Little Mermaid Performance Photos

I don't know who took these but I am grateful!!

More Blargariptoo fun!

Mercury Cast with the District Superintendent 

Our city mayor came to a show as well- Not a really big deal...but it made the kids feel so special! 

Museum Kids Ensemble

These are the 1st & 2nd graders 

Soren's role name was "Liam"

Pirate Ensemble Byron's role was "Daag"

The Production Team

So many months of planning and it was over in a week!!

But so much fun, I love making these memories with my boys.

Blargriptoo!

Space Pirates week finally happened!

 We made it through 2 casts of 60 kids each, 2 dress rehearsals, 2 in-school performances, and 6 night/matinee performances.

It all turned out great!...the black light alien makeup glowed, the pirates were fierce, the sets were amazing and adorable songs were sung with gusto. It all went fairly smoothly as far as make up goes, with just 2 panic amazon purchases, and one emergency trip to Salt Lake for yellow reflecting gaffers tape (thank you Darin!).  

These two were so cute on stage.  They took their parts seriously. Soren was 100% in character as a bored technology obsessed school kid, Byron was especially creepy as an alien that came through a thought bubble (in the song "That's What Aliens Do!") and then as a Space Pirate crew member.  

Grandma, Grandpa and Marcus drove all the way up from Price to see a performance.

Damon and Gwen came over from Tooele

 Of course we all watched as a family.  Miriam saw parts of the show a few times because she came to help me with hair and lipstick when I was shorthanded for a performance.

The crew gathered in the library for a pre show pep talk...before jamming out to Greatest Showman.

 I wish I would have take a photo of the whole stage.  I was just running around so busy I didn't pull my phone out much during the performances. The sets and lighting were amazing, I am constantly amazed by what ordinary people can do when they come together.

I LOVED getting to know the ladies who volunteered for my make up team. So fun to talk and laugh with them in between crazy costume changes. 

Friday night the kids and Darin got to go see Annalise perform in her Jr High's performance of Into The Woods.  I was back at the elementary school...painting Cast A's faces.

It has been a very musical 2 months for our family! 

Now comes the worst part...finding and turning in receipts, then organizing all the supplies so they can be stored for the coming years.  I love the exciting creative collaborative parts of being a production team member...not so much the organizational stuff.

Life...am I right?

I threw a little (ie short but loud) fit the other day.  Its good that these things happen every once and awhile so that I remember what it's like in the head and hearts of my kids when they lose it.  It's just like spaghetti noodles boiling over...growing growing until things just spill. Afterwards...after regretting 90% of what I said, I realized with the help of Darin, that I was once again trying to "make" my kids feel happy and not feel disappointment.  I have a hard time remembering what I can and can not control.  My kids emotions is strongly in the "cannot control" camp but I still hustle to make everything happy and good.  I am not doing them or myself any favors. The hustle is time and mind consuming, it doesn't work, AND we will probably need to get all the kids therapists so they can learn that it's alright....nay...necessary to feel bad yucky feelings.   

Disappointment, loneliness, boredom, fear, anxiety, despair all unavoidable in life, each person needs to develop their own coping/calming strategies.  

Eureak!! I think I just now realized why this is so hard for me! Calming and soothing them WAS my job for a really long time! That was my purpose when they were born, and I was damn good at it if I do say so myself.  This emotional weaning is so much harder than the physical one.  

Anyway.....

So I just love this photo.  I just love these guys. I just love how they love to play video games together, and watch birds, and notice little things. 

Byron is whittling down his Battle of the Books list. He is a voracious reader when it's a funny sci-fi, fantasy book or an encyclopedia type book, but true to life fictions are harder for him to get into.  I love that this program forces him to stretch his preferred reading genre. 

Miriam and Soren went to see Little Mermaid at Centerpoint.  So far Miriam has performed in 2 Little Mermaid Jr's and has seen the musical performed 2 times.  The Little Mermaid story has been a big part of my life since I was born (Dad reading me Han's Christian Anderson version as a tot, the Anime version I rented as much as possible from Bill's Home furnishings, the Disney version came out when I was in Jr. high...I saw it like 4 times in the theatre).  

Little Mermaid and I are like BFF's.  It's funny, Ariel was my fav for the first part of my life, but now I really dig Ursula. It's hard to be a big boned lady with ambition, I love how she bellows her way into the spotlight.

This is what the kids do on winter mornings. The boys are like little ninjas...I am over doing my own thing: making breakfast, packing lunches, look up into the living room and there are blankets with little boys under them. It makes me smile every time.

Space Pirates coming up! The sets are up, lights and sound are working, costumes finished, the makeup is set, the production team is already exhausted. This was suppose to be a smaller low-key play because Lion King was so huge and we were afraid no one would volunteer to take it over after us.

Yeah, well, about that....it just kind of snowballed.  These ladies on the production crew are just really enthusiastic, creative and visionary...I am just trying to keep my part up to their level!

But I am having fun. I get to spend time with mom's I already love, and meet new ones.  The kids are just buzzing with excitement, I love making them feel special.

Soren saw the trailer for Greatest Showman in November while we were watching Wonder.  He said right then and there "I want to see that show!" The rest of us were like..."eh....sure we can Red Box that".  Then it comes out and is so popular and everyone is singing the songs (especially Soren).   Miriam and Byron end up going with friends...all these weeks later we realize that Soren, the one who was excited before it was cool to be excited had not seen the show!

I fixed that....in deluxe style.  This kid is THE MOST FUN to have at a movie. He lives the story right there in the moment.  It's like watching two movies at the same time.  

Utah Classic

Don't get me wrong...I am ecstatic about the snow we got. It is beautiful, fluffy, perfect Utah snow but it came on a difficult day.  I needed to run Miriam to a few practices including a ballroom dance practice in a church on the mountainside with a totally unplowed parking lot (which I have to admit was delightful but also scary) and I slid a yard or two down a steep road on the way home.  When I got home I found a firetruck parked by my driveway. It was actually for someone up the street, the truck just couldn't make it up the snowy road so the firemen jumped out and ran up the street. Then...a few minuets later a snowplow with police lights came. 

Next morning at 5:00 I woke Miriam up to get her ready and up to Hyrum for the Utah Classic. Super fun competition...their samba took 1st, I think their group dance was second? hard to keep track.

M and her friend Josh participated in the swing syllabus.  They made it to the semi finals!!

Cute M and Maddie cheering on their friends dancing on the floor.

M Logan, Max & Maddie along with some other couples from their team competed in a Latin Open.  

I think only couples from one specific studio went on, but it was so fun to watch them all dance their hearts out. I was proud of how hard Miriam had worked on her choreography and how hard her and Logan worked to perfect it.

It was a loooong day, first dance was at 8:00 am the Latin Open was around 8:00 pm and then Miriam and braved Sardine Canyon as the snow started up again. We had to go about 45 mph the whole way but finally made home. Long hard good fun snowy day!

Winter Fest 2018

I know I am crazy, but I agreed to go to Bryce Canyon Winter Fest the weekend Miriam's play ended.  I just had to! The stories were so great, and some of my favorite people were going....plus my friend got us such a killer deal on the hotel room.  Add to that, Byron's 4th grade pass gets us into Bryce for free.  Had to make it work.  How could I pass that up?

So even though we missed all the activities on Saturday and most of Sunday while we were driving down, even though we had a crazy week with Little Mermaid, and even though Soren has a horrible cough, we went.  We made it just in time for kids crafts, watercoloring, and cookie decorating.

Most of our friends ended up leaving early because of the huge snow storm that hit Utah the next day.  Sad...but one of them gave us their room for the night so we wouldn't have to share with the kids. So thats kind of awesome. 

We also ran into the park while the weather was so great. We only hiked for about a hour around the Sunset Rim and a little bit down into the hoodoos. Bryce packs a big visual punch with virtually no effort...you just drive right up to a lookout and hike around.  You can hike down into the hoodoos but you can also get fantastic views and photos from up top.

That night we found a place for dinner (no small feet.....only like 3 options open and one of them had over an hour wait) and then settled in to watch the Olympics before bed.

The winds howled that night! I thought we would wake up to tons of snow...but no, we woke up to this:

a bit of snow but nothing amazing, but it was SO COLD and windy.

Miriam and I went to an awsome yoga class and then met Darin and the boys at the swimming pool. It was funny, there was this crotchety- looking older lady in the pool with us and I was super careful to give her space while we worked on and preformed our "family Olympics" inspired by the ice dancing the night before.  I had thought we were irritating to her but when we got out of the pools she said "it's so nice to see a family playing together".  We talked for awhile about hiking and skiing, she turned out to be very nice! Just goes to show, you can't judge a book by it's cover.

We showered and went to the Bryce Canyon Pines restaurant for lunch (the one with an hour wait the night before).  It was SO good!! I can see why it's a crowd favorite.  They specialize in homemade pies so we each ordered a slice to take back with us. 

Back into Bryce to hit the kids geology presentation and history of Bryce Canyon movie.  We realized that if we did some workbook activities that night in our hotel, the kids could be sworn in as Jr. Rangers the next day.

This is what things looked like when we got back to our hotel...below freezing temps with the wind chill.  After smashing pennies at the General Store we hunkered down for the night. 

We had snacks and breakfast foods in our hotel (tip from my friends who go all the time, food is expensive and there aren't many options in the winter) so we ate a snacky dinner and enjoyed our pie.

Then the kids learned about conservation, tree ring counting, animal footprint tracking, and drew the rocks of Bryce while toggled between the Olympics and the Kids Baking Challenge.

We got through that night, and surprisingly I wasn't too tired the next day.  I should have been, between all the breathing sounds, Soren coughing, the heat coming on and off and my own sleep issues I remember seeing 2:30 am before I fell asleep.  Note to self, spring for 2 rooms. It's worth it.

The kids were sworn in the next day as Jr. Rangers.  We had planned to do the 3 mile hike to get the extra badge, but the Ranger we spoke with said it wasn't the best idea to be out that long because it was so cold and slippery.  She suggested hiking around the lookouts and then driving out to Mossy Cave.

So thats what we did.

Then out to Mossy Cave.  Darin stayed in the car with Soren because his cough was out of control by this point.  The cold air irritated his lungs to him and he was so tired.

Then we hit the road to get Miriam back in time for a babysitting gig. 

Good-bye Bryce! I hope we get back there this summer to do the Navajo Loop!