A Very Merry Un-Birthday

As of today at 11:18 AM, Matilda is officially 18 months old. It really is crazy how fast time goes once you have a child. Her doctor's appointment isn't until next week so I'll be sure to post all of her stats then, but don't expect her to be much over 18 lbs, maybe 19. She is our pint-sized bundle of joy! Since I never posted anything about her first birthday, I am posting some pictures from her two parties (one in Oregon, one in Utah).

OREGON-12 August 2009

 

 

UTAH-22 August 2009

In the past six months, Tilly has changed so much! She has a lot of curly, brown hair and everyday she looks more and more like Sean. On her birthday she was still about three weeks away from walking, but since then she has learned walk, run, jump (tries to at least), and dance like there is no tomorrow. Trust me, I know a little bit about dance, and I can tell she is going to be fantastic. She is always coming up with creative ways to use her arms and legs, and she dances differently to different music. And she loves to twirl, not to mention sing and read. She is talking quite a bit these days and I finally got around to teaching her a couple of signs ("milk" and "more"). I showed her the sign for milk twice and she figured it out. Our favorite time with her is right before bed when we all get on our bed and play. Matilda loves to go deep under the covers and just laugh. She is at an age where she loves to hide and find new sneaky places. I could really go on and on about this sweet little girl, but I think I have done enough gushing for now.  We are continually amazed by her brilliance (that's right, she isn't just smart, she is brilliant) and we are always so anxious to see her in the morning and love her a little more.

Here are a few more recent pictures:

RIP Eggplant

Yesterday, we lost a dear member of our family. She has been on many adventures with us. She was present for our first kiss. All of my closest family and friends have had the pleasure of meeting her. She was a dependable protector who held our safety at the top of her priorities. She was my 1994 Acura Integra. She didn't actually die. She is actually still going strong with only 120,000 miles on her. Unfortunately, it was time to sell her off to someone else. My parents bought Eggplant for my sister when she got her license and then came my turn about two and a half years later.

I have had the Acura as long as I have had my license, so it was really hard to finally sell it. It is funny how you can become so attached to a car. I have so many memories in that car, whether it be driving to the beach with my friends in high school or going on a 3 AM trip to Walmart or the dollar theater my freshman year at BYU. As I mentioned, Sean kissed me for the first time in that car. We bought a Mazda5 in September and have really been dragging our feet about selling the Acura. Since we are both extremely sentimental, we would have kept it if it wasn't so impractical for a young family to have three cars with only two drivers. Eventually, Sean did list it on KSL and yesterday we got three calls about it. We ended up selling it to a young woman who is married to a mechanic, so we are glad that they will take care of it.

So finally, this is my final farewell to my little purple car. Adieu!

 

 

Hale will freeze over...tomorrow.

Tomorrow is the third benefit race that Sean has directed at Hale Center Theater Orem. This is the 2nd Annual Hale Freezes Over 5k & 10k Race/Walk! Of course, we always want more runners to sign up (which you can do here), but what we really NEED are more volunteers! For the last race, Sean and I were at the theater until 3 AM the night before putting together the race packets and getting everything ready. We would love to not have to do that again. We have positions for volunteers starting today (29 January) at 6 PM, plus a lot more for tomorrow morning starting as early as 7 AM. We invite everyone in the area to come out and participate in a great event! Volunteers get a t-shirt, food, and two tickets to HCTO's next show, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. If nothing else, everyone should be jumping at the chance to get free tickets to a FANTASTIC show with a FANTASTIC cast!

I assume anyone who is interested has one of our phone numbers or is at least our friend on facebook, so call, text, send a message, whatever and let us know what we can sign you up for!

Graovsko Horo and Sopsko Kopanica Success!

This semester, I am the TA (teacher's assistant) for Dance 370, which is the advanced world dance class at BYU. As mentioned in previous posts, I absolutely adore world dance. My dream job would be to be on the world dance faculty at BYU, but unfortunately BYU is in Utah and I am not too keen on sticking around here for the rest of my life. I wish that I could travel the world and learn every culture's dances, but that is impossible, so instead I decided to TA a class so I wouldn't have to pay for it since I am a part-time student. So far, it has been a wonderful experience. When I have assisted in other dance classes, I have felt pointless and underused by the teacher. That is not the case in 370. The teacher lets me make comments and corrections at anytime and I feel comfortable doing so. After every class there have been students asking me to go over a step or section with them, which has been great teaching experience for me, plus I love seeing the "Ah-ha" moment when they finally figure out the rhythm or footwork. Another great thing about the class is that the teacher actually lets me teach, which is the inspiration behind this post. Last week, his car broke down in Salt Lake City so I taught the Wednesday class, and then he auditioned for the MFA program in dance at UCLA on Friday, so I taught then, too. Not only did I get to teach, I got to start NEW dances with the students! We had just finished our Russian unit, so I taught Graovsko Horo and Sopsko Kopanica, which are from Bulgaria. I was able to teach the whole Graovsko Horo dance on Wednesday because it is short and fairly straightforward in rhythm and pattern. Kopanica, on the other hand, is pretty complex.

*On a side note: When I am anticipating something, no matter how frivolous, I usually have dreams about it. When I dreamed about teaching Kopanica, it did not go so well. The students acted like 2 year olds and didn't listen to anything I said. At the end of the 50 minute class, they hadn't learned a single step. It made me cry. Literally. I woke up crying. It was ridiculous. I really wasn't very worried about it, but I was having a hard time trying to come up with an effective way to teach the dance.

So come Friday, I started teaching Kopanica, which has an 11/16 meter, which is unheard of in this part of the world. To my surprise, we were able to get through half of the dance in that one class! I was so proud of the students for picking it up so well. Probably the best part of the class was when 5 or 6 students came up to me separately and told me what a good teacher I am and how I made the dance easy to understand. One girl told me how a few of them had learned the dance about 2 years ago at an audition and NOBODY got it, and that she was amazed at how easily the class was catching on. It made me feel so good! It was probably some of the best praise I have ever gotten and it reinforced my reasons for wanting to be a dance teacher. After the Bulgarian unit, we will be moving on to the two Bharatanatyam dances from India. Once again, I am excited because the teacher wants me to teach the first dance. I love Indian dance! It is quite possibly my favorite. I am writing my twenty-page capstone paper about Indian dance. So yeah, I'm excited to teach it.

I'm going to finish this off with some of my favorite things about being a teacher (I teach or assist 9 classes a week, ages 3-college students). I think that all teachers will be able to relate to some of these, no matter the subject they teach. If you have any to add, post a comment!

Some of my favorite things about being a teacher:

• Seeing kids grow in their skills and abilities everyday.
• Watching order come from chaos. When I first teach a dance, everyone is trying to figure it out and are constantly forgetting things, but after some time, they master the dance and it becomes a work of art. 
• Being a positive influence in what can be a harsh environment. 
• Finding ways to break down a movement phrase (or problem, or concept, or whatever) so that everyone can understand, which can be a challenge since people learn in so many different ways.
• As I mentioned before, the "Ah-ha" moment when something clicks and the student just gets it.
• Providing exposure to an art form that is mostly absent in public schools. 
• Loving my students and feeling their love in return.

That's enough for now. This is a semi-long post, and I'm not going to apologize for it.

It's Cookie Time!*

One month of every year, I look past my bias against baking (which exists merely because I'm not very good at it) and I enter a world of sugary chewiness where I just happen to be Mistress of All. Ok, that is an overstatement. What I mean is I bake a lot of Christmas cookies. And I mean a lot. As soon as I finish this post, I will be heading into the kitchen to make my favorite Christmas cookies, which includes, and is most likely limited to, Chocolate Crinkles (pictured above), Russian Tea Cakes, Shortbread, and Snickerdoodles. This is the first time that Snickerdoodles have appeared on my Christmas cookie list, but I could not resist because they are basically my favorite cookie. Tomorrow morning I will have dozens and dozens of cookies all over my kitchen. So my question is:

Who wants some?

I'm serious. If you live in the Provo/Orem area, let me know if you are interested. I didn't give any away last year and I ate nothing but Chocolate Crinkles for two days, no joke.

*PS This movie inspired the title of this post.

To Mac and Back

Our little family went to McMinnville over the weekend to see my family. I couldn't leave until Saturday morning, but Sean and Matilda went out Thursday night so my parents could have more time with the girl. I was there for a whopping 48 hours, but I had some good times visiting with my family and seeing people from my home ward. Here are a few highlights:

1. My Dad. When Sean and Tilly walked hand-in-hand through security at PDX for my dad to pick them up, Tilly saw her grandpa and immediately dropped Sean's hand and ran to my dad. This warms my heart so much. Matilda hasn't spent a lot of time with him since we live 800 miles away, so I asked Sean if he pointed my dad out to her and he answered no. I love that Matilda was able to recognize him and got SOOOOO excited about seeing him. Also, we were there for the Mac 2nd ward Christmas party. My dad was asked to sing "We Three Kings" with a group of men and was so nervous about it. He loves to sing, but has never had ANY musical training and has a difficult time singing the right pitches. They sang the song acapella and it sounded great! I even listened hard for my dad's voice and I could hear that he was singing the correct notes! I was so proud of him.

2. Family Dinner. My siblings and their families in Oregon all came over for stew and pumpkin pie on Sunday. There were 10 adults and 10 kids, altogether. After dinner, we watched the First Presidency Christmas Devotional, but with 10 kids running around and making noise, I didn't get a whole lot out of it. I held my 7 week-old nephew for a long time and played Christmas Charades with my nieces. I feel so lucky that even during such a short trip, I was able to spend some quality time with my family.  After everyone left, Sean and I watched the devotional again and were really able to feel the spirit of Christmas. My favorite talk was President Uchtdorf's about humility and "seeing" Christ in Christmas.

3. Going Through Stuff. My closet (can it be considered my closet if I've never actually lived in that house?) is full of my stuff. Old Halloween and dance costumes, American Girl Doll paraphernalia, possessions I have had for at least 15 years that I don't really care about but I haven't gotten around to throwing them away. One of these trips I am really going to go through the boxes, but last weekend I started looking through a box from my senior year of high school. I found my graduation mortarboard and the various tassels and cords I wore. I found some pictures that brought back a lot of memories about the wonderful group of friends I had in high school. And I found my cheerleading uniform. I have lost about 15 lbs of baby weight since August (finally!) so I decided to try on my uniform, although I wasn't very hopeful. It was a little bit tighter than it used to be, especially in the, um, chest area, but it definitely fit! It makes me happy that I finally have the body I'm used to back and I'm able to wear my old clothes again.

December 3rd = Baby Day

L-R: Janneke, Kathy, Gretchen, Sarah, Megan

This picture was taken in August of 2006 when our folk dance team was on our way to Nauvoo, Illinois to perform for two weeks. Janneke and Gretchen were already married, but the rest of us were all married within two years. These girls are some of my best friends, so we always have fun recreating this picture when we get together. It is amazing how many memories one little picture like this can bring rushing back to your mind. We took a picture together in 2008 when we were all married and reminisced about this time in our lives and marveled at how much can change in two years. Now, just over a year later, four of us have children and Kathy is due in January. I was the first to have a baby and then Gretchen had little Hannah about 4 months later. In fact, a year ago today I was visiting her in the hospital, and just now I returned home from visiting Sarah and her baby girl in the hospital. Amazingly enough, Janneke and Sarah both had babies today! That's right. Three out of the five of us have had babies on the same date. Apparently, Kathy and I missed the memo about the third of December. I guess we can try for that next time.

Congratulations to Sarah and Justin and Janneke and Danny and their new babies!