One more thing.

When I posted about April, I completely forgot about the most exciting event! I have seen it on the West Coast (Portland) and Sean has seen it on the East Coast (New York), but finally we were able to meet in the middle(ish) and see it together. On April 26th, we went to Wicked at the Capitol Theatre in Salt Lake City! We love love love this show, and it was even better watching it from the SIXTH ROW. One of the first times that Sean and I were really attracted to each other was when we were driving up to SLC to attend a tanchaz (a Hungarian dance party, we are cool) and we belted along with the Wicked soundtrack, not caring how good or bad we sounded. The other people in the car thought we were crazy. So yes, Wicked is very special to us, so we were elated to finally see it together. In addition to that, it prepared us for our trip to New York a week later, but since that occurred in May, you will have to wait to hear that story.


.

April showers bring...not a whole lot for the Murphy's.

April wasn't the most exciting month for us. Sean kept going to work and I kept going to school. In fact, Winter Semester 2009 was my last full-time semester, which is exciting, but also sad because I love my dance friends and teachers, and especially because I love Brigham Young University and learning. Education is one of the most important things in my life, which is perhaps why I am more interested in the pedagogical aspects of dance more than the creative facets. I hope Tilly and the rest of our kids will value it as much as Sean and I do. I am planning on doing a post about these topics sometime in the future, especially defending dance as a major (you cannot imagine the reactions I get unless you are a dance major yourself), so I will go ahead and continue reporting on the events of April.

Sean and I both auditioned for performance opportunities in April, Sean for Singin' in the Rain and the Hale, and I for the BYU International Folk Dance Ensemble. Unfortunately, only one of these auditions concluded with favorable results, so I will begin with that one. The Hale Center Theater Orem held the real auditions for Singin' in the Rain at the end of March, after which the show was cast. Sean did not go to these auditions, so obviously he was not cast. As it ended up, several of the men who auditioned and were cast could not or did not want to be in the show. So why did they audition? I have no idea. Anyway, because of this shortage of men, one of Sean's bosses asked (told) him to come to a mini-audition because she knew he had some dance experience. He went, he auditioned, he conquered. That is, he was cast as one of the ensemble members.Between work and rehearsals, Sean was a busy boy. I was so proud of him for stepping up and auditioning even though the only experience with musicals he had had was playing trombone in the orchestra. The show didn't open until June, so I'll write more about it later.

On to less happy news, I auditioned for folk dance again, but this time I did not make it. I was on the Performing Arts Company (PAC) of the International Folk Dance Ensemble back in the 2006-2007 school year. It was a great experience and I discovered that I am in love with the dances of different cultures around the world. There is a folk dance concert every year called Christmas Around The World that is held in the Marriott Center, so when you are on PAC, you are the star of the show. Unfortunately, I broke my ankle on October 26, 2006, so I was unable to dance in the show, which was the first week in December. Naturally, I was devastated. I was also unable to audition for the dance major, but that was less devastating because my teachers loved me and petitioned successfully for me to be accepted without auditioning. Anyway, you can understand how my experience was marred by the fact that I could not dance. By January, I was allowed to dance again, so I still had great experiences going on tour to California, Italy, and France. Long story short, in the spring of '07 we decided to have a baby, so I did not do folk dance the following year. We first found out I was pregnant in September, but that pregnancy ended with a miscarriage in November. I mention this because I had all sorts of thoughts about giving up folk dance to have a baby, and then I wasn't having a baby anymore. Luckily, I became pregnant with Tilly right away after the miscarriage, so those thoughts went away. Since I stopped doing PAC, Sean has seen how much I miss it, so in February of this year, he suggested that I talk to Ed, the Artistic Director, about auditioning. At first I didn't think it was a real possibility, but we decided that I should talk to Ed and just see. I talked to him and he was happy to consider me for the team again, but in the end, I did not make it. Ed asks for a two-year commitment from his dancers, so I like to think he didn't take me back because there wasn't enough room on the team for a one-year dancer, but it could be because of my skill/performance level or any number of reasons. It was, and still is, hard to accept that I'll never perform on a folk dance team again. There have been many things I have auditioned for that I haven't gotten, but dance isn't one of them. I have gotten everything I have auditioned for in dance. I know this is a great growing experience for me, but I would have rather been on the team. I know I should feel like this was what was right for everyone involved, but I just don't feel that way yet. So, yes, that has been on my mind a lot the last few months. Sean has banned me from BYU folk dance concerts for a while because I seem to have a breakdown after each one.... All this said, please do not think that I am deeply depressed or anything. I really am as happy as ever!

So, apparently, even though we didn't do a lot in April, there were still many things going on. The post is a lot longer than I was expecting. Thank you for reading the whole thing if you did. Now here are some pictures from April!

Matilda loves to take baths with her turtle washcloth. It matches her turtle towel.

The Exer-saucer was Tilly's favorite toy for a few months. At least until she started crawling.

Sean fed Matilda some prunes one day and waited a little too long to clean her up. By the time he wiped her face, the outer edge had dried, leaving a prune goatee.

Every Sunday we go to Sean's parents house for dinner. On this Sunday, I took a nap while Sean and Tilly went on a walk with some of his family members. Family friend Justin Wright snapped these awesome pictures. Having Tilly stand on his hand was Sean's favorite trick for a while, until she learned how to sit down from standing.

Apparently we didn't get any pictures of me in April, so instead here is a picture of our house on April 16. That's right, that much snow in the middle of April! I'm still not used to all the snow here.

Highway to Hale

I promise I will write about April soon (all of our pictures are on Sean's laptop so I don't have access to them when I have freetime during the day), but right now I want to invite everyone in Utah to run/walk in Highway to Hale! It is a 10k and 5k race/walk (I will be walking) that benefits the Hale Center Foundation for the Arts and Education, and Sean just happens to be the race director. Please come participate! Click here for more information about the race and how to register. It will be a ton of fun, plus each participant gets a lot of free stuff including t-shirts and tickets to a show at the Hale Center Theater Orem, which has been voted Utah Valley's Favorite Theater several times! So, putting together the slogans for the race and the theater, respectively...

GO TO HALE AND COME PLAY WITH US!

Hannah and the Chocolate Milk

I just remembered my favorite quote from my dance classes this week. On Monday, we were in a circle practicing our plies and tondus when little red-headed Hannah started rubbing her leotard-clad belly and said,

"My tummy is full of chocolate milk and it looks funny."

I laughed very hard on the inside.

My Turn.

Hi, my name is Megan and this is my first time contributing to this or any other blog.... Frankly, I am kind of nervous about it and I don't even know why. Perhaps it is because Sean is such an engaging writer that he can write a forever-long post and keep you entertained the entire time, while I have always been more of a math and science person and tend to do the bare minimum to get a good grade on a paper. Also, I have never been in a habit to write about myself, whether it be journal writing or letter writing. While my brothers were on their two-year missions, I only wrote one or two letters to each, and my record for writing friends on their missions is even worse. Alas, because of Sean's increasingly busy work schedule and my aversion to writing, it has been almost two-thirds of a year since this blog of ours has been updated. Over the past several months, there has been a foreboding dread surfacing within me whenever I thought about the blog. I knew that if I wanted to continue to update friends and family of the recent happenings and thoughts of the Murphy Family, I would have to do it myself. A few weeks ago, I thought to myself, "Ok, I'm going to do it! If I crash and burn, so be it, but I am going to do it!" That resolve quickly amounted to nothing due to the beginning of a new semester and my new "career" as an official dance teacher. But then this week, I noticed that my blog had been deleted from a friend's blog due to the lack of use. I said, "Ew. I don't want to be the type of person who gets deleted," and so here I am. I am here to update you.

Since the hiatus of our blog can be measured in months, as opposed to mere days or weeks, I figure the best way to get everyone up to date would be to go month by month. We ended in February when Matilda turned 6 months old, so on to March!

MARCH

On 3/6/09, we went on a family outing to a Utah Jazz game. This occurred because, of course, Sean won a prize. I'm sure many of you have heard or read the story, but for those who haven't, read the note on Sean's facebook page. Long story short, Sean and Matilda met Carlos Boozer and Deron Williams and I got to take pictures of them. Here are a few:

During Winter semester of 2009, I was on a modern dance company at BYU called dancEnsemble. Our show was in March and my parents came out for it since it was my last performance at BYU and may well be my last dance performance, period. I do not have any pictures of me dancing, but I do have pictures from that weekend.

My parents with two of their Utah grandkids



The roses my dad gave me after my performance

After watching the Friday night performance, Sean hopped in a car and drove to Moab to run a half marathon the next morning. Here he is getting ready to run after sleeping for about 2 hours in a car.

And to finish off March, here is one of my favorite pictures of the month.

Watch for more posts coming soon and find out what happened in April!