playing catch up

Henry turned 4 a few weeks back, and Andrew and Heather had their 6th anniversary! Andrew's school year is almost over. Then he'll have a very small break before he starts teaching at a summer school type program.

Andrew and Heather took their family on a little hiking/camping trip in April

Very soon it will be time to put in guesses as to where Alex will be called on his mission. He has 2 interviews to go before his papers will be submitted. We're hoping that in a week or so they will be able to be sent in to Salt Lake. Then it might only take a week to hear back from Church headquarters. Exciting times!

Yesterday my pottery class had a raku pottery firing event outside at our teacher's house. So fascinating. We used special clay and glazes for raku. You make your item, fire it, glaze it, and then it's ready for the raku treatment.

There is a special kiln where the pieces are fired to 1800 degrees. You take the pieces out and put them in trash cans that have newspaper in them (which immediately catches on fire) and shut the lids, which creates an oxygen-less environment. You take the pieces out, cool them down by spraying water on them, then wash the soot off. You never know what you are going to get as the same glaze doesn't necessarily produce the same results.

I only had 3 bowls to fire, but the other students (many of whom had done this before) had made some really cool items...sculptures, wind chimes, flower pots, etc. It was really neat to watch.

Loading the special propane kiln

the trash cans (reduction chambers)

the pieces are then cooled down by misting water on them

some of the finished pieces

my 3 pieces

Only 4 weeks left of regular instruction at school and then it's finals week. The end is in sight! (but meanwhile, things are very busy)

March Madness, Alex's mission papers progress, General Conference

I can't believe I forgot to post about March Madness last week...but then again, my bracket had no hope, so I wasn't giving the tournament too much thought.

And the end of last Sunday, only 3 out of the 33 brackets had the chance to win the family's competition: Jacob, David, and Eric's brackets. As of today, we know that Jacob is the winner, even though there's one final game tomorrow night. Jacob is the only one who picked Virginia to go all the way and no one picked Texas Tech to make it to the finals. So, my congratulations goes out to Jacob! Way to go!

My family wound up with the following rankings:

2nd-Andrew (tying with Becky)-- Congratulations Andrew!!!
5th- Glen and Kaellen (also tying with Alan) --Congrats to Kaellen who really moved up the rankings as he used to be ranked 30th
11th-Eric
22nd-Alex
23rd-Beth (tying with Uncle Jim and Michael's wife Alicia)
33rd-Hannah tied with herself (she made 2 brackets, but then didn't get her picks loaded in time)

Alex has been working on filling out his mission papers. On Monday he had his physical. On Tuesday, Glen drove him to Reno to have his wisdom teeth out. He's had the toughest time of all 5 of our kids. First off, he actually had all 4 of his wisdom teeth (Andrew and Hannah only had 3 teeth, Ryan had 2, and Eric only had 1). Then he suffered from nausea. His chipmunk status is lessening, though, so he is on the mend.

Now he just needs to finish filling out some paperwork and have 2 interviews, at which point his papers will be submitted. Soon it will be time to guess as to where he will be serving!

And it was General Conference weekend. No major announcements like there have been the last 2 conferences, but it was really good. One of the speakers, Becky Craven, was actually someone Denise knew and admired back when we were in college. Her talk was one of my favorites this weekend. You can watch it here:

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2019/04/media/session_1_talk_5/6023380729001?lang=eng


Lastly, it will be Henry's 4th birthday this Friday. Wow. Happy Birthday Henry!!! We love you!