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Cast On, Cast Off!

2/21/2016

Cast on, cast off!!

The cast of Roy High’s production of the “Pied Piper of Valley Junction” was on the stage and off again Friday and then on and off and on and off again twice Saturday.    And they were delightful….especially when they were on.

Miss Grace, cast as a snotty, tomboy-ish teen (who wants to kiss a boy even though she thinks boys are gross), does a fabulous job both of playing an ornery adolescent (those Hislop eyebrows of her truly knit together at times as she scowls on stage) AND of portraying the tender relationship she shares with her grandmother. There are moments when she steals the show.

Miss Tanah, the play’s protagonist, is simply brilliant.   She vividly portrays the chemistry that develops between her character and the male lead. She convincingly portrays the wrestle experienced as she grapples with her responsibilities as a dutiful daughter and her intellectual yearnings. And her portrayal of the heartache that comes when the hero leaves (and dies) is powerful, poignant, and completely NOT sappy. Oh my lands.   OH MY LANDS!   Beautiful.

Lance was probably the only one in the audience who wished the hero dead.    His desires had everything to do with the fact the hero kissed Tanah (twice….passionately!) and nothing to do with either the actor himself or his character.

“The Pied Piper of Valley Junction is a beautifully written, sensitively portrayed story of love and hope and vision and empowerment.   And you should see it if you have the chance.    The closing performance is Monday, 2/22/16, 7 p.m. in Roy High’s Little Theater.    Just sayin’…….

Cast on, cast off!!

A couple weeks ago Sara got her temporary cast off and was fitted with a removable splint, which she takes off at every opportunity (showering, writing, cooking, skyping with friends, day dreaming…..)   J

Blast on, blast off!!

Under the tutelage of one the greatest young men’s leaders ever, Miles took a hunter safety course and is now a certified safe hunter.    He is also certifiably gung-ho over guns.    He traded the ping pong table he was promised for his birthday (but which had not yet been purchased due to a lack of affordable alternatives on ksl.com) for a real bb gun (which has been bought due to a plethora of affordable options at Wal-Mart).

Almost daily he takes the gun into the garden where he shoots at pop cans, chalk boxes, and the “rascally rabbit” that has made a home in our hay barn.

Shop on, shop off!!

Sara led us on an IKEA (a Swedish everything-you-could-want-in-your-house company) adventure.   And what an adventure it was!!    Holy cow!   Touring IKEA is like hiking the Grand Canyon; it is a whole-body commitment, there are endless side canyons, getting lost is a distinct possibility, new wonders exists around every corner, and, unless you stray from the beaten path, plan on being part of a big crowd.

Under Sara’s tutelage, we totally enjoyed our IKEA experience….and it certainly was an experience.   With Sara as our guide, we did it all from eating Swedish meatballs and split pea/kale soup to testing sofas and beds to racing shopping carts down aisles.

“Mom says I can never leave IKEA without buying something,” Sara told us.    I understand why. There are charming, enchanting, unique, clever, cute, and often useful gadgets everywhere.    True to Tina’s prediction, we did not leave empty handed.    We brought home lingon berry jam (which Sara told me is not eaten on bread after I spread it on a piece of Michelle Drago’s homemade bread….), a red (Grace’s favorite color) dish scrubbing brush, six bars of Swedish chocolate (Elder Hislop, yours is in the mail….), and a frog-that-turns-inside-out-into-a-prince (which I gave to Lance because I love frogs and he is my prince).

Spirit on….and hopefully never off!

We took a chance and went to the Provo City Temple Open House without tickets.   Turns out it was a successful gamble.    We arrived at 8:00 a.m. on a holiday (President’s Day) and already there were hundreds of people in line.   These people know how to do lines, though.   Neither time nor feet dragged and we were in the temple much sooner than we expected.

As to be expected, the temple was beautiful.    And peaceful.

God bless us all.   May your lines be shorter than expected and your peace be longer than expected.

Love,
Teresa

P.S. The lines to purchase tickets for “Pied Piper of Valley Junction” are very short!!

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The S.S. Man

2/14/2016

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“Mom, please!” Tanah sobbed.

What could I do?   Typical Tanah fashion, it was the 11th hour and, this time, I could not pull any tricks out of my hat.

Situation:   If Tanah could find someone to attend Mr. Peer’s English-as-a-Second Language class, she would not have to take the final exam in U.S. Government.   It was 4:00 p.m.   The class started at 6:00 p.m.

Tanah begged me to find someone to take the class; she had SO much to do and simply did not have time to study for the government final.   “Please, Mother!”

Given two weeks I might have been able to find someone for her—I teach at a Spanish emphasis charter school for heaven’s sake—but there was nothing I could do in two hours.    I’d called the only mono-lingual Spanish speaker for whom I had a phone number and I’d been turned down flat.   My hands were tied, my solutions bag empty.

Enter the S.S. man.

Tanah’s Sunday School teacher is from Mexico.   He speaks Spanish.   He also speaks English.   In fact, he speaks English so well that he is often hired as an interpreter.    He also speaks love.

Tanah called him and pled her case.   Did he know anyone, ANYONE, who might be interested in taking the class?    ….a class that started in less than two hours……   She was desperate.     And he was kind.

Hyrum Alatriste, father of five young children, native Spanish speaker and fluent English speaker, awesome person and dedicated disciple of Christ, changed his evening’s plans, abandoned his wife and children, and spend two hours in a Spanish-as-a-Second Language class that he was much more qualified to teach than Mr. Peer.

He probably did not learn anything in the class but he certainly taught something that evening.    He taught a certain young woman (my daughter) that she’s loved enough to be sacrificed for and for that I am grateful.    VERY.

MORE of the story…..

So the above story casts Tanah in a somewhat less than favorable light.   She is actually quite a favorable person; one my very favorite favorable people, truth be known.    And truth will be known, as the following story illustrates.

I get up at 4:30 every morning and almost the first thing I do upon getting out of bed is venture outside to feed the sheep. Friday when I fed the sheep, the chickens came out to greet me.   When chickens leave the protected hen house to venture into their dark yard at almost 4:30 in the morning, there is something wrong.     And there was.   They had no food. None. Not even a crumb.

It is Tanah’s responsibility to feed and water the chickens. (I’ll get to the part where Tanah is cast in a more favorable light, I promise!)   Back up to the house I went, to awaken my slumbering teenage daughter, the same daughter who had not gone to bed until past midnight because she was working on costumes for the upcoming play.

“Tanah,” I said, “The chickens do not have any food. And they are almost out of water as well.” And I left.

The outside faucet is frozen so Tanah had to fill a five gallon bucket in the bathtub and haul it 100 meter down to the hen house.   The feed barrel was empty so she had to hunt for a sack of chicken grain. Unable to find one in the barn, she returned to the house to ask me where it might be.   I directed her to the back of the van.

She hauled a 50 lb. sack of grain to the hen house, filled the feed barrel, filled the chicken feeder and, finally, returned to her warm bed.   (Have I mentioned it was cold outside, about -4 degrees Celsius?) Before heading back downstairs to her bedroom she said, with complete sincerity and without a trace of sarcasm, “Thanks Mom for waking me up to feed the chickens.”

Oh how I adore this girl!!!

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Ice Castles

2/7/2016

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“Tell me a story,” Miles begs. “Step into a story,” the narrator at the Tree House Chidlren’s Museum invites. “Life is the stories you can tell,” writes a contemporary blogger. We’ve always known that stories make us happy. And now research confirms it.

“There's a very logical assumption that most people make when spending their money: that because a physical object will last longer, it will make us happier for a longer time than a one-off experience like a concert or vacation. According to recent research, it turns out that assumption is completely wrong.

“Dr. Thomas Gilovich, a psychology professor at Cornell University who has been studying the question of money and happiness for over two decades says ‘We buy things to make us happy, and we succeed. But only for a while. New things are exciting to us at first, but then we adapt to them.’ So rather than buying the latest iPhone or a new BMW, Gilovich suggests you'll get more happiness spending money on experiences like going to art exhibits, doing outdoor activities, learning a new skill, or traveling.

“Our experiences are a bigger part of ourselves than our material goods," says Gilovich. "You can really like your material stuff. You can even think that part of your identity is connected to those things, but nonetheless they remain separate from you. In contrast, your experiences really are part of you. We are the sum total of our experiences.’

“…shared experiences connect us more to other people than shared consumption. You're much more likely to feel connected to someone you took a vacation with in Bogotá than someone who also happens to have bought a 4K TV. "We consume experiences directly with other people," says Gilovich. ‘And after they're gone, they're part of the stories that we tell to one another.’" (The Science Of Why You Should Spend Your Money On Experiences, Not Things, http://www.fastcoexist.com/3043858/world-changing-ideas/the-science-of-why-you-should-spend-your-money-on-experiences-not-thing, bolding added )

Wright and Carole and family gave us an experience for Christmas and it brought much more happiness than any material thing we could have purchased with the money. I’ll let the pictures tell the story.