Tonight we had a “I’m a Mormon” fireside activity at the church for a ward activity. It was very well put together. We had a wonderful presentation in the chapel, and then afterwards, we had refreshments and booths/displays about all facets of the church in a “trade show” format around the outside walls of the gym. This was kind-of a “dry run” for a larger one we will be doing later on this summer or early fall where we will all invite our friends and neighbors to participate.
Today we took all the youth 12 and up to the temple to do baptisms. It was a great experience and it was nice to have all three of my daughters up there. This was Sarah’s last trip as a youth and she was kind-of sad that her time is almost up. 🙁
This evening we had our Pearls of Wisdom event at the church. This is to honor all the graduating seniors. Sarah had a huge amount of stuff set up for a display table and it was fun to see.
There were 4 seniors that participated. Each senior was introduced by a sibling (Brittany spoke and introduced Sarah). Then each senior, after being introduced, spoke for a few minutes on lessons learned in life up to this point, and each gave advice for those coming up.
Sarah did a GREAT job and we were very proud of her. It is hard to believe that her time in high school is almost done. Where has the time gone since we were giving her baths in the kitchen sink in Provo! 🙁
Today Sarah paid taxes for the first time!!! She came in a little close to the deadline, but no worries. She ended up having to pay Illinois taxes (go figure – this state is so screwed up)…
On a much better note, Metea Valley High School had their big end-of-the-year bash, which they called Senior Road Trip. It looked absolutely amazing and they had so much going on. The courtyard outside was all done up like Yellowstone, they had a Hollywood Boulevard, all kinds of games, food, etc. Everything was all included with the hefty $50 ticket fee we had to pay. 🙂
There are so many pictures that it’s hard to give a good sense of how big this really was. Don’t have any of Sarah that I know of (these were all taken by someone else), but I’ve attached a few below…
Sarah had a blast! Before she knew it, it was 6am in the morning and things were winding down. 🙂
Today we had day 2 of our RLF Re-connect, and it was even better than the first day! Cliff Higbee (our facilitator) flew out from Salt Lake just to be there with us. He’s a great guy and we all respect him quite a bit.
We met at the Eaglewood Resort and found an area in the dining room where we had a couple of activities, mostly around catching up on what has been going on in our lives, and how our learning from RLF has helped us get through these trials and triumphs. We also did a team building activity that Cliff brought. He wanted to try something out on us before actually doing it in an RLF session. We don’t mind being guinea pigs for this kind of thing!
At lunch, we drove down to Oakbrook, picked up some food from Portillo’s, and then went over to the Grant Thornton building to eat and finish the day. I wanted to provide some give-back to the group, so I volunteered our facilities to do some presentations, etc. We did a couple activities there, one of which was a 2-hour presentation from me on the Covey 4 Disciplines of Execution (4DX) process and how it can help us with our current business responsibilities. It went very well and I got a lot of great comments!
After the presentations, we left and went over to the Claimjumper Restaurant for dinner. Angela met us over there and it was great to have her meet all the folks that I have become such great friends with. We had a great dinner and awesome discussion and then we went over to Lucky Strike (bowling alley) for the remainder of the night. We had fun bowling and eating more food!
What a great last two days. I can’t wait for the next event! 🙂
Today I had an absolutely wonderful day! We held day 1 of a 2-day Regional Leadership Forum (RLF) Re-connect with a bunch of the folks from our group. We had 8 or 9 people there and we met at the Eaglewood Resort in Elgin. We read a fascinating book on leadership called It’s Your Ship from Captain D. Michael Abrashoff of the US Navy. We had an in-depth discussion of the book, and had some other activities where we sat and discussed what was going on in our lives and such.
After we had our serious activities for the day, we all went over to Chicago Motor Sports and played Whirlyball for a couple of hours. We had a blast. It brought back memories from our second session of RLF when the whole group went there and had a blast.
It was really great to see the folks who came. We all wished there was more, but for those who did attend, we really had a great time catching up and enjoying each other’s company. Tomorrow we will proceed with day 2 and Cliff (the facilitator from our session) will be there.
Today we finally got the outside wood on the house painted! It was MUCH needed and I had put it off for so long. We found a painter that had done other homes in our neighborhood and had done a great job. He power washed the wood and prepared it yesterday, and then painted today. He even took off all the gutters and put them back on after painting. It looks great!
Tonight, Sarah and the Laurel Class at church had a Teacher Appreciation Dinner. She invited her Spanish teacher. While that was going on, I taught the scouts part 1 of the Computers Merit Badge. Fun stuff! 🙂 Sarah had a great time and next year, they are going to do it again, but expand it to the entire youth group!
Yesterday we filled all the plastic eggs we had with candy and hid them in the back yard for our annual family Easter egg hunt. The boys had a blast! We invited the two little boys from next door over to join and they had a lot of fun as well. It was fun watching the boys run around the yard and find eggs. It’s not that much of a challenge for Zach (and the girls joined in as well), but it’s still fun…
Today (Easter Sunday), we had a wonderful day together as a family. I had abbreviated meetings so I could stay home a little bit with everyone. The girls got matching Easter dresses and were excited to get pictures taken with them together…
Everyone at church thought that they looked really cute together. Brittany was a little embarrassed that she looked like everyone else, but she got over it quickly. 🙂 The meetings were really good and when we got home, we had a great dinner and a wonderful “resurrection cake” covered with white frosting and coconut. Happy Easter everyone!
Angela was called last week to be a Den Mom for our Pack and she is very excited! 🙂 She can’t wait until Zach becomes a Cub in July. She had her first Den Meeting today and although the kids are pretty rowdy, she had a great time and loves doing things with the boys. 🙂
Today was a monumental milestone for education and for our family!!! Sarah accepted her letter of invitation to BYU Provo and also signed up for her housing! We have an official BYU Baby Cougar in our family!
The only down-side (and probably won’t be when she gets there) is that when she went to sign up for housing, Heritage Halls was all filled up! 🙁 She was kind-of bummed because it’s close to campus and they cook their own meals. So she looked at Wyview Park which is still on-campus housing but a little further out (far northwest side of campus, north of the stadium). We made a couple of calls to folks we know and Sarah is ending up rooming with the girlfriend of a son in a family that used to be in our ward and we are great friends with. Sarah has met her before and is excited to get to know her better. The apartment she will be in is pretty nice. It is a 2 bedroom and she’ll have 2 other roommates. We spent a little more money and so Sarah will actually get her own room (which will be nice for her to study and sleep when she wants).
Since it’s a little further away, it will give Sarah a chance to get some good exercise. She’ll either have a bike or walk, and we think that there’s a shuttle for when the weather turns cold. Turns out that this option was even cheaper than Heritage and it’s even newer and nicer.
Yea Sarah!
This weekend was a pretty busy weekend due to General Conference. Kirstyn had EEP and then the rest of the weekend was spent watching conference sessions and learning a bunch. Last night for the Priesthood session, we did our usual get-together at Portillos for dinner and then went over to the session as a group.
This morning we had a sister and her son from our ward over for breakfast. She is moving this next week. 🙁 We are very sad to see her go, but it is the best for her and her son.
Today we had our neighbors over for a BBQ and had a great time. We got to know them better and the boys really were excited to have people over, even though the kids are in middle and high school. Kirstyn also went to a birthday party of one of her friends and had a wonderful time!
