Katie rubs shoulders with fame

I am going to catch up on the recent past and decided a good way to do that was to start with today. Today we went to the Tabernacle Choir broadcast on Temple square with our exchange student and a couple extra students as well (posts to follow after he leaves, Tuesday). While we were waiting for the broadcast to start I noticed someone shaking hands and talking to people. It was Orrin Hatch and Katie went up and shook his hand and talked to him for a minute. My kids are so brave. I'm not sure at her age if I would've had the nerve to do that. "Hi! My name's Katie Abbott and I just wanted to shake your hand." Ha! Katie you are awesome.

Before the broadcast they announced the names of a couple of important visitors. One of them was Brendan Graham. Never heard of him, have you? Well, he wrote the song "You raise me up". Really. Katie was so excited. After the broadcast she tried to go up to him to get his autograph or something but he was escorted away before she got the chance. So, we went on a tour of Temple square(in Japanese) and then walked up to see the Christus statue. As we were leaving, he was walking in and we stopped him and introduced ourselves. He is from Ireland and has a great accent! He said that this was his first time to see the choir and it was like he was a little boy (I guess meaning he was really excited). So, here's Katie with him, too. It was an eventful visit to Temple Square!

Keep checking in and look backwards in time(back to Sept. 20), sorry I do this but I am planning on catching up with a ton of posts from the last 6 weeks...

Abbott family Halloween party!

This picture got stuck in out of order, please excuse. Here is David in 2002 wearing his bat costume. He was 4 and on his way to preschool. Scroll down a ways and check out which costume David chose to wear this night. His official costume wasn't ready for the night so he grabbed the old stand in.

Nelson's sister Lisa had a family Halloween party, complete with pumpkin shaped bread bowls for our chili, costumes and pumpkin carving.

Yum!

Katie came straight from rehearsal so she made an impromtu costume.

Look at all these good sports! If you look closely a few pictures back you can see my costume, orange trick or treat t-shirt, nice.

Caroline the mime and godzilla (grandpa).

David the bat.

In addition to Halloween, we celebrated birthdays for Matthew, Jacob, and Grandpa.

Crazy girls!

Lots of muck to scoop.

Halle's carving team, the California cousins.

Caroline's pumpkin was destined to be the Rembrandt of the evening...so much that it never got finished. Maybe next year she can be professional again.

Katie and Lindsey's on the left, Harry Potter mania! Brittney and Matthew on the right, how cool!

David's true blue BYU pumpkin!

Grandpa is taking piano lessons and now serenades us from the piano as we visit. What a great thing to take up in your 70's, that's awesome!

St. Louis

Nelson, Katie and I went to St. Louis for an HHT patient conference. Chuck, Oranee and Ali came also. We have been to conferences before but this is the first time we took Katie. We thought she was old enough and they actually had a youth program for the first time. Her classes were WAY more fun than ours so next time I am signing up for those classes. They got to use the echo bubble machines on themselves, get hooked up to O2 sat monitors and ride bikes, hold embolization coils, have a tour of the hospital and all the machines, went on a field trip to the St. Louis science center and Imax, and ride in the virtual reality machine they brought in among other things. We got to sit in a large auditorium listening to expert radiologists, cardiologists, pulmonologists and pediatricians give their power point presentations. Good stuff but not as exciting. At the recommendation of some locals we went to the City Museum the first night we were there. This place was more amusement park than museum! The first picture is of the outside of the building. It is 10 stories tall and the first 4 floors have all kinds of themed play areas made out of all types of materials. Yes, that is a school bus teetering off the top of the 10th floor. You walk out in it and look down...freaky. There is a ferris wheel and a huge slide on the top of the 10th floor.

Ali, Nelson and Katie climbing in one of the many creations.

Ferris wheel!

This is built on the edge of the building and Nelson and Katie climbed to the top. The view was fabulous from up here!

Katie and Nelson in a giant hamster wheel.

Katie eating an ice-cream cone in an old fashioned bumper car. Ah, to be the only child amongst 5 adults, she really enjoyed the attention.

In one area, there was a big arts and crafts area with free projects to make. One huge wall was a chalk board to draw on.

On Saturday we went to see the arch. Ali was on the ground on her back trying to get a picture and a guy offered to take her place and get a picture of all of us (Chuck was at the conference still).

Awesome picture, huh?

Saturday night there was a gala dinner and auction to raise money for research. It is always a lot of fun. Chuck was the auctioneer and he's the real deal.

Our flight home on Sunday was overbooked and they were asking for volunteers to give up their seats. One of the agents told us we would get $400, hotel for the night, meal vouchers and confirmed First class seats home the next day. We didn't have much time to decide because they were starting to board the flight. In the few minutes we stood trying to get things figured out, we got the idea we could pay to rent a car and go to Six Flags that day with the money they were going to give us(and pay for Katie's upcoming choir trip) and miss school the next day. Katie went to the restroom and while she was gone a different agent came and said that no, it wasn't $400 but a travel voucher for later and our flight the next day wouldn't be first class. On top of that, she had homework to turn in the next day, she would miss school and the term ended that week, etc. etc. By the time she got back from the restroom all plans were shot and we were just flying home. Oh, I felt so bad for Katie! It's too bad we couldn't be more spontaneous, next time I guess we need to plan more time to see the place we actually came to visit.

Michael's 5 second blog #2

Well it's been a long time since anyone posted anything, so I am. College is good.

Piano, swim...yes. Farmer Kirstin...no.

Choir is one of Katie's loves. She is the President this year for Concert Choir and she gets some opportunities to accompany also. I told her at the next concert her page turner needs to sit on the other side so I can get a better picture. Way to go Katie!

Michael loves to swim, and his sisters, too. Trying to get a nice picture....

success!

Even though this grew in my yard I cannot take credit for it. I grew weeds in my garden this year. My neighbor grew cantaloupes and this one found its way under the fence a while ago and then grew big. Lucky me!

Time for swim again!

This year we have both girls swimming for Orem high. This is the first meet of the year, the Blue and Gold. The captains divide up the team and they swim against each other. Katie was on the blue team and Caroline was on the gold team. It made it difficult to get dressed that day, blue? yellow? what to wear? Nelson, being both diplomatic and supportive, wore a yellow shirt and blue shorts. It was too much for me, I wore black and white.

Caroline needs to work on her game face. Gold won so Katie ended up serving dinner to Caroline.

Caroline swam the 500(uuugghhhh). Katie, showing that team Abbott pulls more weight that blue or gold, holds Caroline's lap boards in the pool as she swims.

During fall break we decided to take a break and go camping. We took Chuck and Oranee's rhinos along with a friend for each kid. We went to five mile pass, about an hour from home.

The views were great but we sure did get dusty. There are a ton of windy, bumpy trails.

We roasted hot dogs as we watched the sun set.

The next morning we went a couple of miles the other direction on the rhinos to watch a model rocket club launch some rockets.

There was everything from little beginner rockets to 6 foot monster ones. It was pretty cool.

We rode the rhinos for a while longer and then went home. David is trying to pretend he is asleep, an impossibility on these trails. The last one we went on was like a mile long sine wave, updownupdownupdownupupdownupdownupdownupdown. Hopefully no one went home with whiplash, HOLD ON!

life...not as usual

I didn't grow up in a household where fall was synonymous with canning. The first time I ever canned or witnessed anything being canned was 14 years ago when my mom and grandmother came together to Utah to visit. It was September and they couldn't resist having a canning session I guess. I have canned tomatoes once since then and peaches another time. This is the latest. The not as usual part is that I actually did this BY MYSELF. Ok, I did make several phone calls to friends with experience before, during and after but it was just me.

Purty, ain't they!

I love it when we get invited somewhere for dinner. It's just so nice to spend the day knowing I get the night off! The stake presidency and their wives invited all the bishops in the stake and their wives to a cabin for yummy food and some get to know you games. It was a nice evening.

After David's last soccer game of the season we stopped at the BYU practice fields to watch Michael's intramural flag football team play.

Michael's friend from high school Matt Gowans is on his team. The team they were supposed to play didn't show up so they played a different team whose wives and kids came to watch them play. Michael thought that was kinda weird.