Easter

We had a great Easter Sunday.  The kids dyed Easter Eggs on Saturday.  We've probably only dyed Easter eggs about 6-7 times in 17 years.  Calissa was the most excited, but everyone participated!

 Our beautiful eggs!

 Smile!  (Trav was on his way to the Stake Conference Priesthood Session) 

We had Stake Conference the night before and the kids (12 and up) were invited to come as well.  There was a little grumbling, but once we got there, they felt the Spirit and were glad that they had gone.  Easter morning Parker and I had to get up early to drive into Oakland to practice for the Stake Choir.  As I was lying in my bed looking at Facebook everyone was posting "Happy Easter!"  I thought, "Oh yeah ... it's Easter.  Oh no, it's Easter!"  The Easter bunny had forgotten to fill the eggs and put together the Easter baskets. Luckily the bunny came through!

 It was a great Stake Conference and a beautiful day at the Oakland Temple!

 Once we made it home the kids looked for Easter Eggs in the back yard.

 A squirrel found one of the eggs and chewed a hole right through one end and ate some of the candy.  This egg was in the tree and was bothered. None of the other eggs were disturbed.  So weird!

 The kids looked high,

 and low,

 and found all of the eggs.  It's been a lot of years since we've had an egg hunt in the backyard.  It was fun finding the eggs in our beautiful backyard!

 One more family picture!

 We had Drew, Tina, and family over for dinner as well as my parents.  After dinner and dessert, my parents headed home.  The rest of us hung out in the backyard.  Emily crawled over to our flowers and decided that it would be fun to pick some.

 Trav relaxing (before he decided to change)

 Calissa and I enjoying the comfy couch.

 The girls

Lindsay, Tina, Calissa, Jen & Emily

 The boys

Parker, Drew, Christopher, Trav, & Conner

 The guys played Volleyball for quite a while.  The weather was so beautiful.

 The girls played around and had fun taking silly pictures.

 The Volleyball got hit over into Calissa's garden and broke off the top of one of her carrots.  

 They dug around and pulled out the carrot for Calissa.

We had a great day thinking about our Savior, Jesus Christ and the sacrifice that he made for each one of us.  We are eternally grateful for all that he did and that we can be together forever as an eternal family!

Show Choir Tour- Williamsburg, Virgina (Written by Parker)

 So last year, my friends finally convinced me to join show choir on the last week of school and I'm glad i joined! Our choir has been practicing a lot (way too much...) and has basically taken over my life as of late because we were getting ready for tour. Finally, tour came and I was super excited. Above, is me and my mom driving to the airport to go on my 7 hour plane flight.

 Me and my best friend Trever Rivera heading into the airport with our garment bags (super heavy).

At the airport getting ready to get my bags checked in.

 The three musketeers! Me and my two best friends (Tyler and Trever) just hanging out before the flight. Last picture before my mom had to leave.

 After the extremely long two flights, we had to get on buses to get to our hotel. With the time change, we got into our hotel, Doubletree by Hilton, at about one in the morning. None of us were tired though since we hadn't adjusted to the change yet. Pictured above is our hotel room where me, Trever, Tyler, and Greg shared a room.

 Going to bed at three in the morning probably wasn't the greatest idea since we got up at 4:50 the next day to go to the gym and go swimming (which I couldn't participate in because of my ankle). So on our three hour bus ride to Washington DC the next day, we were extremely tired as you can see by the picture of Tyler.

Washington DC was very cool and a great experience to be there. In the picture above, that is the back side of the White House which is much smaller than it seems in person!

 Lots of hanging around and random pictures before moving on to other places.

 Here is the Vietnam Wall which listed the names of every American soldier who died during the Vietnam war. It was a really special experience to see so many people walking by in silence out of respect. The names seemed to go on forever!

 Next, we went to the Lincoln Memorial which was really cool since it's in one of my favorite movies! (Night at the Museum 2!) The stairs were not my friend since my ankle was bugging me still but going up and inside was totally worth it!

Honest Abe himself. I was surprised at how close we were actually allowed to go! We were pretty much able to touch it!

 Tyler, me and Trever hanging out outside in Thomas Jefferson's backyard. 

 Thomas Jefferson's house (well, used to be at least). We got the whole tour inside and then were allowed to roam around the area checking out everything. Me and Tyler decided to go check out the wharf but apparently we weren't supposed to! We found that out when the cops started coming after us... Whoops! Everything was ok though and we got back to where everyone else was and had a great time. Day 1 was a success!

 Day 2: Today, we got a tour of Jamestown in the morning which was fairly cool, but not terribly interesting to me. After lunch though, we were allowed to go to Colonial Williamsburg and go off on our own and check out the place and all the cool things it had to offer. Pictured above is Zach and Spencer in front of the public school.

Later that day, we had a rehearsal scheduled at a Mormon church which was just our last thing to solidify any parts of the music that we were having trouble with. As show choir was rehearsing, I had a really bad headache that was bugging me, but I was able to rehearse just fine. I also was invited to sing with Concert choir and as I was singing with them, I started getting extremely light-headed and once we finished I just laid on the ground to try to relax and figure out what was going on. But then my right arm and hand started shaking like crazy and I had no power over it and could not stop. I went outside to get some fresh air but my arm was still shaking and at that point parents started coming to me, seeing if they could do anything to help. Apparently, I lost all color in my face and was not doing well when someone decided to call 911 which got me extremely freaked out. At the hospital though, they did a bunch of tests on me and eventually determined that I had extreme exhaustion and dehydration and what I needed was food, water, and a good night sleep. Everything worked out fine, but I freaked a lot of people out!

Day 3: Performance time!! Here are me and some of my show choir friends waiting outside for our performance. Everyone was very nervous, but also very excited!

Show choir went first, and we nailed it! Everything went extraordinarily well and the judges were very impressed with our group and actually said that we were world class. They said lots of nice things about us and were very complimentary about our group as a whole.

 Next up, Concert choir! Again we did really good and the judges had lots of compliments about us. All of our choirs did awesome and we were super excited once we finished!

 The best part of the trip was Busch Gardens after our performance. It was a really fun amusement park and we had a blast their. Also, as you can see above, I asked my show choir partner, Erin Livingston, to prom! It didn't go exactly as planned but ended up working out great!

 She said yes! That pretty much made my day and the rest of the time in the park we just partied and had an amazing time. Lots of memories made, and lots of fun rides.

 At the awards ceremony (inside the park), our choir was super pumped and excited to find out how well we did. We ended up winning all gold and all first place and won every award and trophy possible. We rocked it and had an amazing time! Me and Erin above holding the show choir trophy.

 All the awards and plaques that our choirs received! They're now hanging proudly in our choir room at school!

 Sunday school class picture! Me, Morgan and Tyler with one last picture. That night we partied and got no sleep at all. We all crashed on the plane flight the next day and pretty much slept the entire time. Overall, for my first choir tour, it was amazing and I had a super fun time with all of my choir friends. New friends made and many memories to keep for a long time. We all had a great time and I can't wait for next year! Hopefully no more ambulance trips! 

Movies with Conner

While Parker was out of town for his Choir Tour, Trav, Conner, and I went to see the movie Divergent. Calissa had no desire to see it, so we went on a date with Conner.  Conner chose to go to Five Guys for burgers and then we went to the movie. Calissa got to go out to eat with Grandma and Grandpa.  We enjoyed the movie and spending time with Conner.

Les Miserables

We were lucky enough to get invited to go to see Les Miserables in Walnut Creek last week.  The Smith's asked us if we were interested in going and we jumped at the chance.  I had seen it before in San Francisco, but Trav hadn't.  (He had only seen the Melodrama's performance and it was not quite the same thing, since it was a comedy instead of a tragedy).

Unfortunately, the night we went was the night that Parker ended up in the hospital (in Virginia). I got the phone call from the choir, and was trying to manage that, get Calissa to a sleep over, get changed into nicer clothes, and not be too worried about Parker.

The Smith's picked us up to go out to dinner while we were still talking to people in Virginia.  After talking with his chaperone (our Stake Patriarch, Jeff Adams) we knew he was going to be fine and it was just a precaution.  We still fielded several phone calls and finally got to talk to Parker during dinner at PF Chang's. We felt much better about the situation by the time we got to the theater.  We were pretty distracted during the evening though.

The show was really well done and we really enjoyed it.  It was a long first act and we got several text messages during the show.  We couldn't really look at them (since it's not polite) so at intermission we pulled out our phones and returned some texts.  Parker had posted something on Facebook about his trip in an ambulance so we had concerned friends and family trying to check in with us.

We finally made it home by about midnight. Thanks Smith's for a fun evening!

General Conference Trip

Several months ago in a Bishop's Youth Committee Meeting, the youth decided they really wanted to attend General Conference in person.  So we spent the past few months planning all of the details, including setting aside some budget money, figuring out where to stay, what to eat, when to leave and come back, etc.

This past weekend it was finally time.  We took off right after Seminary on Friday morning -- well, that was the plan anyway.  It was pouring rain so it took longer than expected to get everything loaded into the cars.  But eventually we got on the road about an hour later than planned.

The rain stopped after a couple hours and, thankfully, before we got to the mountains in Tahoe.  Our first stop was in Sparks, Nevada to stretch and get some gas.  We then went to Winnemucca and stopped for lunch.  It was our first of many meals of sandwiches and chips.  After that, we made it to Elko where we gassed up again and then went the rest of the way to Utah.  We had dinner at Pizza Pie Cafe in Bountiful and it was the best meal of the whole trip.  I asked if they had a group rate and their manager gave us their all-you-can-eat buffet for $6 per person with $0.99 for drinks.  It is normally $8.25 per person and $1.99 for drinks so that saved us about $90.  The kids all loved the food and they had the most amazing dessert pizzas.

We then split up and the guys all went to Kevin and Kellie's house (Jen's brother) and stayed in their basement.  They loved being there and playing ping pong and double-shot.  The girls went to two different houses south of Salt Lake.

We got some sleep (not enough) and then headed into Salt Lake for conference on Saturday morning.  We only had about 10 tickets for that session but were able to get a few more so that all of the girls and their leaders were able to watch it in the Conference Center.  The guys all went to the Visitors' Center and watched the session in a theater.  It had really comfortable seats and lots of leg room so we definitely weren't complaining.  We only needed a few extra tickets for the afternoon session so we spent a while holding up a sign that said we were from California and needed tickets.  We ended up getting what we needed for the afternoon session and also a few for Sunday morning.  There were lots of protesters that had pretty strange signs.  Also, there was a guy dressed up like the devil and he had a sign saying he was Satan and these street preachers were his missionaries.  He was taking pictures with people and was pretty hilarious.

We then went back to the cars for sandwiches and chips (although we forgot the bread in Brother Smith's car so we had to buy some more for that meal).  After attending the afternoon session, we went to the Food Court at City Center Mall.  Us and about 10,000 other people, it seems.  We asked the kids to choose what they wanted and then the adults split up and everyone waited in line for their food.  We barely had enough time to scarf it down before needing to head back for the Priesthood session.  Somehow Ethan Smith broke the rubber heel off of his shoes but his Dad found him some black duct tape and he wore that for the rest of the trip.

We had enough tickets for Priesthood session so that was nice to not have to worry about getting in for that one.  After Priesthood session, we met one of the missionaries that had served in our ward for a while (Elder Wassink), chatted with him and then found an ice cream place where we could all get gelato and hang out and talk.  We then went back to the homes to get some more sleep (though not nearly enough).  Parker was still using his crutches (most of the time) from his sprained ankle but he was able to get around pretty well.

Here we are all ready for Priesthood session to start.

Most of our tickets were pretty far away but it was still awesome to be in the same room as our prophet and the apostles.

A few of us had better seats for the Sunday morning session where we got to listen to Music and the Spoken Word before the Sunday morning session. 

After the Sunday morning session, we went over to the temple for a couple pictures in the rain before heading back to our cars.  Here we are trying to stay dry.

This is a picture of the guys in the theater seating on Saturday morning (singing the rest hymn).

After taking pictures, we went to Pioneer Park and had lunch (yep, sandwiches and chips).  We also fed a few of the homeless that hang around Pioneer Park.  Everyone packed up an extra sandwich for the road so we wouldn't have to stop and spend money buying food on the way home (since it was Sunday).

We listened to the Sunday afternoon session in our cars on the way home.  We eventually made it back to Concord between 11 pm and midnight, exhausted but with great memories of a fun and inspiring trip.  The young women were able to view all 3 of their sessions in the Conference Center and the young men viewed 3 of 4 sessions in the Conference Center.  That was pretty good since we didn't have enough to get everyone in any of the sessions (except the Priesthood session) when we left Concord on Friday morning.  We have great youth in our ward and it was exciting to be together on this adventure where we got to listen to counsel from our church leaders.