Waiting for Ryan's mission call, Poetry Out Loud, and other stuff

So Ryan had his last interview last Sunday and his mission papers were sent off to Salt Lake. According to Uncle Alan, who can see computer updates on Ryan's account, the call has been issued...now we just have to wait for it to arrive! His cousin's arrived on a Thursday, so we will try and be patient until then. We asked people to give their guesses as to where he's going...I will put the guesses I've collected at the end of the post. If you haven't guessed yet, but still wish to, let me know and I will add your guess to the list.

Anyway, Hannah's been busy lately. Tuesday night was an Improv Night at the high school to raise money for the Nevada Acting Competition to be held in Henderson, Nevada on March 14-16. Hannah is one of those going...if it all works and they get to go. She is in a musical number "They Both Reached for the Gun" from the musical Chicago.

Wednesday night, Hannah participated in Churchill county's Poetry Out Loud contest and won...she will be going to the state competition if we can get her there. It turns out that the State competition is in Reno on Saturday March 16th...we are looking into flying her up from Vegas that morning from the Acting Competition. Hopefully it will all work out. She carries on the family tradition as Andrew twice won our county's Poetry Out Loud contest as well as her cousin Sarah.

If you are interested in the 2 poems she recited, they are April Love by Ernest Dowson and Fire and Ice by Robert Frost.

Yesterday, Hannah attended the ROTC ball. Sadly, I had no pictures as I was in Reno picking up my camera that had just been fixed. I was hoping to take a photo afterwards, but she had already changed by the time I saw her. Somebody better have photos to share.

Andrew shares with us this week that his math minor requirements are all filled! Now he just has to finish his English major and general ed classes. Some progress in the wedding plans--Heather has found her dress! Now, if I could just find one for me.

Eric sounds like he is very busy and doing well. Here's just a snippet from this week's email:

The new Very Special Projects Project we got started working on is adding info boxes to counties on the FamilySearch wiki. I worked on North Dakota, and got finished Thursday. See the box on the right side, with county seat information and stuff? I added that. https://www.familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/McIntosh_County,_North_Dakota We'd gone through how to do that a bit last week, but I guess I was the only one who caught on at first, so I had to be more or less unofficially put in charge of the project on Wednesday, helping out everyone else who didn't know what was going on.

Alex is continuing with his swimming lessons that he got for Christmas and hopefully soon will be able to pass the requirements for his merit badge. He also continues to take piano lessons and is reading a lot.

I just finished an 8 day subbing job as the high school band and choir teacher. It was fun. It made me wish I had been in the marching band in high school (I'm not sure we had one, though...strange, isn't it?). I quit the clarinet in 7th grade, however. Man, I might start going to the sports games just for the band.

Glen is still super busy. I don't know how he does everything he does. Between school and church and scouts he rarely has a minute. Though we did get to spend yesterday afternoon and evening together in Reno. He is currently building the set for Feb 22 & 23rd's play "Murder Runs in the Family" (which is where he'll be tomorrow, on his day off) and soon it'll be "The Giver" he works on.

Now for the guesses (Ryan took French in high school, which is why I think so many guessed French speaking):

Glen-Paris France
Beth-Eugene Oregon (where my parents live) or Portugal (where I've decided I'd really like to visit)
Andrew-Peru
Heather-Northeastern States or Berlin Germany
Eric-Massachusetts (I used to live there) or Guam
Elder Smith (Eric's companion)-Mississippi or Guatemala
Ryan-Eugene Oregon
Hannah- Quebec, Canada ("the more specific you are, the more cool points you get"~Hannah)
Alex-France
Gma P-St. Louis Missouri
Gpa P-Michigan (where Glen and Adam went)
Gma and Gpa J-Uruguay (where I went)
David-South Carolina (my grandma's family is from there)
Jackie-France
Daniel-Brazil
Hanna-New Mexico
Brinley-Washington
Laila-California (where my father-in-law was born)
Elise-New York (where I was born)
Brandon-BC Canada
Calista-New York, New York
Jacob P-West Virginia
Susan-California or Brazil
Alicia-Kenya 
Dallin-Arizona
Michael-Madrid Spain
Teresa-Ecuador
Matt-Alabama (where my grandma was born)
Bryce-Houston Texas
Jessica-Chile
Thomas H-Hawaii
Brendan-New York
Sister Haley Loveland-Chicago Illinois (she is currently serving in the California Roseville Mission)
Amanda-Mexico 
Alan-Chicago, Illinois
Carey-Chile
Mindy-Texas
Jon-Florida (where my Dad and sister were born)
Melissa-New Hampshire
Maddie-Italy (where the Perazzos come from)
Kathy-Alaska
Gary-Philippines (where Ryan's cousin Jake just got called)
Sarah-Hmm . . . no one has been to the bible belt yet. How about Louisiana! French speaking? (that's where my sister and I joined the church)
Becky-Maine (where my brother Kyle currently lives)
Joseph-mainland China (where friend and roommate Jiaxin is from)
Thomas-France
Ben-Australia (where friend Travis just got called)
Denise-Peru
Pat-Mexico
Danny-Philippines
Zach-Mordor
Jake-Columbia
Kyle-Uruguay
Jiaxin-Taiwan
Darcy-Germany (where my mom's maternal side is from)
Chalea-Ohio (where my mom was born)
Ashley-France
Scottie-Mexico
Amye-somewhere in Europe 
Don-Spain
Tracy-Philippines
DonNell-Washington
Heidi-Argentina
Cherilee-Eastern US or Western Europe
Terra-Guatemala
Amy-Guatemala or Lansing Michigan  
Patti-Oklahoma
Skylar-Kentucky 
Jennifer-Great Lakes region 
Maralea-Philippines 
Tracy-El Salvador San Salvador/Belize
Steven-New York
Claudia-Indiana (her daughter just opened her mission call yesterday and that's where she's going)
Jeff-Arizona 
Melissa J-Japan Tokyo North 
Torree-Montana 
Corinne-Belgium or France

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)