Tonight, Brittany had her final Orchestra concert at Still Middle School. She played in the 8th Grade Orchestra as well as the Chamber Orchestra (Honors).
They played Viva la Vida, Night at the Museum, Perseus, Farendole, and Shenandoah. They did a GREAT job! Sarah babysat the kids while Angela and I went and enjoyed the evening of great music. Keep up the GREAT work Brittany!
Happy Anniversary, Angela! We can’t believe it! This year makes big 19! We’re getting old… Angela and I were able to steal away for a few minutes tonight and go out to dinner at La Hacienda. We both had steak and the chips and salsa were awesome!
While we were gone, the kids had a little cleaning party and cleaned up the basement! 🙂 It was wonderful to see a spotless room and smiling, helpful children. They sat us down and gave us presents as well. It was very sweet! We have wonderful kids! 🙂
Happy number 19, Angela! 🙂
Today was quite the busy day for the family! Angela got up early and went shopping with some friends. It turns out that there is a new craze around coupon shopping and getting a TON of stuff for pretty cheap! Some call it “black belt couponing.” It takes some time to figure things out (where the coupons are, what stores are having the major sales on what you want, etc.) but once you do that, you can cash in big! Today, they went to Jewel and Angela came home with 44 boxes of various Kelloggs cereal, 12 bottles of Lawry’s marinade, and 4 boxes of Pop Tarts! She got all that (over $200 in groceries) for just over $40! That’s huge!
What you do I guess, is print out coupons for stuff that is on sale. You then go through and use a coupon or two, then get the “catalinas” that spit out of the register with your receipt. You then use those to go back through the line and purchase additional “stuff” with coupons AND your catalinas. You keep doing this and the more you buy, the cheaper it gets. If you’re interested, you can go to http://www.jillcataldo.com to see how this works. It’s pretty cool! We could save enough money in 1 month to cover Sarah’s car insurance! 🙂 We have a friend that told use she used to spend around $800 in groceries every month. She now spends around $200 for her family of 5!
When Angela got home, we went over to Zach’s soccer practice/scrimmage. He loves his team and loves playing! We love it because it’s fun to watch the pack of little kids running around in a big bunch kicking each other and occasionally the ball! 🙂 Plus, it wears Zach out and he comes home pretty tired.
After getting some work done around the house and yard (trimming edges, mowing, raking, vacuuming, dishes, etc.), Angela, Sarah, Kirstyn and I went to Waubonsie High School and watched their production of Les Miserables. What a FANTASTIC show! They had a rotating stage, just like the production on Broadway, and the voices and acting were amazing! It’s no wonder our school district gets Grammy Gold status every year at one of it’s high schools! Angela and I have both seen Les Miserables on Broadway and we both think that, with a few small exceptions, this was very close to 
Broadway quality! 🙂 What’s even more amazing is that the strongest voice we liked the most came from a Sophomore! Sarah knows him well and they went to school together for years. There was a young man from our ward in it, as well as a couple from other wards. Sarah knew many of them from high school last year. It was also amazing how many of the kids with major parts came from Still Middle School (where our kids go)! 🙂
Even though it was the school edition, it was still about 2 1/2 hours long and the music and singing never stopped the entire time (except during intermission, of course). Kirstyn was kind of confused at times about what was going on because she was not familiar with the book, so I talked her through the series of events and answered her questions. She even thoroughly enjoyed it!
Tonight Kirstyn and Zachary participated in the Gombert Elementary Variety Vortex show! Zach was a background dancer in a group number and it was so cute to see him in his shades doing his thing! 🙂 Kirstyn sang “You Belong to Me” by Taylor Swift. She did a GREAT job! The music she had was the karaoke version with no melody and no words (just background singers on the chorus). She is quite the talented little singer.
There were also a couple other kids with some great talent that sang and played the guitar! So far this week, we have had stuff going on every night and it will continue on tomorrow! Crazy week!
On another good note, Dad had his open heart surgery and everything went incredibly well! He was only in for 2 hours and the valve replacement went perfectly. The doctors couldn’t believe, however, that he made it through his knee and hip replacement surgeries, etc. and survived. He’s one lucky guy! All our faith and prayers paid off! Whew! He is still at the hospital and in the ICU, but will be moved to normal recovery soon.
Last night and tonight, Brittany was a shining star in the Still Middle School production of Guys and Dolls. She, along with all the other cast members worked very hard over the last couple of months and it really showed! There is a lot of talent there this year. Brittany was in the chorus and was also (as I mentioned before) the chorus manager. She had a great time. In the play, here stage name was Scarlett Sanders. 🙂
Angela and I also participated in the musical as well. Since we were in charge of all ticket sales, marketing, and distribution, we were there both nights at the will-call/sales and ticket distribution tables. On Tuesday night, I watched the musical with Kirstyn and Zachary while Angela stayed out in the hall and watched the door (we called her the door Nazi)! 🙂 Tonight, Angela and Sarah watched and I played guardian of the door.
Below are some of the pictures from the musical:
We wish that we could post more pictures here but I think the woman in charge of photography said that she took over 2000 pictures during the past two months! 🙂 Each night, there were about 400 seats max and Tuesday we had 360+ in attendance, and on Wednesday night, we had 310+ in attendance.
Brittany went to the cast party at Culvers right after everyone broke down the set and had a great time!
Great job Brittany! Way to really break a leg!
Today, Brittany sang a duet in church with one of her friends. The title of the selection was “Everywhere I Go” by Sally DeFord. It was incredibly beautiful and they did a GREAT job. Brittany was nervous because she was singing both harmony and melody parts throughout. It was a very difficult song to sing, but she nailed it. I wish we had a recording of them singing. We have a great deal of talent in our Ward and it’s great to see it being used in sacrament meetings!
Brittany is participating in the Still Middle School production of Guys and Dolls, and Angela and I have been very busy helping prepare for this. We were assigned to be the chairs of the ticket sales and distribution committee. We had to come up with the order form to go out to everyone, a ticket tracking and payment tracking system, design and print the tickets, and distribute them the nights of the musical (April 27th and 28th).
It has been fun, but a LOT of work! Here are the tickets we designed…
We hope that they sell out both nights. Right now, things look promising, so we’ll keep our fingers crossed. The kids have been practicing very hard and Brittany is loving singing. Not only is she in the chorus, but she was designated as the Chorus Manager! 🙂 She gets to do all kinds of things from helping direct the chorus to taking and tracking attendance. It’s boosted her confidence a little, I think!
Tonight we went to a concert at East Aurora High School put on by the BYU Idaho Sound Alliance and Vocal Union. This was presented to the community through the help of the Public Affairs arm of the church here, of which Angela is a part. She has worked very hard over the last couple of months to help make this happen. She has done everything from helping select the site, market the concert, and her main job of finding places for all the members of the group to stay overnight after the concert! It has been very stressful for her, but the concert turned out GREAT!
Sound Alliance and Vocal Union combine to create an instrumental and vocal concert that will entertain and inspire audiences of all ages. Both groups represent what is best in the students at BYU-Idaho. The group presents a multi-faceted program with both ensembles interwoven to present inspiring vocal and instrumental jazz selections.
Sound Alliance is composed of 17 jazz musicians selected through a highly competitive audition process. Their repertoire ranges from the artistic to the “just-for-fun-of-it.”
Vocal Union, an ensemble of 12 singers, performs a variety of styles which feature the tight harmonies of vocal jazz in a performance of popular, big band and classic jazz tunes.
There were over 1000 people in attendance and everyone who went absolutely loved it! The groups did jazz numbers together playing instruments and singing, and they each had separate numbers as well. It was VERY entertaining! It was a great way to spend a Friday night as a family.
Today Brittany had her track meet at Waubonsie High School. Right now she is trying to juggle being in the Musical and running track at the same time. She hasn’t been to many track practices and the coaches have been really good about this. With not much practice, however, she got her personal best time in the 200 of 32.96 seconds! We are very proud of her! Just think of what she could have done if she would have been practicing every day! 🙂
She also does the triple jump and the 4 x 400 meter relay. The 200 is her favorite, however.
Go Brittany!
We found out that my dad has to have open heart surgery next week! 🙁 For awhile now he’s been having chest pain, but ignored it somewhat. He told my brother Greg about it (who is a cardiac PA) who then listened to his heart. Dad has always had a slight murmur (rheumatic fever twice when he was a kid) but this time the murmur was way worse. Greg told him to have it checked immediately, which he did. Bad news… he has critical aortic stenosis, which means the aortic valve is just a tiny little hole right now for the blood to get through. That would explain the pain and him being so tired (not enough oxygen getting out to his body). The scary thing is that at any time, if something were to block that off, he would die. Today, he went in for an angiogram and with the exception of the valve, everything looked OK. No bypasses will be needed, but it’s still a major surgery that will take 6-8 weeks of recovery. They’ll completely open him up and put in a bioprosthetic valve (from a cow). We are all very thankful to Greg for his experience and insight into this. He probably saved Dad’s life. Please keep him in your thoughts and prayers.
Brittany made the High Honor Roll for the 3rd quarter! She was so excited! She got above a 3.8 and we are very proud of her efforts!
She worked very hard all the way through the quarter. She told us that she was going to do it this quarter if it killed her and she stuck with it the whole time. It was challenging but she breathed a big sigh of relief at the end! 🙂
Great job Brittany!
Today was Zach’s first day of spring soccer! He was so excited that he got up way early and got dressed and ready to go. At 7am he was ready to get in the car to go, and we didn’t have to be there until 10am! 🙂 It’s fun being his head coach and we have a fun team. There are 10 kids on the team and they vary a great deal in talent. Some have played before, and others have not. The important thing, however, is that the kids have fun.
The trainer for the kids this season is much better than in the fall. He didn’t get too technical with the kids and kept things very fun and simple. He seems to really like doing what he does. It also helps that I have 2 great assistant coaches who can help me keep things in order.
The kids practiced for the first half of the hour and then we scrimmaged another team. It is so funny to watch kindergartner’s play! 🙂 Zach had a ball and can’t wait until next week!
Sorry, I didn’t get any pictures! 🙁
