Part 2 - Shannon's Birthday

Part 2:  Shannon's birthday........yeah, I know it is April.  But she will be 16 all year long!      The Laurels and their leaders came and set an early alarm in her room and the poster said "Arise and Shine Forth".  This is the theme for the YW this year.  Then someone decorated the outside of the door, including Doug's truck and left a sweet brownie.  

So part 2, which was actually done along with part 1, a blog made a few weeks ago, but, I failed to do the pictures in order so you get what I give you.  In this 'Ostrich Fishin", you go on this huge monster truck (sorry I forgot to get a picture), but it's huge, and they drive you through the desert scenery out there and then they stop at this platform where you get 'poles', attach grapefruit and the ostriches will come up and grab them.  The kids totally loved it .  After that we just walked around and fed deer, goats, donkeys, and ducks.  There was probably more, but I can't think of them right now.   



Always on the move.

Shay and Katelyn (friends of Shannon)

 Katie not really really liking this.

This ostrich doesn't know who he's dealing with. 

Okay, this was new this year.  They have this large lifty thing with this Goat Penthouse on it.  There is no way for these goats to go any where, so I'm sure they must change them out every hour?, but what you do, is put food in these containers, crank this handle and the food works its way up the 'pulley' line and then dumps into a canister that the goats eat from.  Too funny!  If you weren't careful with the 'cranking' it starts swaying pretty hard and then the food spills out before it reaches the top and then the goats are MAD!  Because they know the food is coming....... 

Katelyn, Bethani, Shannon and Shay

These pictures need explanations:  Jason was having a great time, as seen in picture #1.  Then he and Doug decided to try and feed them with their mouth, being very careful as seen in picture #2.  I think Doug must have chickened out, because you see him laughing and then grabbing Jason's neck and pushing him into the goat!  It was so-o funny! 

 

here, they come

Poor Stacey, no birds

No food, so we'll poop on her hat.

 Thanks for sharing your Birthday with us Shannon!  We had a great time!

I walked today.  Here is why.  After returning from Hawaii - later in the blog - I had been asked to help chaperon a choir/orchestra/band field trip to Thatcher, Arizona, about a 3 hour drive.  The bus I was on had only the choir kids, about 25.  The bus driver was kinda mean, the teacher had to be strict to keep the kids in line and I mostly observed.  After performing their 2 numbers at Eastern Arizona College, where there was the best, greenest, softest grass ever,

 we waited for the orchestra to be done.  We knew we had boys on our bus that had to return as close to 3pm as possible because of sporting events that they were involved in, so that meant we had to leave before noon if possible.  (And we still had to stop and get lunch somewhere, and as mentioned before about the mean bus driver, we weren't going to be allowed to eat on the bus. Not one thing).  To shorten the story, we did NOT get off before noon and it was going to be a close call.  About an hour into our trip home, we came to NON-MOVING traffic.  NON-MOVING for 2 hours +.  There had been a fatal accident about a mile- mile and a half ahead of us and it was just sit and wait time.  There are only two lanes of traffic - no side roads, no shoulders to try and drive on - NADA, ZILCH, NOTHING.  No bathrooms.  We didn't get back to the school until after 5pm.  11 hours on a bus (mostly) with 30 teenage kids.  That is why I walked today.

smoothie mustache. Jonathan is so proud.

Now....Doug and I decided to jump on a plane to Hawaii and surprise Jill.  She was going to be walking through the graduation ceremony, although she won't be officially done until August, at BYUH.  She was totally shocked!  It doesn't look like it on the video though, because Vin was sleeping and she had to be quiet. II'm sorry. I've been working on downloading it and of course there is a problem, so I'll work on it and hopefully post it later.)  It was great.  Jason ALMOST ruined the surprise, but that will remain non-discussed.  We were there 5 glorious days, being with Vin, Jill & Jonathan and of course, getting to the beach 3 of those days.  The weather was great, but the waves were killer.  Not too great for Doug to do his snorkling.  Here's a few pictures!!!

The family will love this one.

             

Cute family!

a big one.

I love this!

In the ladies bathroom.

Jonathan faceplant-but saved Vin........Vin in his casual eating preference.

Jill not as brave.

My pictures are a disaster.  I can't figure out this new post settings and I am struggling to figure out how to move my pic's and comment on them.  I have given up.  If any of you want to see most of my picturers, and there are some cute ones of Jill's family, go to Costco.com....click on their photo tab...sign in to my account: reebeck10@juno.com/password is melvin find the Hawaii album.  I think this should work.  http://www.costcophotocenter.com/album/

All these pictures were shot with just my little point and shoot camera - Sony.  I'm pretty impressed.

Part one - Shannons b-day fun.

For her birthday, Shannon decided to take 3 of her friends out to the Rooster Cogburn Ostrich Farm, which is about an hour south of Phoenix. After being inside the farm, we came out to the cars and ate a little bit of 'lunch' and Carolyn (or Jeff, I'm not sure who), pulled out this baseball pitching little thing and we all had a bunch of fun with it. First of all, the Birthday Girl: Her friends: Shay,, Bethani, , Katelyn S, , some family members: Um, Katie, it didn't quite go as high as you pointed.. Treysons turn..... Camden tried, then mom (Stacey) helped, they didn't do too well, then he threw a fit.. Grandpa's turn... Oopsie- Daisie, he turned too fast......or is he throwing a fit also?! "Grandpa, you're silly!"

Walmart moment...

I hope this is big enough to see..this is my 'see who's shopping at WalMart' photo. Zoom in on bum. I want you to know how hard this was to try and take while driving. Luckily, they weren't paying too much attention to the fact that I was behind them going super slow.

The calming of April...we hope

The play is officially over. The costumes have all been check in. The set is all taken down. The props have been put in the portable room #510. I will have to say it was quite the experience and both Shannon and Allan have expressed the desire to try-out and perform in the next years play. Yikes.
Although I love taking pictures, the play is not one that I had alot of time to focus on. (no pun intended). I am sure there are many sites to find pictures from. I won't bother you with them.

However, I will show you a few events that we have snuck in before, during and around the play. Dress like your favorite animal day. Scary Sheepdog? Shannon wore a giraffe print coat, so I didn't get that picture...maybe you can just imagine it.

Mesa High also held the Mr. Mesa. First year they have ever done it, so we weren't quite sure what to expect. But each boy had to have an Evening Gown, a Swimsuit and then a talent, just in case they made it that far. Allan did make it to through the talent compition and then failed in the next part, which was styling a girls hair and adding makeup to her face. He then was cut. I think his offical placement was #5.


His talent was the Napoleon Dynamite dance - found here: (he is not the one dancing hehe)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kr7djGY1fhA

He was spectacular. We were so proud. (teardrop).

I am having an enjoyable week with the grandkids! Camden I had Tuesday and Thursday for about an hour each and then Celynda and Brians kids are here. They were here yesterday for about 6 hours and we invited over Carolyn's boys (they had a half day of school - as well as Shannon and Allan) so we had a house full of yelling, crying, sleeping and hungry people. Yes, I fell into each of those catergories too!

I can breath...

First of all, it has been brought to my attention that in the last blog I wrote I called myself a sewer. Nope not this , but this Seamstress is the work I should have used. Sorry. And sorry to Mom if I offended her....you know, for making me a sewer.

But here is a quick summary of why I haven't written too much in the past month.

Mesa High School play, 'Beauty and the Beast', costumer/seamstress/designer/etc.

It really started out small. I was on the sewing committee list, the costume coordinator gave me 2 village girl dresses to sew. Done. Turned them in and received two more. Done. Turned them in and found out some of the dresses were too hard for others who had signed up to sew....in all I made 9 full village girl dresses (apron and corset too). Also, helping to complete 4 others - the corsets were complicated....and then we embellished all of the aprons with ribbon and a few bows on the girls sleeves. I also ended up sewing two of the napkin costumes - altering 6 napkin ring belts, twice on some of them...I altered 7 plate tops - taking them from a 'coat' looking thing - down to a slenderizing vest (a major feat, especially since each girl wanted them as snug as possible) and the material used in these 'vests' is NOT my favorite material to use: Satin - all I saw for days was frays (and trying to stop them with zig-zag stitches plus a straight stitch) and string flying all over my bedroom. When it was getting down to crunch time -5 days before the 'run through' - 6 days before the play began......our costume coordinator left to be with a daughter who was in labor. Hmm....there were about 5 of us who literally worked nonstop for those next few days - I was living down at the school -sometimes working up to 12 hours a day. It was crazy. With a week left the director realized that we had no one working on the enchanted plates. Late one night I went to Wal-Mart to buy dog food - got an inspiration of what might work - made up a 'prototype' ran it down to the school at 1:30 in the morning (I knew they would still be there), and got an 'okay' to go with the plates, honestly, finishing on Monday, for the full dress rehearsal. We had to repair Shannon's during Monday night for a painting error - but they were done for Tuesday nights parent show. Crazy! Oh, also, I had to make Cogsworths pants, 9 village boy knickers (luckily pants that were in the schools closet that I only had to cut off, add each leg band and velcro to them.). I didn't take pictures darn it! But if they do it again, as I hear they might, I will for sure learn how to take pictures in the dark without a flash. Here is a web sight that has a few pictures. If you look hard you can see Shannon in a couple and Allan in a few too. Look really hard though! Love to you all!

https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Mesa-HS-Theater-Arts-Presents/147390068615619

go into the photo section!