Today Kirstyn had another basketball game, this time at Fischer Middle School. She was really excited for this because Fischer hasn’t won a game yet either. She got a lot of playing time and got to start the game with the jump ball again…
They played really hard and well and WON!!!! Kirstyn was SO excited after the game. The final score was 10-12 and was very close, but a win is a win! Congratulations, Kirstyn! Great job!
Tonight Kirstyn had her band and orchestra concert at Still. She did a wonderful job and we are so proud of her! Ben came with and the only way we can get him to sit still is to bring the iPad or iPhone. 🙂 One of his little friends from church was there as well so they both sat quietly with their electronic devices!
With Ben nice and quiet, the concert went really well. The band, chorus, and orchestra all performed. Kirstyn did 3 numbers for each.
Keep up the great work Kirstyn! Practice makes perfect! 🙂
Today Kirstyn had another basketball game, this time at Crone Middle School. She is getting better and better each game. We are working on encouraging her to be more aggressive. 🙂 Today she got to play a lot more and she even got to start the game with the jump ball!
She did a great job, but in the end, they came up on the short end. It really doesn’t bother Kirstyn much as she is just SO excited to be out there playing what she is really loving doing! 🙂
Great job Kirstyn! Keep up the good and hard work!
Tonight we had a re-broadcast of the 100th Anniversary of the Seminary program. We missed the original broadcast due to the Youth Theme Fireside for the year. Our Ward, the Naperville 3rd Ward, and the Oswego Ward all met in our building and watched the broadcast. I was in charge of all the technical equipment and it went off without a hitch (laptop, downloaded content, projector, microphone hook-up, etc.)! Here is the link…
http://seminary.lds.org/history/centennial/
It was very good and they had some great talks. After the fireside, we had some refreshments. We decided to involve all the Deacons and Beehives in the broadcast as well because eventually they will be in seminary and we wanted to get them excited.
Today Zach’s basketball team played Coach Tony’s and Coach Jeff’s team. They got to play against the other half of their Packers football team. We were hoping so much that Zach’s team would win (at least to make up for all the losses on the football field). They did! They actually looked really good and beat the other team by a bunch. It was sad for Jeff and Tony, but oh well… 🙂
Tonight, the girls went to the basketball game at Metea (they won of course) to play in the Pep Band. After that, they drove over to the Naperville Stake Center to a church dance. They had a blast and came home talking and talking, and did I mention talking? 🙂
Today was a crazy and busy day. To start (after a full day of work and other related items), Kirstyn had her basketball game. She played hard but they lost. Every game she’s getting much better. It’s great to see! 🙂
After the game, we ran home, and got Zachary ready to go to the Gombert Elementary Open House. He was so excited and had worked hard to put things together to show us. We really felt bad for him because we had a BIG ARTSpeaks event tonight and so I took him over to Gombert, quickly looked through everything (while Angela went to the event to help with the pre-event coordination), and then I ran Zach home and went over to the event myself. He was a little down, but I did my best to look at everything in the time we had. He brought a bunch of stuff home that he was proud of, so we’ll give him some one-on-one time to look at his things with him.
As soon as I got Zach home, I ran over to the ARTSpeaks event at the Neuqua Valley Gold Campus. It was titled How the Arts Create the Competetive Edge for Students. We had 3 featured speakers from around the country: Brian Pertl who spoke on “Everything I needed to Know about Business I learned at the Conservatory,” Sean McCollum who spoke on “Why you Can’t Keep a Band Kid Down,”, and Professor David King from Harvard the spoke on “Conducting Oneself into College and a Successful Career.” Their BIOs are below:
Brian Pertl, ethnomusicologist, received a B.M. in trombone performance, a B.A in English from Lawrence University and an M.A. in Ethnomusicology from Wesleyan University. He then moved to Seattle to undertake his Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology from the University of Washington. Before completing his degree, he was offered a position as an ethnomusicologist at Microsoft. He, along with a team of other ethnomusicologists, helped pioneer the use of music and sound in multi-media reference titles, by selecting, licensing, and captioning over a thousand music excerpts for Microsoft’s Encarta Encyclopedia, Encarta World Atlas, and Encarta Africana. For ten years, Brian managed the Media Acquisitions Group, Microsoft’s central resource for selecting, tracking, and licensing all forms of audio, images, and video.
Sean McCollum was born in South Dakota, raised in Wisconsin, and now lives in the hills above Boulder, Colorado. Along the way, he has been lost in nearly 50 countries, climbed mountains and volcanoes, and sailed across the South Pacific. He has counted birds for the Audubon Society, scuba-dived the Great Barrier Reef, taught in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and ate a goat’s eyeball in the Sahel. A writing prof once told him that to become an interesting writer, lead an interesting life. He is an accomplished writer of many children’s books and is currently writing a book about the CIA, creating Web site materials to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Marvin Gaye’s album “What’s Going On,” and researching an article about sports rivalries.
David C. King is a Lecturer in Public Policy at The Harvard Kennedy School and Faculty Chair of two programs: Harvard’s Program for Newly Elected Members of the U.S. Congress and Harvard’s executive program for leaders in State and Local Governments. He lectures on Legislatures, Political Parties, and Interest Groups. Professor King joined the Harvard faculty in 1992. In the wake of the 2000 presidential elections, Professor King directed the Task Force on Election Administration for the National Commission on Election Reform, chaired by former presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. That effort culminated in landmark voting rights legislation signed by President Bush in late 2002. He later oversaw an evaluation and new management structure for the Boston Election Department.
The event was facilitated by Chip Staley, the Fine Arts Department Chair for Neuqua Valley High School. The presentations by all three speakers were wonderful and we had a great time! There were about 200 people that came! We had hoped for a few more than that, but the room was just the right size. Brittany came with us and she enjoyed the event as well. After the speakers, it was opened up to the audience for questions, which there were many of.
After the event, Angela and I went over to a restaurant/bar for with the rest of the ARTSpeaks Committee and the speakers for an after party. We had a great time talking to everyone. We had a fascinating conversation with David King. He lives right down the street from Mitt Romney and that ended us up talking about BYU, the church and other fun things (like big Catholic families and big Mormon families). 🙂 We had some great food and then were on our way. What a great (but exhausting night)! 🙂
Today was a pretty busy day! Kirstyn (in addition to basketball practice) had auditions for the school musical. She is very excited for these and has been practicing like crazy. She really felt bad last year after not making it and is determined that this year, she will be in it. She is (as are we) concerned that the basketball participation may inhibit her ability to make it (due to conflicting schedules) but we’ll keep our fingers crossed.
Brittany went out driving this afternoon for one of her last driving sessions with the school. She is so excited and is getting much better at driving than when she first started. I am finally starting to feel comfortable riding in the car with her… 🙂
Tonight at the church, we had a combined young men/young women activity called Human Clue. Sarah was in charge of the refreshments. They ended up having a french fry bar which was really cool! The Human Clue theme was around the Book of Mormon and so the classrooms the teams of kids visited were Book of Mormon places, the people in the rooms were Book of Mormon characters, and the weapons were Book of Mormon or ancient weapons. It was a LOT of fun.
The refreshments were great too! Sarah titled it a “NeFry Bar.” 🙂
Unfortunately, I didn’t get a picture of the table fully loaded. It was really cool with all the fries out on the table, the cheese, and all the other things. Great job Sarah!
Today was Kirstyn’s first basketball game as a Lady Bulldog. We had a great time watching her. She still isn’t 100% sure exactly what she is supposed to be doing as she has never played competitive basketball before, but she did great! She even scored!!!! For me, that was the best part of it, even if they don’t win a single game all season! 🙂
They got beat pretty badly (26-4) but the good thing is that Kirstyn scored half their points! 🙂 We had a chuckle about that. 🙂 We look forward to seeing her play in many more games. She really likes playing basketball.
On another less important note, today was my (Kirk’s) birthday. We celebrated a great X anniversary of my 29th birthday! The boys me a wonderful birthday cake that was decorated with about 10 gallons of sprinkles!
For the celebration, and we had steak and all kinds of non-vegetable things for dinner! 🙂 I got some great presents, including one of the funnest which was to go and watch Kirstyn play and see her score her first points! 🙂
Yet another really busy Saturday… This morning, Kirstyn went to EEP where they discussed electronic circuits. She loves being a part of the engineering program. I had to hurry and go pick her up after her event and ran over to Zachary’s second basketball game. He had a great time and they WON AGAIN!!! Two in a row! He was so excited!
This afternoon (thank heaven we didn’t have to take them), Sarah and Brittany went up to the high school and played in the Pep Band for the boys basketball game. They always have a great time when they do that. Angela and I spent the time they were gone working with Kirstyn and the boys to clean up the house and then we played a game and watched a movie. 🙂
Tonight was very cute. Sarah took time out of her busy schedule and took Zach over to Gombert Bingo Night for a date night with her little brother. Zachary was so excited to be with his sister and to have fun at the school. They didn’t end up winning anything, but both had a GREAT time and got to spend some time together. What a great sister! 🙂
Today, we all went down to the Morris ward building right after church to support Sarah as she received her Patriarchal Blessing. What a WONDERFUL experience that was for Angela and I to sit in on this very spiritual event. We spoke with Patriarch Burkhart for awhile and then he excused us in order to speak with Sarah alone for awhile. He then invited us back in and gave her the blessing. It was a very touching blessing and she was promised some great things if she lives faithfully. It reiterated to us yet again in our lives how much we are loved and cared for by our Father in Heaven, and how much he knows us personally.
Sarah may not fully understand what was said today, but when she receives her copy of the blessing and reads (and re-reads it) throughout the years she will come to understand how important it is. I don’t think I really understood how important mine was until I sat in that room today and listened to my own child receive hers. Wow!!!
We had a great time as a family driving home, talking about the blessing and what it could mean in Sarah’s life and how important it is for all to receive theirs. It was a great family together time.
Congratulations Sarah on this great step in your life. It will serve as an invaluable help to you as you grow up. 🙂
Today was an absolutely CRAZY day! We had so much going on we didn’t even know where to start! The first part of the day was taken up shopping for basketball shoes for Kirstyn. We looked all over and it was hard to find women’s high-tops! She finally found a pair she liked and that were really comfortable so we were relieved!
Unfortunately, they cost us almost $100. I know, that’s typical price for quality shoes, it’s just crazy that they cost so much.
We then took Zach to his first Basketball game, and he was pretty nervous (although excited too). He was concerned that they might have a season like they did in football where they didn’t even win one game. 🙁 They played GREAT and they WON!!! Zach was so excited! He got to play a lot (great coaches that are all about playing time and having fun rather than winning).
Let’s hope they win more games… 🙂 That would be great! He is really loving playing basketball, although he’s not quite 100% up with what’s going on yet since it’s only his first time ever playing! 🙂 Go Zach!!!
Tonight, Brittany and Kirstyn had parties that they went to so we had to truck them around. We decided to have a date night, so we left Sarah at home with the boys in order to get away from some alone time! Thanks Sarah! 🙂
