asleep on the couch and stayed there all night.  Other than sleeping on the couch it was a good day.

Halloween 2010

This year for Halloween we resurrected a few old costumes from 5 years ago when Dallin was a toddler.  We had to add a couple of extra characters of course because now we have two more little people in our family.  Thanks to a couple of friends (the Cotters and Shumways) for being gracious enough to loan the Jedi and Yoda costumes.  Next year we'll do the work all on our own--I think.  At least I did make the Yoda hat.

Hope you had a good one!

couple of things we did

To update what we've been up to:

Last month we went with our ward on a campout to Potato Lake (near Strawberry).  Made me think we need to actually get a tent to fit our whole family so we can go camping more often.  The second day a lot of people took a walk from the campsite down to the lake.

The kids had a lot of fun getting dirty in the mud.  Dallin had brought his notebook and some colored pencils.  After playing for a while he retreated to a spot by himself to sketch the lake.  He's six years old, people.  If you want something entertaining, you should ask to see his notebook sometime.  It's full of diagrams of robots, rockets, etc.  I think this guy could end up in design someday--engineering, product design, robotics--anything like that could suit him.

Myself, I've been busy with home and motherhood.  Things are busy with three kids.  After Owen was born I thought things would eventually settle down and I'd get the hang of it all but 15 months later it's still chaos sometimes.  I love it though.  Somehow I managed to do some canning lately.  I canned several cans of peaches and a giant pot of spaghetti sauce.  I made the sauce from fresh tomatoes, something I've never done before.  I've done some pressure canning before but canning the peaches in a water bath canner was new to me.

These make me proud:

I've also been working on I Heart Mesa.  We've got some plans in the works for our next step.  It's been a lot of fun to have a project like this to work on.  We're trying to get more readers and make it bigger and better.  Any suggestions?

Last night we went to the state fair.  Mark's family goes every year to see the Figure Eight Races.  Beat up cars racing round a dirt figure eight track.  Running into eachother and nearly crashing on the intersection.  Mark says his Grandma got the tradition started though I still need to hear that story.

Dallin and Shauna

 Owen and Grandma

 Grandpa, Grandma, and Adam

Cheers for now,
Marily

And Adam is Four

We love Adam.  And he had a birthday.  Here are some things that we love about Adam:

Adam has the greatest smile ever.  Ever, I tell you. 

When he is upset it is easy to make him feel better by doing something to make him laugh.  We'll tell him something funny Owen did or if he's throwing a tantrum we might say, "You must be joking," and lots of times he'll smile and laugh at himself. 

He is a great little singer.  His teachers have told us he is the loudest singer in junior primary (kids 3-8), though he is one of the youngest.  He remembers songs easily and is almost nonstop singing throughout the day.  He can even sing most of the Fifty Nifty United States song.  You should ask him sometime, I'm sure he would love to sing it to you.

We had a little party with a few of his friends.  A few weeks prior Adam had told us he wanted to do a "Race Car Water Party."  He said, "The race car team goes 'zoom!' and the water team goes 'swish!'"  In my mind I couldn't figure out how to do that but as time went on he was still insisted that he wanted a Race Car Water Party so we figured out a way to make it work.  Mainly, it was race cars.  I got most of my ideas from other blogs I searched.  I wish I had saved the links to credit but I didn't.  (I love using Google Blog Search for this kind of stuff.)

The game below is where we incorporated Adam's dream of having a race car team and a water team.  The goal: race car team runs around the "track" while the water team tries to pelt them with water balloons.  Simple, strange, but surprisingly fun.

This is one of the fun things I did: I printed out little labels for the kids' drinks.

And that is the conclusion.  Thanks for stopping by.

Dallin is 6

Hi folks.  So, I hear Dallin had a birthday early this week.  Here's how it went down.

Dallin was born on Labor Day, September 6, 2004 at 11:57 pm.  I'm pretty sure my doctor thinks it's great to deliver a baby on Labor Day.  He probably hopes for at least one each year. Fast forward six years later and it's Labor Day on September 6th yet again.

Dallin decided he wanted a robot party this year.  I had a bit of a hard time coming up with games and activities for this party but was just happy it wasn't Transformers or some other character.  We had a good 12 guests plus our own little boys and it was rowdy, but I think they all had fun.

Dallin and his robot cake.

The decorations.  I asked Dallin if he could build some robots to use as decorations for the party and he told me something like, "You know that I'm pretty creative, so I can make some good robots."  We had "Nuts and Bolts" (Chex Mix) and I made labels for the water bottles that said, "Machine Oil."

This is a relay game we played.  The kids had to wear a robot breastplate and use the grabber to transfer the power cells (balls) from the basket to the power pack.

Mark's sister Stacey made this robot costume for Halloween a couple of years ago (sorry the picture's not great.)  She came out to attack the kids and they were suppose to throw balls at her to defeat her.  This is the part of the party that got a little out of control.  Note to self: next time you have fourteen little kids wild at a party you might want to sit them down and explain just exactly what "attack the robot" means and what it doesn't mean.

After the party we went to Mark's grandma's house to see Mark's aunt Penny and her daughter Adeline.  Adeline is Mark's cousin but she is Adam's age.  They were visiting from out of town and apparently Adeline was telling Grandma she "wanted to see her people," meaning she wanted to hang out with some kids.  We went swimming and had lunch.  Adam and Adeline are in this blurry photo here. 

After swimming and getting dressed Owen discovered the fun of the slide.  He would climb up the steps all by himself, get to the top and twist his legs under him precariously until he could scoot forward and slide down.  He did this over and over and it was lots of fun to watch.  All those parks apparently have influenced him.

For dinner later that night I pulled out our birthday plate for Dallin to eat off of.  I painted this with Mark's mom and sisters at As You Wish. 

Next up, Adam is four next week.  Wow.  Just keep the birthday plate on the counter.

Some Photos and Stuff

Here's the ever-popular catch-up post. 

The boys were over at a neighbor's house on voting day.  I hadn't voted yet so I took the opportunity to take just one kid with me to the polls.  On the way back it started to sprinkle.  By the time I got into the house it was raining and soon it was pouring.  Then it actually hailed for a couple of minutes.  It was 110 degrees that day and a couple of hours later ice was falling from the sky.  After the storm calmed down I called my friend to let her know my boys were welcome to go outside and play in the rain.  Her kids came outside as well.  Did I tell you that I love my neighborhood?

Owen had to watch most of it from inside.

Then it cleared up and we got to go out.

Adam is doing Joy School with a few neighbor kids.  There are four kids and the moms take turns teaching preschool.  All of them are almost four, with Adam's birthday next week and the others turning four the same week in October.  A couple of weeks ago preschool was at our house.

Here are the kids doing a sorting activity with beans, rice, pasta, and cheerios.  This kept them interested for a really long time.

This is chocolate pudding "finger painting"

Did you see Owen back there?

He got in on the action as well.

This summer we have been participants with Kaboom in a challenge to visit 50 parks or playspaces around our town.  Tomorrow is our very last park!! If you have any questions about Mesa parks, feel free to ask. :)

Here's Dallin at Quail Run Park:

Owen is a different kid now than he was when we started this challenge in the beginning of July.  At that time he would mostly play in the sand or I'd push him in a swing.  Now he is up and all over the playground equipment, crawling around, climbing up, and even sliding down slides of his own accord. 

At Red Mountain Park:

And someone special (the older guy) had a birthday last week.  I have the greatest husband.  Amazing, I tell ya.

The boys helped me come up with "33 Things We Love About You" for Mark and we wrote them on balloons that we threw around the house.

This is what Owen does when Daddy gets home from work:

And a short video of some of Owen's first steps. 

This was taken about 2 weeks ago. He is getting more and more confident all the time! He's walking of his own accord now and can get pretty far before he falls down. Could there be anything cuter?  I submit that there cannot.

Westwood Reunion

Warriors through and through.  Mark class of '96, Marily class of 2000.

This last weekend was my high school 10 year reunion.  Time to catch up with old friends and see people I haven't seen for years.  It was a long, fun, weekend packed with three different events.  On Friday night was the family event.  My friend Kathryn put it together.  She asked me a couple of months ago if she decided to put a family event together for the reunion if I would be interested in helping.  I said something like, "uh.....maybe?"  So, I wasn't the most supportive friend because frankly, life has been kinda crazy lately.  But I helped out a bit. She had a great idea for a photo booth at the event and the photo above was taken by a fellow classmate in the photography business.

Saturday lunchtime we went to a pool party with a smaller group of Westwood Warriors.  After our senior year of high school several of us drove to the outskirts of town and buried a time capsule to be opened in 10 years.  Our friend Thomas was pretty technologically savvy at the time because he had a GPS to coordinate the whereabouts of the capsule.  Ten years later it was dug up and hauled back to the pool.  I got back a couple of Westwood soccer memorabilia, several photos from school dances, my high school IDs and a letter I wrote to myself.  It's a lot about where I wanted to be in ten years and fortunately I didn't disappoint myself. Go me.

Amanda, Kathryn and me at the pool.  Picture swiped from Kathryn's blog.  (We should have gotten a group shot with everyone, dangit)

Back in junior high, at one time it was just the three of us.  Eventually we made some other good friends, then even got brave enough to sit with the boys at lunchtime.  It started with the group of girls sitting next to the group of boys then one day we devised an infiltration.  At the signal we all got up and each squeezed in between a couple of guys until we were no longer girls on one side boys on the other.  Big step.

That night was the actual reunion. Our friend Josh (the night's photographer) handed his camera off to Kim to take this photo:

And yes, here is a picture actually from my very own camera:  See?  Mark was there too.

Go Warriors!