Slower week for me, but not for everyone

For me, this week was a slower week than we've had all summer, but there was lots going on in the family.  The first event that was busy for my 5 oldest children and their families was Back to School!!!  I remember how much I liked getting the kids back in school at the end of each summer.  I didn't love "Back to School Night," paperwork, paying fees, and so on, but in general it was always a happily anticipated event.
Hyeji started 3rd grade, Gunnar 2nd, Doyeon 1st, Max, Kindergarten, and Ollie, Ori, Ruby and Yuna will be going to pre-school.  I got a few pictures from Jieun (Max started school last week so his picture is in the last newsletter)

And Doyeon lost her first tooth!

Andy finishes his rotation in Fort Hood at the end of next week.  Elise drove up to visit him this weekend with the kids.  I'm sure Elise will be thrilled to have him back after his 6 weeks away.

Both these pictures are of Beverly (The army clothes do say "daddy's little girl."

Jennie gave Dojin a haircut. Here are before and after pics.  There's a huge difference.

Before

After

Roy, Crista and Matt went on another long bike ride--Cache Valley Century.  Nick was going to go with them, but he is sleep deprived from helping with a new baby, so he opted out.  Crista and Roy did the shorter ride--37 miles.  Roy said it was still a good work out.  

Caitlyn had her first class at Utah State.  It was a connections class that started before all the other classes.  She stayed with Crista for the week and thus was available to babysit the girls on Saturday so Crista could go on the bike ride.  She was able to move into her apartment to some extent on Friday afternoon.

Greta

Ruby

Crista in biking attire

Ruby in dancing attire

Sunday was Amelia Christensen's farewell.  On the way in the door Roy asked the greeter if she knew Vernon Cook.  She said, "I sure did. He was a great man. Every time my children would give talks in church, they would get a letter from him within two days, telling them what a good job they did."  This was a little tidbit of information that I didn't know about my dad.

 Amelia gave a great talk.  And it was especially fun because Bruce, Glenn and Rosilene were there.  We had 6 out of 7 siblings there.  Also, Norm and Carol Wright were in town from California (Carol Cook Wright is a cousin of mine), so we were able to visit with them.  Kim Saling and Bruce O. took pictures, but I didn't even take my phone in.

Christine had made some delicious quiche.  There was also salad, fruit and some treats.  After a fun visit, I had to hurry to get to my ward in time to teach the Relief Society lesson.  It went well, even though there were lots of announcements and I had to finish early in order to allow the chorister time to practice a song that the RS is going to be singing in Sacrament meeting in a couple of weeks.  At least no one really had time to get bored.

Amelia and Caitlyn.  She'll make a great missionary!

On the 4th of July we were supposed to celebrate Grandpa Rasband's 89th birthday, but because of the fires threatening Tara and Luke Osborn's cows, the party was cancelled.  So, this evening we went down to Payson to wish Verl (Grandpa, dad) happy birthday and to socialize with Roy's family.  We had a great time, but Verl didn't look like he felt very well. He's had a lot of back and joint pain among other things.  Hopefully, we won't have worn him out too much.  Bruce Oblad took the following pictures at Amelia's farewell.  We missed Dave.  He had to attend his stake conference since he is a stake leader.

Phil, Christine, Catharine, Bruce, Glenn and Nan

Charlotte and Christine

Catharine and Brayden Saling

Bruce and Caitlyn

Rosilene, Glenn and Ila

Christine and Bruce

Violet and Nan

Caitlyn and Catharine

Caitlyn, Catharine, Chris Saling, friend of Eliza's, Eliza and Peter Christensen, and Laura Beale

Shakespeare Festival

Roy took Elise and the boys to the airport

It looks like they went back to sleep pretty quickly

 Elise left early Monday morning.  We missed the boys and Beverly right away.  It’s hard to have them live so far away.  I spent Monday catching up on housework--and in the early afternoon skated--first by myself and then with Ollie, Finn and Gunnar.  We took Nan and Bruce to Pirates of Penzance Monday night at the Centerpoint Legacy Theater.  I’ve seen the play before, but I enjoyed it a lot more this time.  It’s an unusual operetta, so it helped to know what I was getting into.  Bruce and Nan almost cancelled because Bruce got a cold in his eye.  He looked pretty terrible, but we went anyway and Roy and I stayed healthy!  Tuesday after teaching water aerobics, I kind of crashed, so it became a recovery day and by Wednesday I was able to spend some time sewing and get a quilt started for Avie Rain.  Thursday morning Roy and I left for Cedar City for a few days of plays.

If you count the play on Monday night, we really maxed out on plays this week.  We saw four Shakespeare plays: Henry VI part 1, Merchant of Venice, Othello, and The Merry Wives of Windsor.  We also saw The Foreigner, which we have seen many times, but I don't think we ever enjoyed it more.  The actors were fabulous and the main actor was so physically talented (he was even doing back bends on stage as he tried to slink out of sight of other actors) that we were highly entertained.
I learned a lot about the Shakespeare plays this time, and was left with a lot of food for thought.  It's amazing that someone who wrote plays 100's of years ago was so talented that he left the legacy that he did.  The play, Merchant of Venice, was written because Queen Elizabeth's lover had killed a jew. He wanted to feel okay about it, so he asked Marlo and Shakespeare to write anti-semantic plays.  Apparently, Marlo did just that.  He wrote an ugly, vile play.  Shakespeare, however, wrote a play that was seemingly anti-semantic, but has underlying tones that make you feel sympathy for the Jew.  The Jew was played by a woman, who did such a good job that I didn't even know she was a woman until someone told me the next morning at breakfast.  She has a Jewish background and her grandfather (or great grandfather) took his own life after spending time in a Jewish concentration camp during WWII.  She also runs a women only Shakespeare company where all the parts are acted by women.  The play was staged so that it was obvious that the "Christians" in the story, ruined the life of the Jewish man and even his daughter's life.  The monologues of the Jew in the play showed that Shakespeare understood people of many backgrounds a lot better than most of those who lived in his day.
Othello was a dark tragedy.  I'd heard of the story, but I'm not sure I've ever read it.  It was superbly acted.  Shakespeare would take a character flaw and show how that flaw could escalate until it destroyed--in this case several lives.
As usual, there was one play we didn't see and as usual, we regretted not getting tickets to it.  We had seen Big River and decided that we didn't need to see it again, but we heard such great things about it we were disappointed we couldn't find a way to fit it in.
While we were in Cedar City, we spent one morning in the Cedar City Temple.

It is a very small temple, but beautiful.  Most of the colors throughout were soft pastels, but there were stained glass windows with big red flowers to accent the celestial room as well as some of the hallways and stairwells.  The Bountiful temple is closed for three weeks, so we were glad we got an opportunity to attend while we were there.
While we were in Cedar City, Jennie babysat Dan and Jieun's kids overnight for them so they could celebrate their 10th anniversary, and Caitlyn participated in a skating competition and took a couple of skating tests.  See videos below.

Pictures from the week:

Mav had a little mom time without his brother

Caitlyn skated in a competition and got 1st place.
The category was artistic/dramatic.  She choreographed
her whole program.  Annika was the only one who went
to watch her perform.

Max started school practically as soon as he arrived
back in Texas.  Here he is on his 1st day!

Maverick

Caitlyn went shopping and found a cute
new dress while we were gone.

Below are 2 skating videos (if you didn't see them on Facebook.

The 1st is the competition where Caitlyn took 1st place, 

the 2nd is a Skating test.  She falls on the last jump, which was her

easiest one, but she was able to reskate just the jump and

passed the test.

Effie having a "late" Sunday afternoon
nap.  Of course she falls asleep at 5:00.

2nd week with Elise, Mav, Max and Bev

 We have had a fun and eventful week with Elise.  Having Elise here means having everyone around and we have a lot of fun family pictures.

Max and Mav, Hyeji, Dojin, and Dan

Roy took all the kids back to ride the horses so Max and Mav could have the experience.  We had 15 out of 16 grandchildren come.  Avie is still a little small for horseback riding.
Back row: Ollie and Doyeon; Middle Row: Elise, Effie, Ruby, Finn, Gunnar and Roy.
Middle front: Max, Ori, Beverly and Ila;
Front row: Maverick, Yuna, Dojin, Greta and Hyeji

Max

Effie, Ori, Mav and Max

Mav and Max

Ollie milking a goat

Gunnar milking a goat

Dojin

Finn

Max

Doyeon

Ollie

Mav

Dojin

Hyeji

Ruby

Yuna

Effie

Ori

Mav

The only one who wouldn't ride a horse was Greta.  It was too scary.

Ila and Yuna Sunday evening

Dojin

Beverly

Grandpa Rasband has been hounding Roy to get all of our kids together and do a musical program at his assisted living center.  We had been largely ignoring him since he said he didn't want a lot of that "classical stuff," and that's mostly what we play.  However, with Elise's visit, we knew we needed to make a trip down to Santaquin, so we hurriedly arranged to fulfill both responsibilities.  Elise played the guitar and sang.  Jennie sang some of her favorite songs--2 or three with her iphone playing the song, and one acapella.  Se has a great voice.  Caitlyn played a few violin numbers (I accompanied her on one, and Jieun accompanied her on another.  We also played a duet which sadly did not go well :{  Jieun played a solo and part of another for an encore.  It was a fairly amateurish performance, but the old people loved it because there were 14 children to watch while we played.

Grandpa Verl with his lady "friend"

Elise performing on the guitar with Effie and Mav watching closely

Add caption

Grandpa Verl with Avie Rain

Elise, Bevy and grandpa (on his phone)

Grandpa Verl with EFfie

Roy, Jennie and Avie Rain

Grandpa with Mav

Grandpa with Max and Mav

Grandpa with Bevy

 It is a good thing that I ice skate, so that I can go with my grandchildren.  We all met at the rink for an hour or so during the week.  They have these walkers so even the little ones can feel successful.  Gunnar and Ollie were there, too.  They are really getting comfortable on the ice.  Ollie is trying out hockey skates so he can learn to play, and Gunnar can now skate backwards, he even tries to go on one foot and does pretty well.  Hyeji, Doyeon and Yuna are pretty comfortable, too.

Nick, Ori and Effie

Mav, Max and Hyeji

Nick with Effie

Elise, Mav, Nick and Effie

Ice skating with Max, Yuna and Beverly

Finn and Hyeji

Treats after!

 When Elise comes in the summer, we always try to take a boating trip.  This year we went to Flaming Gorge from Thursday to Saturday.  Pics from the gorge:

Roy and Max driving the boat
We need an album of all the kids/grandkids driving the
boat with Roy!

Matt and Greta looking at deer

Ruby.  She even wears dresses camping

Greta and Mav

I found a little time to read

Greta and grandma

In the water with Maverick.  It was pretty cool,
but Mav loved it.

Max, Greta, Bevy and Grandma

Even Greta got a turn to drive

Grandpa helped Max catch a crawdad, but he wanted a fish.

naptime

In this picture, Mav is awake.  But he had a long nap on the tube earlier.

There is always at least one deer that comes for food in
the campground

Friends:  Mav and Ruby (Crista and Greta in background)

Going home Crista went the other direction towards Matt's family in Mapleton.  We stopped for a bite at Jimmy Johns in Evanston.

Max is a better eater than Mav.  He took a bite, but it took a long time for him to chew it:

We came home Saturday morning because I had my 40 year reunion that evening.  It inconveniently fell on Elise's birthday, but I signed up anyway.  A couple of my good friends from High School were in charge of putting it together and I wanted to support them.  I was glad I went.  It was fun to catch up with people.  There are 24 or my classmates that have passed away, but I didn't know about half of them (or at least I don't remember them).  Elise  had the family over for pizza.  The only injuries were Nick getting nicked on his face (from trying to unbind the balloon string from the ceiling fan with a knife), and Mav got his fingers slammed (I guess in a door).  We're finding that having that many kids over, and that much chaos can be a little dangerous.

Heidi Nelson Jenkins, me, AnnJanine Freeman Etzel, Jamine Simons Craeger

Ginger Davis Bitter on right

Roy and I ready to go to the reunion

We had the family again on Sunday night for chicken and steak.  The kids played a lot inside, but when the adults ventured outside, they all came out.  We got a rare picture of all 16 grandkids together.  Of course, to get 16 kids looking at the camera all at the same time is impossible, but we did okay by taking many shots. 

Ruby, Yuna, Ollie and Max on tramp

Max, Yuna, Ollie and Doyeon

Elise, blowing out the birthday candles.  Adrienne made the cake.  She's
really good at it!  Gunnar, Max, and Mav also in picture

Nick swinging one of the kids over his shoulder

Dances and dressups: Effie, Doyeon, Yuna, Ori and Max

Effie, Doyeon, Yuna, Max and Ollie

Front row: Ruby, Yuna, Ori with Avi, Effie, Max holding Beverly, Doyeon, Dojin, Finn, Hyeji holding Greta, Maverick
Back row: Gunnar holding Ila, Ollie.