Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Temple Celebration

I've decided I am getting just as bad at blogging as I am at journal writing! Kind of like the same thing, so it really isn't such a shock to me! But I am sorry you have been looking at the same lovely picture of Justin now for 2 weeks, wondering what that was all about! As it turns out, it has to do with the new LDS Oquirrh Mountain Temple that has just been built. We are lucky enough to live in that new temple district, and because of that, all of our youth had the opportunity to participate in a Temple Celebration. It was a huge production, involving about 8,000 youth from the Salt Lake Valley here in our district. For 3 months they practiced every week to learn dances and songs to perform in the Conference Center in Salt Lake for the Prophet and General Authorities of the church as well as thousands of family and church members. Each stake was assigned a different dance theme depicting the history and different cultures of the state. Our stake was assigned the Polynesian Culture. They learned the hula, the poi balls, a Samoan dance, the Hakka, and I believe a Tongan dance. Justin, of course, was demonstrating the final pose in the Hakka in my last post. Everyone worked so hard, and the final result was an amazing production! Youth who did not participate in the dances were a part of the choir--2,000 strong! It was incredible! I was lucky to be friends with the gal in charge of the whole thing for our stake, and she asked me to be a captain over some of the youth from our ward. That meant I was at every practice, helping and watching as it all unfolded and progressed. What a great experience, for myself and our youth! Here are just a few pictures from the day of the event.

For the final dress rehearsal and production days, we were assigned the same kids to ride in our cars. I had the best group of the bunch! They were all so much fun. Their excitement and enthusiasm was contagious! Here are a couple of shots of them.

On the way out to the car after the performance, it was so crowded and busy, the girls were afraid we would lose Jordan among all the people since he was one of the shortest there. They decided to be his protectors....oh yeah, he was lovin' it!

Check out my friend Amanda's blog for photos from the actual performance...she was our stake photographer and has some great shots from inside the conference center.

Saturday, June 6, 2009

Rounding out the kids talents

May was a busy month for us! It included lots of performances for our family. Tyler loves to sing and has enjoyed being a part of the school choir called Melody this year. They had their spring concert last month where they sang several songs from popular movies. Here's a picture with one of his friends before the concert began.

Jordan is still enjoying playing the violin in the school orchestra. Every spring the school district does a "monster concert" with all of the elementary school orchestras in the district. It's really exciting for Jordan, and this year they did a spectacular job!



Now, we are a little bit worried about the new talents Justin has been developing....



There is a story behind the photo....more to come soon....

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Final Soccer Game...

Who knew soccer could be such a dangerous sport?!!!!
Poor Brett really did get smashed in the face during the final soccer game of the season while playing goalie. I think he took a cleat to the face, to be more accurate. Not only did it mangle his glasses (which luckily got repaired), but it left quite a bloody mark on his face, that unfortunately won't heal quite as quickly as the glasses got repaired! Justin, on the other hand, was reclining quietly in the big rocking chair during the final soccer game due to the fact that he had surgery on Monday. As many of you know, he was born with a club foot. Thanks to an amazing doctor 14 years ago, he walks and runs and does everything else just like any 14 year old boy. However, one of the things that can happen with a club foot is that his feet, calves, and leg lengths tend to be different. To avoid future problems, the doctor put some staples in the growth plate of his right leg to hopefully allow the left leg to catch up to it in length. After they gave him his valium before taking him off to surgery (see pictures below--too bad I didn't video it--he was hilarious!), the doctor came in and talked to us about putting a screw in the growth plate of his left ankle to help even out the growth there as well as help bring the joint more parallel to the ground. Right now it rolls in by about 9%. We had talked about it before, but we didn't know going into the surgery that he would decide to do both things that day! We agreed to it, and I didn't think too much about it until Justin was finally coming out of the anesthetic and asked what the heck had happened to his foot! (It was wrapped up.) He apparently was too doped up when the doctor talked to us about doing it to remember the discussion and was completely cluelss when he woke up! Poor kid! He came out of the surgery just fine, and we were lucky to be able to come home that same night. He is slowly improving each day and is hopeful to make it back to school tomorrow or Friday for the last day or two of school (probably in a wheelchair).
All doped up right before going off to surgery...they give every patient at Shriners a teddy bear...his got lost somewhere between the holding room before surgery and returning to his room after surgery.

After 3 hours in surgery and recovery, he finally came back to the room. This picture is about 3 hours after that, when he finally looked like himself again.

I am woefully behind in posting events from May, but I thought I'd get this one posted so you would all know that the surgery went well, and he is on the road to recovery...hopefully very soon!