David's dance festival and graduation

I have been feeling like this year has been filled with so many "last times" and this is one of them - the Cascade Elementary Dance Festival. Each year, each grade prepares 2 dances to perform in the field. Here's David and the 6th grade boys rocking out!

David and Adam

More David and Adam, they did a great job and looked like they had fun doing it!

Here's the 6th grade later that day for graduation in the auditorium.

David and a bunch of his buds - Brian, David, John, Brett, Adam, Jake, Nathan and Enrique. Do you love the matching outfits thanks to the dance festival?

Adam and David

Here he is...the 6th grade graduate!

David and his teacher, Mr. Jacob. What a great year it has been for David. It may not fully hit me that I don't have anyone at the elementary school until next year when David and Caroline both head out the door for the Junior High bus. It will be weird to have everyone gone at 7:15, but until then...summer!

What is wrong with this picture?

"Dashing through the snow...Jingle bells! Jingle bells!" Caroling? Hot cocoa? Skiing? (needle screeching across a record) Yes, today is May 24th. 4 days until summer vacation, swimming, flip flops, sunscreen, air-conditioning and popsicles. Well, maybe not.

Katie participated in Orem High's spirit bowl last week and got, well, a little dirty. Mostly we have been having wet weather, not the white stuff, but rain, and this was an outdoor activity. Ok, there were fire trucks that hosed the ground that made HUGE mud puddles and the kids had a blast jumping in and sliding through the mud. As soon as this broke out, the principal came on the loudspeaker and told everyone to go home and they were not allowed back in the building because everyone was so filthy. Michael didn't get dirty and refused to let Katie in the car for a ride home (good boy). One of Katie's friends offered a ride in the back of a pickup (thanks Kaylee). I am not sure how this should count as one of the 180 days of required education but oh well, textbooks have been checked in for several days now so I guess what else is there to do? Actually I was glad she had fun, this is what makes memories.

We have almost come to the end of this years performances. Here is Caroline singing her last Treble Trios concert. On to Footnotes next year and she is excited that they get new, cute dresses.

The next event was Senior Honor's Night at the high school. Michael earned a bunch of awards and sure made his parents proud. He has been a great student. As he said on his facebook page this weekend "6 days until the rest of my life". Way to go Michael! The tall guy is Zach Blackham, his roommate at BYU in the fall.

Next, Senior Showcase, which is a drama, dance, music performance night. It honors the graduating seniors that have been involved in these things through high school but others can try out. Katie and Aubree tried out with "What is this Feeling" from Wicked. The director picks one big Sophomore number to put in the Showcase and they got picked. I have posted the video at the end, sorry, I can't figure out how to put it in the right order. It isn't great quality, you know, huge auditorium, camcorder, well, you get it.

For those of you living under a rock and not as obsessed with Wicked as we are, Katie is Elphaba(later know as the wicked witch of the West) and Aubree is Glinda. I seriously never get tired of the music from this musical. This takes place pre-Dorothy while they are roommates away at "Dear old Shiz" and the feeling they are feeling is Loathing.

"Boo!"

They were fabulous and so fun to watch, especially because loathing is not how they feel about each other.

David's soccer team had an end of the season BBQ. Here they are minus 1 player who had a scout campout. What a great season they had and will be together next year as well.

Boys!!

Here's David getting his trophy.

Sunday night was Seminary recognition night. Michael got a 4 year certificate and was one of the speakers for the night. He told about a story in the Book of Mormon that touched him and why. Michael is a very good speaker and expresses himself well at the podium. I truly enjoyed it. Knowing your children have a love of the Savior and a testimony of the scriptures is the greatest blessing a mother can have. Grandpa Lorin made the round trip all the way from St. George just for this and a bunch of other family came, too. Thanks for the great support everyone.

And now for Wicked...(the beginning is not so loud if you want to turn up the volume and then turn it down when they get going) Enjoy!!

Just a Reminder . . .

Just sos ya know people, the kids in this family are a part of this here blog. I repeat this is not my mom's blog, it is the family blog. Oh look! Wadooya know! Just as I was writing this radical post my mom comes over and says "are you writing something on my blog?" gasping as her eyes widen. I'm serious here. Well this post is basically just for fun cause I never ever participate in this blog and I wanted to feel included . . . . now I bet your thinking OMG, what mad person has taken over kirstin's blog! What is happening!!!! WILL THE WORLD SURVIVE!!! EEEK!!! call the national guard! whoa. Hold it there peoples. This is a non-violent post. Really. Not even freakin' jokin' here. (as you can tell by my whipper-snapper sonny speech, I am a teenager.) Speaking of non-violent jazzy stuff i believe we should all wear clothes over our mouths so we don't accidently inhale microbes and harm the poor little things. They have lives too! Just imagine: a nice sunny mini house floating out in space, there's a cute little dog named speck and a little boy running in the yard while his mother prepares breakfast. Daddy walks in and eats his eggs and happily goes off to work whistling a little tune to the microscopic birds . . . . NEVER TO RETURN. And do you know who caused this. YOU. prepare to be guilty! Little bit of Jainism there for ya. Well i've run out of topics now so . . . .see ya later. Peace out. Yo. Long live the youngers.

Spring Fling

This is the last date dance of the year and both Michael and Katie went. Here is Michael and his date Keri Erdmann for the "day date" part. They went to Comedy Sportz and then for shakes after on Friday night. I may get pictures later of Michael's group. There were somewhere around 12 or more couples, Michael wasn't sure. Katie's group didn't have a separate day date, but went to the park and played games before a BBQ at our house.

About a year and a half ago our whole extended Abbott family went to Hawaii for 2 weeks at Christmas for Chuck and Oranee's 50th anniversary. Just before we went, we bought fabric to make Katie a Hawaiian dress for the vacation. Well, being a month before Christmas we didn't find time to actually make the dress. We had started cutting out the pieces but nothing was sewn. The theme for this dance was surf's up so Katie wanted to finally make the dress. We procrastinated once again and found ourselves sewing on Saturday. We finished in time, though, and she got to wear it. We both took turns doing different parts and got it done together.

Almost done!

Here are Katie and Ben Cookson at the park for pictures.

The dress turned out great! These are the kids in Katie's group. Being that none of them have their driver's licenses yet, Nelson and I drove the crew all around, back and forth for the night.

Michael and Keri before the dance.

All 24 plus kids in Michael's group had different color t-shirts with their date's names on the back. Michael and Keri's color was white. I can't wait to see the pictures of the whole group!

Ben and Katie in the back yard for the BBQ.

After the dance, they came to our house again for tiki torches, campfire and s'mores! What fun!

Mr. Mom and Mother's Day

Well, sports are winding down. Here is Michael at the region track meet last week waiting for his turn at the javelin. He got an Academic All-Region award, that was a nice surprise for the day! He and Katie competed but won't be going to State this weekend so I guess we are done. David's soccer team lost in the quarterfinals of the tournament Saturday so they are done, too. Track is over for Caroline also. They all had a great year and it will be nice to have a little more wiggle room in everyone's schedule.

Michael has adult roles this year in school. This last weekend he got his turn to have a baby. They have the baby for a little more than a day and have to care for it properly and get graded on how the computer chip in the baby scores them. Michael got a 97 so I guess he will be a great dad!

He named his baby Abcde(pronounced ab-suh-dee) Amanda Abbott, or AAA battery for short, that's what she runs on. He and Connor spent most of their time in the basement playing game cube, watching movies and trying to sleep. Connor's baby was maybe more difficult than Michael's but they both survived.

Ingenuity. They used the spare diaper tethered in the baby's arms to support the bottle.

Happy Mother's Day to all of the mothers reading this! I had a wonderful day and hope everyone else did, too. Nelson canceled church meetings Sunday morning so he was home to make breakfast with the kids and hang out. It was really nice. Then we went to church and the graduating Seniors spoke about mothers. I didn't realize until a couple of hours before church that Michael was speaking. He did a great job, it was funny and real. My kids are awesome.

Then we went to Chuck and Oranee's for dinner. The guys are in charge of all of the food and cleanup so it's especially wonderful to sit back and be waited on. Ahhhhh, mother's day is one of my favorites.

Happy Birthday Michael

Eighteen years ago Michael made his entrance into the world. Here he is with dad on the way to the nursery while the doctors finished up with mom.

Michael was the center of our world, what first baby isn't? This is in Long Beach at about 2-3 months old.

Thomas the Tank was HUGE with Michael. Here he is with Katie and Dad.

Look how big my baby is now! For Michael's birthday today he got 1 candle on his strawberry shortcake to represent the beginning of his first year as an adult, well, also we couldn't fit 18 candles on his portion. One of the traditions we have for birthdays is the birthday person gets to choose what we eat for all 3 meals on the day of their birthday. These are usually their favorites of everything. Michael's birthday happened to fall on fast Sunday so we ate his favorites on Saturday. Then for dinner on Sunday we had his choice: steak, baked potatoes, salad, zucchini, homemade raspberry lemonade and strawberry shortcake. We had a great day. The Seniors were invited to the Church Educational System fireside, these are generally for young adults, and then stayed after refreshments for a testimony meeting. He didn't get home until 10 so we had dessert late.

Michael also earned his Duty to God certificate for Priest and earned the medallion for earning all three Duty to God certificates. We are so happy with what a fine young man you are, Michael!

Spring Fling Asking

With two teenagers old enough to date, it seems we have a lot of dance date experiences. Spring Fling is the next dance and it is girl's choice. Katie and a group of friends have plans to go together as a group and she asked Ben Cookson to be her date. We went to the piano store and got a grand piano box and spray painted her asking...

This is in our driveway testing out the plan. Michael and I carried the box to his driveway and put the box over the top of Katie. Then Michael rang the doorbell and ran. He came out and yelled to a friend next door that he just got asked. Katie started shaking the box so he would know someone was inside. He lifted the box and she showed her face long enough to reveal the asker and then we all dashed away.

Her answer was this jack in the box wrapped up in another box on our doorstep the next day. I don't have any pictures for Michael because the whole thing happened at school. They announced Monday morning at school the details of the dance and during 2nd period he got asked by Keri Erdmann. She asked Michael on a piece of paper, crumpled it up and threw it at him. She was hoping to get caught passing a note because the teacher they have makes you stand up in front of the class and read your note out loud if you are caught. The teacher turned to face the class, she aimed, and just as the note went sailing, he turned his back again. It was a nice try. Michael responded the same way in a later class period. The dance is in 2 weeks so watch for pictures of the event to come!