Performances and Highlights

I was thinking last night about how rewarding and beautiful it is to watch one's children grow up with unique talents and personalities and to watch them spread some good in this world with the incredible goodness that is in them. I feel so grateful for the short time I get to have them with me in my home on this Earth. This October I will have officially raised an adult. The time's flown by so quickly, but seeing the incredible young lady that she is makes up for the pain of having to let her go soon. There can be nothing more painful or rewarding than parenthood. I guess I've been reflective because we've had lots of opportunities to see them displaying their talents these last few weeks.

Cassia finished this beautiful painting:

Brenda Kidd put the videos of their lchoir concert on youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8-ZBqSydHGFdf2cvyyD3P50Cx3LeRLAV

Here are some of my favorite choir songs they performed:

William has a solo in the middle of this one. The song is fun to watch:


I was impressed with William's killer dance moves (and everyone else's) on this one:

Jess has a cute dance at the beginning of this medley (and you can see Dallin signing in the corner):

Josh and James are so fun to watch on all of them, but these two were my favorite:

This one is pretty to listen to:

I like them all, it was hard to narrow down my favorites.

Here we are playing before a performance:

Jess and Dallin performed in "A Little Princess." It was a beautiful play with a beautiful message. Unfortunately, my phone was out of battery when they performed and I got no pictures, but my mom filmed a little :) I'll share the link  to the whole showwhen it gets uploaded.

You can kind of see Jess behind some people on this video and then the camera goes to Dallin:


Cassia performed in Julius Ceasar last night, Friday night and will be performing again on Monday. I was impressed with the play. The acting was so good and it was all done by students. Cassia gets to stab someone in the play - she did a great job looking shocked and upset about it. I'm a terrible actress so it's fun to see these kids pull stuff off that I wouldn't be able to pull off. I got two terrible pictures of her as the soothsayer and as a soldier.

William made it to the semi-finals in his Speech and Debate tournament yesterday, which means he was in the top 12 out of 60-something people that entered the Oratory event. He talked about how media can negatively impact relationships and the importance of limiting it to take time for the people around us. I didn't go to his tournament, so no pictures :( But I got this cute on of Cassia asleep on his lap after their long day yesterday.

James is getting pretty good at reading. This melted my heart when I walked in on it one morning:

And here are some highlight from the last little bit:

Bill's birthday was on Saturday and we got to go to the Jazz game and stay at the Hilton to celebrate. It was a lot of fun to have a night out in the city.

Yesterday we went to the Tulip Festival with those who weren't at the tournament. We'll have to take William later because it was so beautiful. It was a little chilly when the wind would blow, and Saturdays are pretty crowded, but we still had a really nice time.

Joy having a sleepover with her friend, Zion. We technically have a rule against sleepovers, but we've decided to count the Packs as family since we practically lived with them for 4 months.

And some hikes from the last weeks:

The next two weeks will be busy with Fiddler performances and final weeks of classes. And then we'll start planning some weekend camping trips. Bill just got a new job so we won't be able to do any weekday trips for a while until he builds up some PTO. We should be moving into our house sometime in June we hope. We are living with my parents right now, but their house closes at the beginning of June and if our house isn't ready - we'll have to figure out what to do for a couple of weeks :-)  It looks like they'll be working on the exterior this week so that will be fun to watch. We do miss our friends in Davis County so much already, even though we  are still driving up quite a bit. Our homeschooling friends were like a second family. Transitions are hard. But we are so so blessed.