UTA Conference in Salt Lake, The Phantom of the Opera at BYU, and Eric's newsy letter

It was time for our annual Utah Theatre Association trip with Glen's drama students (24 students this year including Hannah) and 2 other adults.  It was held at Westminster College in Salt Lake City.

The bus left at 2 am Thursday morning...the morning of the freezing rain. We saw several semis that had gone off the road and a car or two. There was a stretch where we crawled along at 15 mph.  The school bus has automatic chains that come down and spin under the wheels, so we arrived safely, though later than we wanted to. The poor kids went straight to the first event after having been on the bus all night.  

While everyone else went to the first activity, Marsha (the bus driver) and I checked in to the hotel. It was actually quite nice...full kitchenettes, plus plenty of places to eat a stone's throw away, though no pool or hot tub.

Sundance was having its film festival, so the place was packed...and the prices sky high, but we needed that hotel because it was so close to Westminster and we had to walk that evening and on Saturday since Marsha was off duty due to the all-night drives.

After the workshops and dinner that evening, we walked to Westminster 4/10 of a mile away. It was very treacherous going with ice being everywhere due to the freezing rain they'd had (I fell flat on my back, but luckily wasn't hurt). 

We saw a play Noises Off! I have mixed feelings about the play as it was hysterical and very well done (superb timing on a lot of physical gags), but had a few inappropriate things, especially for a high school audience. I realize it was a college production, but the performance was just for the UTA conference. 

The idea for the play: the 1st act is a play's dress rehearsal that keeps getting interrupted, the 2nd act is watching what goes on behind the stage when the play is put on (my favorite part), and the 3rd act is watching the play on closing night when everything goes wrong. 

Anyway, Friday I was brave and caught the city bus to the Family History Library, which was about 5 miles away. I dropped a goody box off for Eric and spent the day looking at books in the library...I didn't find much exciting, but maybe I have a few new leads.

While I was downtown, the others had workshops and saw Sweeney Todd. I've seen the Angela Lansbury video of it and am not sorry I missed it. The other thing I missed by not being with the group was going to East High, which is where High School Musical was filmed. I'm told they took pictures.

Saturday we walked to the college and had workshops, then walked to a nearby high school 1 mile away to watch the Thrillionaires, an improv group we've seen before and loved. 

Next we were off to BYU where we had dinner on campus--Andrew and Heather joined us, but Heather had to hurry off as she plays violin in the pit orchestra for our final production of the week. We got to see The Phantom of the Opera performed by BYU. BYU is the first college that has been allowed to perform The Phantom and they did a phenomenal job.

Then it was another long bus ride back home with snowy weather that slowed us down. But we survived and had a great time. It was a fabulous few days with a great bunch of kids.

 Now, Eric's letter this week had a lot of detail in it. Since most don't know what Eric does on his family history mission (including us), I thought I'd share: 

Elder Smith and I went to have dinner on Sunday with a senior couple, Elder and Sister Heaton, who are in my zone. Elder Z.  came with us too, because Elder F.  is super... independent... and likes eating by himself, not even having Sunday Apartment Meal with us so he keeps on his bread-eating schedule with his sandwiches so that he runs out of bread exactly when it’s his prep day and time to get more. He’s the first and only missionary to have taken himself off of the Young Elders feeding list for senior couple meals. We get to eat at a senior couple once a quarter, so this was my first time. We had Tuna Noodle Casserole.

Monday was a day off for Martin Luther King Day. There was a deep-cleaning-stravaganza, with senior couples stopping by to help us and tell us what needed to be cleaned, but our apartment is the cleanest in the entire mission, and didn’t need anything.

Data Quality zone is split into two parts, and takes up two floors. Fifth floor zone works on developing tools to help patrons be able to search. They work on their own family history down there. Up on the sixth floor, where I work, you need a badge to get in, and we work on confidential materials, caseloads. Cases that patrons submit if they find a problem in Family Tree and stuff- like duplicate ancestors who need to be merged but that it’s restricted for patrons to do so, so you need an admin to help you. As an admin, you’re able to access the information of living individuals, so the area is restricted and we don’t do our own family history there because of the possibility that we might accidentally do it while still logged in as a FamilySearch admin.

Being with PPO I don’t do casework like that. I’ve been looking at spreadsheets and filling in the correct information. My first few projects were looking at documents in the FamilySearch image viewer, filling in the missing record type on the things that the indexers couldn’t figure out (marriages and baptisms and stuff in parish records,) then looking at German Census records and assigned household numbers so that the names indexed would show up under their proper households. My latest assignment is working just from a spreadsheet, making sure that dates indexed were standardized correctly. Dates that were mistyped, like @* Jan 1873 or 28Jan 1873 and stuff, making sure that the computer was right interpreting it into a standardized form. Some of it is pretty difficult, and there are thousands and thousands of dates that needed to be checked. The computer also got confused on the 29 February s, so I had to check to make sure that the years where that happened actually were leap years.

After Data Quality, usually, I go down to the third floor when I get off at 4:00 and Elder Smith and I take the freight elevator up to the seventh floor, which is just storage, to have a session of companion study alone in relative quiet. We started up on Jesus the Christ a couple of days ago, and before that we were studying miscellaneous sections of the Doctrine and Covenants. This is on Monday, Tuesday, and Friday, now. Thursday is my half day for Temple and Research, so we have it at lunch then, when I get out, and now we just started lunch study this week on Wednesday, because Elijah Choir is meeting at 4:30 now. On Wednesday and Thursday we go to that- combined choir on Wednesday, men’s chorus on Thursday.

On Friday, it was Australia Day on Saturday (Australia being on the other side of the world and thus a day ahead of us, y’see,) so we had a party to celebrate that. It was my first real party at Data Quality. We’re supposed to have a lot of parties, but that’s the only one that’s gone on while I was here. There was a sort of a lunch about a month ago, but there were only a few crock pots of soup, and I was at a funeral anyway, of a man I’d never met but who was in my branch and was alive when I got on the mission at least.   But Australia Day was actually pretty good. We had Australian food (forgot to bring Vegemite and cheese sandwiches, though, but they were going to be brought) and got permission to air Rescuers Down Under. 

(then he attached 2 photos of the weather, which Glen, Hannah, and I saw 1st hand)

Glen's new calling and mine

Glen:

Two Sundays ago, Glen and I were called to the Stake President's office. While waiting we were guessing what we were going to be told. We were joking that since our youngest is 12 and no longer in Primary that it was time for them to kick Glen out of Elder's Quorum and make him a High Priest. After all, Glen will be 50 in May and has gray hair.

Yep. Glen was released as the 1st counselor in the Stake Young Men's Presidency and called to be a High Councilor.   To be on the High Council one needs to be a High Priest.

So, this past Sunday he was ordained a High Priest by his father and then set apart to be a high councilor by his brother, Alan, who is in the Stake Presidency. Pretty cool. Very cool.

Glen's assignment on the high council is to be over the youth programs.  He will continue as the District Commissioner for the Pony Express District in the Nevada Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America. Since he is keeping his scouting position, I don't know that this change in callings will change his time commitment to his calling. It just changes when he's gone. He'll have stake meetings on Fast Sundays and speaking assignments on the 3rd Sundays...and this next Sunday is a 3rd Sunday and he'll be speaking in our ward. Good luck, Hon.

Mine:

I mentioned in my previous post that for the New Year's Eve Party, we had been asked to give one of the mini-Family Home Evening lessons they had that night. What our family did is that each of us shared a quote that inspired us. My quote was one I've always liked, but there was also another motive behind sharing it--I would soon be living it.

The quote:


Use what talent you possess. The woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those who sang best. ~Henry Van Dyke

I first used that quote back in 1989 when I had to teach a lesson for the Relief Society sisters on how to lead music. The idea was that we all share what we can do even if there are those who could do it better...we just do the best we can and contribute what we can, even if we don't consider it perfect. We all have something to share. 

Yes, I am now "sharing" my "talent" of playing the organ every 2nd Sunday during Sacrament Meeting at church. (sharing = inflicting   talent = semi-talent). Our ward is a bit short in the available musician department, so 4 of us are sharing the organist duty along with keeping our other callings. I'm the least musical of the bunch.

Last Sunday was my first time playing in Sacrament Meeting in a long time. I've filled in before and it was always a nerve-racking thing...I get nervous like I don't get nervous for anything else I've done except for giving birth. So, playing the organ in church is like laying on the operating table waiting for the knife. And I'm not really exaggerating here.

The thing is, there are so many notes...3 to 4 for each word and then some. Each one is an opportunity to make a mistake. Even if I can play a song perfectly at home, I get to church and it's a different story. No joke--I was playing one of the hymns last Sunday and for a moment I had to play by memory (which is really like a mini-miracle every time it happens...the brain is awesome).  I had to play from memory because the notes on the page looked like gibberish and I couldn't "read" them for a bit.

So, my main prayer when I play is that I don't distract from the Spirit. I apologize to the tenors who can't follow along well because I drop their note. That's always the first note to get skipped.

I want to develop this talent. But I feel bad for the congregation who has to put up with my mistakes.

Though, I don't think I made too many on Sunday. And some mistakes are less distracting than others. And I know the more I play, the better I'll get. I found a neat blog that posted lessons for lds pianists who are trying to be organists:
 http://organlessons.blogspot.com/2010/01/lesson-1-acquiring-essentials.html

And, I know it's what I should be doing. That's why we have talents--so we can share them and serve with them.

So, I'm suffering, but I'm happy about it (Harry Potter reference...).

kids home, broken camera, Christmas, New Year's Eve, Harry Potter party, missing cat

Well, the title of this post sums it all up.

Andrew made it home safely from Provo, so we are all here except for Eric. Plus various other cousins have been around. It's been fabulous.

My camera broke on Sunday the 23rd. My dad said he had a similar problem and that it might be that I needed to replace my battery (which was acting funny). $13 later I can say it wasn't the battery. It's a sad thing to not have a camera at Christmas time. Ryan took a few photos on his cell phone and Alex took some on his camera--conclusion is that Alex needs a camera that takes pictures you can actually see.

The one picture I really wanted was the "pickle" picture. Years ago Eric made a paper maché pickle that gets hidden on the tree every Christmas. The first child to find the pickle gets to be the first to play Santa (they wear a Santa's hat) and take a gift from under the tree and give it to the first recipient, who puts on the hat and opens the gift. Then he/she grabs another gift from under the tree and gives it to the next recipient.

We love this tradition, only this time we didn't find the paper maché pickle to hide...so unbeknownst to the kids, I took a real mini-gherkin and put it on a hook and hung it up. Hannah found it...and about freaked out upon discovering she was squishing a real pickle in her fingers. It was funny.

But, even without good pictures, Christmas was great anyway. It was just the 6 of us since it was my sister's turn to have my parents for the holidays. We did have Glen's parents here for a little bit when Eric called for his allotted Christmas call. Eric is enjoying his mission and his new assignment is Data Quality. He works on the 6th floor of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building in a restricted area. He didn't have any details yet since he had just received the assignment and hadn't really started working there yet due to the holidays. We hope to hear more on Saturday when we get his email.

We spent the next week (and since then) playing games. Lots and lots of games. Of which I lost 99% of them, but that's OK.

We got an expander pack for our Dominion game (Dark Ages), a quick and funny card game called "We Didn't Playtest This At All," and my favorite "7 Wonders" and its expansion pack "7 Cities."

For New Year's Eve, we went to the church dance, but we spent the time playing games and giving a mini-lesson and attending the other mini-lessons. Nothing too exciting, but we were together, and I'm not into excitement anyway.

Today and tomorrow, Hannah is having a Harry Potter movie marathon. The first 4 movies are on today's list and we'll finish up with the other 4 tomorrow. She dipped pretzel rods in white chocolate and different sprinkles as magic wands. We cut into the necks of gummy bears so they can represent the character Nearly Headless Nick. Hannah made butterbeer (cream soda and butterscotch with rum flavoring--I think I'd rather just have the cream soda, though). We have chocolate brownies so we are ready for dementor attacks. Best of all--we used the cake pop machine that my parents gave us for Christmas to make doughnut hole Golden Snitches. During this enterprise Glen learned the difference between apple cider (which the recipe called for) and apple cider vinegar (which is what Glen put in the batter). It was quite funny.

However, after the marathon started, we discovered that Steve the Cat is missing...we think he might have gotten out yesterday when we were taking the Christmas decorations outside. He was our stand-in for the orange tabby Crookshanks. Oh well. Just hope he's safe and turns up.

So, we are having a great time and it's been a wonderful vacation. We have Ryan until the 5th and Andrew until the 6th when they will head back to school for the start of a new semester. We will miss them, but then I'll have a better chance of winning the games...maybe...as long as Hannah isn't playing...or Alex.

UPDATE: We found the missing cat...under a drawer in a cabinet in the kitchen! We heard a meowing and then it took us 5-10 minutes to figure out where it was coming from. Steve is safe and sound.