Glasses

Courtney had her yearly eye doctor appointment last week. Her eye doctor is REALLY old but he has a lot of experience with children's eye issues. He told us last year that Courtney could someday grow out of her glasses. 

The doctor checked her eyes and told us that he no longer needs bifocals. Courney was so excited! She has 20/20 vision in one eye and 20/15 in the other. She only wears glasses to strengthen her eyes, not to correct her vision. So now we get to buy her new glasses that aren't bifocals. Happy day!!

The doctor told us that she will completely grow out of her glasses probably in 1-2 years. Great news!!

Cakes by Courtney

Courtney was given the opportunity to dance at the Stadium of Fire on July 4th in Provo.  She really wanted to do it but it costs money to participate.  So we decided that she would need to do a fund raiser so she would be able to pay us back for her participation fee.  We brainstormed and came up with an idea to make cakes to sell for Mother's Day in May.

The Young Women were having a fundraiser so I thought it would be a great time to make a practice cake so she could see how hard/easy it would be and so we would have a photo to put on the order forms.  The cake below was baked and frosted by me, but Courtney tied the ribbon (with my help), piped the pearl border on bottom and piped the flowers on top.  I was very impressed with her!

So if anyone would like a cake for Mother's Day, give Courtney a call.  They are $15 and you can choose the color of ribbon and the saying you want on top.  She will need to sell 12 cakes.

My Big Fat Tongan Funeral

You've heard of the movie "My Big Fat Greek Wedding"?  Well, we had "My Big Fat Tongan Funeral" last week.  A wonderful man in our ward passed away and he was born and raised in Tonga.  So we had a Tongan funeral, which was fascinating.  If you want to know what they did, here is the Wikipedia entry for "tongan funerals": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongan_funerals

Anyway, I was asked by the Bishop to arrange the luncheon after the funeral.  We talked about how they would have a lot of people coming for the funeral but I had no idea how large it would be until I talked to the family.  We needed to feed 300 people! The family was awesome and pitched in half of it (and their food was really good!) but it was a huge production getting all the food, cooking all the food, setting up tables after the funeral but before the luncheon, and then serving.  It was just like a ward party.  But everything went great and the people who helped were amazing.  I am very blessed to have so many people willing to help.

After the luncheon, the Deacons came up to help clean up.  They put away chairs, tables, vacuumed the Church, and ate leftovers (including guava cake which is really good).  I took a picture of the Deacons as proof that they worked hard!

Wonder Woman

The Jr. All Starrz are doing a character dance this year.  Courtney came home last month and said we had to get her a Wonder Woman costume.  We didn't want to buy it because you never know how the costume is going to fit so we sat down to figure out what to do.  We came up with the idea of getting a red dance leotard and making a blue skirt out of swim suit material. I Googled how to make the costume and got a lot of great ideas...that didn't really work.

I bought a sheet of yellow duct tape and cut out the Wonder Woman logo to put on the leotard.  It worked great and we took the picture below...right before the logo came off.  For being duct tape, it wasn't really that sticky.  I also had to figure out how to make the crown.  I finally came up with the idea of using gold sparkly paper and attaching an elastic to the back of it to keep it on her head.  I used the leftover elastic to make the bracelets too.

But I was really worried about the logo because it won't stay on.  Then I remembered that the people around the corner do embroidery and vinyl out of their house.  After a quick call to them they had the leotard and promised to get it back to us the next morning.  They did a great job!!

I can't wait to see her superhero dance.

Here is her costume with the duct tape.  (Ignore the mismatched socks, that's just Courtney.)

Dance Competition

Courtney had another dance competition.  They did a great job and were pretty disappointed not to get a higher score.  There were 4 other studios in their category and so they competed against those 4 groups.  They received 4th place for their jazz routine and 3rd place for their lyrical.  Bummer but that's life.  I'm still in awe of how they do.

Here are 4 of the Jr. All Starrz with their coach, Kara, and the trophy.  They receive 1 trophy that has a place on it to put the "jewels" they are given which denote their places.

Spring Recess

The kids had Friday and Monday off during Easter for Spring Recess.  They were pretty bored because a lot of their friends went out of town for Conference weekend.  So we decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather and went to the park for some baseball practice.  Ethan pitched to Courtney, they played catch and I pitched to Ethan.  It was a lot of fun!

Science Fair

Courtney wants to do EVERYTHING!  This year she wanted to do the science fair and was really excited about it.  She figured out what she wanted to do and finished the research in a couple of days but kept putting off doing the board.  The weekend before it was due she and I sat down and figured out what to do.  Her project was on the "Kiki-Bouba Effect."  This states that when someone looks at a pointy object they automatically will name it "kiki" and when they look at something round-ish they will automatically name it "bouba."  Courtney cut out shapes, took them to school and asked her classmates what they thought.

We typed out all the information, printed it and then Courtney put it all on a board.  It turned out really well.

The night before the science fair we went to the school to drop off her board.  There weren't too many students who entered this year so there was a great chance she would place.  The next day she talked to the judges and showed them everything.  That night we went to pick up her board and she had gotten 3rd place.  I was excited for her.  She wasn't too thrilled because....there were only three kids in her grade who entered.  But still, I think she is further along than the kids who didn't even try!