Good news bad news better news

So lets get the bad news out of the way: John was laid off on Monday (a week ago). We aren't very excited about that.
But the good news: I went in to the doctor today and I'm pregnant! We've been trying for 3-4 months now and just found out that we're going to have a baby.
Now some people would think that finding out I'm pregnate just after John got laid off is bad news, but we feel really good about it. And when we went to the temple the day after he got laid off (before I knew I was pregnant) I just had this amazing good feeling, so we really feel like evrything is going to be fine.
The better news: it looks like I'm going to have somemore sewing work soon and we're pretty sure that we can prepay the hospital for the baby (8-9 small ish payment before delivery) so weather or not we have insurance shouldn't be a problem.

Recapping July

So July has been busy!
We shingled the playhouse roof and have spent a lot of time working in our yard and Grandma Earl's. For all you non-relatives that read this, Grandma Earl turned 90 this year and she's still going. She lives in her house with her widowed brother Uncle Karl. They have some one who comes in and helps around the house and a little in the yard. Some one mowes the lawn, but most of the garden has been left to go totally wild for the last 5 years but it was starting to go wild from the far corners in about 5 years before that, and since she has about a 1/2 acre lot thats a lot of yard!
Well we've started to reclaim the yard from nature. It's totally like The Secret Garden there's still a lot of good stuff growing under the weeds and creeper vine, we just need to give it some TLC. And maybe you've heard those jokes about "Nature's a mother!" well some days thats how it feels working out there, and then John whips out the weed eater and 30 minutes later we go oh well maybe that's doable. I'll have to do another Grandma's yard post after I get the pictures off the camera.
Little John and I started a once a week mommy & me tumbling class, he loves it. And we're in the last week of our mommy & me swim class, which it sooooo much fun!
We keep canning: cherry pie filling, blueberry pie filling, raspberry jam, tomato juice, maraschino cherries (non-alcoholic), danish cherry sauce, and just canned raspberries. And we froze the ecsess purple carrots from the garden, because we don't have a pressure canner.
My mending and alterations bussiness is picking up a little, I just altered a wedding dress for a girl.

Recapping May and June

So May was a good month because school got out.

Ben went to his first ever fancy dance on a date. He took Amanda Wendel from down the street, they look so good!

My grandma Earl (she is actually my Great-Grandma) had her ninetieth birthday so we celebrated with a great huge part with all the reletives from out of state that we don't get to see very often. Someone found out that you can get amazingly good deals on huge orders from Maddox so we got the food from there. YUM!!! Two different flavors of cake. After the lunch we had an open house so that all of her friends and neighbors could come and see her.

We made and frosted donuts, chocolate and vanilla frosting!

Little John decided the sand box is more fun with water.

We started buildingLittle John a playhouse in the backyard, we modified some plans off the internet. John's parents came over and helped a lot. The weather was hot not foggy, the fog in the pictures is Little John's fingerprints on the camera lens but no one noticed until too late.

We enjoyed a nice picnic up the canyon.

We made jam and our sticky helper is so cute!

We went to the zoo and Little John was mezmerized by the elephants, they are deffinately his favorite animal.

We ran the Race For the Cure 5k with my Aunt Juli and her daughter Kate. It was awesome! I hope to do it again next year. Maybe next year I'll jog part of it with the stroller instaed of just power walking with the stroller.

My brother Ben graduated from Box Elder High School and Seminary. At the high school graduation things were getting boring since the speakers just go on and on and on. Then all of a sudden, at the back of the students there was a great commotion with everyone looking all over and looking under their chairs. It turns out that someone had let loose a mouse. Ben appreciated the break from the monotony. After a while they caught it. Then there was some more commotion because they had let loose more than one mouse. It kept the audience very well entertained. It also kept the sutdents awake. Oh, and some guy wore a kilt, it was cool.

We spent a lot of time working on the playhouse.

We took Ben for a ritual "last meal" before shipping him out to boot camp.

We spent a weekend with my sister Heather in Loa, UT (near Capitol Reef Ntl Park), for her baby shower.

We made arricot, pinapple apricot, and apricot plum jam

Little John ride his trike a lot.

For Father's day I helped Little John collect stuff and we put it in plaster to make Daddy a paper weight (I gave it a few coats of sealer to protect it).

We are loving your year pass to the Jensen Historical Farm (where we went to Baby animal days) We saw lots of chickens and washed clothes.

Little John loves bubbles!

My Mom entered an online contest and won a Pizza Party! So we had a bunch of friends and family over. The kids loved the backyard.

We took Little John to the pool.He lasted about 10 minutes because once the wind picked up it got cold.

Nana (my mom) lets Little John get away with things sometimes. Like making the backyard a nudist camp. He decided sitting naked was a mistake, but had fun doing everything else.

Typed by Sarah Snow the cooliest ever!!!! ('Cuz I don't type, I chicken peck:D)

Stage managing part 3

This is the cute little church that they converted into a theater. And now I'm going to try a new thing the rest of the pictures are on my facebook page ('cuz they give me more storage room). If you can't get it to work tell me in the comments and I'll find another way to do it.

Stage managing part 2

So the show is over with now and it was great. And I've been really busy which is why it's taken me so long to get to part 2.
So I left off with the show I did in college. For that show I did costumes: repair, organizing, and quick changes. I enjoy costumes. I love everything about them. The styles and eras, the fabric types and colors, and the great hats, shoes, jewlery, ect to acessorize them with. I enjoy making them. I don't always enjoy repairing them, although I like the challenge. I like designing them, but I don't get the chance too often.
My other great love is lights. I love designing lights. I love when you get the colors just right and it adds to the mood of the scene. They are some of the best special effects as you can get with live theater. I like the challenge of being the follow spot operator during a dance number. I even enjoy (crazy as it sounds) hanging out of the ceiling or balencing at the top of a ladder or cherrypicker to adjust the angle of a light.
But for this show I was just your basic stage hand, translation: I move lots of furniture in the dark. I had a good time, but I decided now that I've lost all those muscles from all my time off and now that I've had a kid- being the furniture hauler is not the job for me. I'll stage manage, I'll do props or costumes or lights. I'll help haul a few things, but I'm not meant to lift chaise lounges over my head any more. I should also stop trying to move large tables or stacks of chairs by myself. And I should spend the extra $10 for the super comfy shoes since I stand the whole show. Any ways bed is calling me so I guess there's going to be a part 3 and that's where I'll put the pictures.

Why tech theater is great mom training

So in honor of Mother's day this is my list of why tech theater is great mom training.



1. After so many years of cuts, bumps, bruises, and scrapes from building set, moving set, and running in the dark, you know your way around a first aid kit and always have one handy.



2. After building set, framing in a basement is no big deal. And you can paint it in your sleep. You can probably even do a little electrical and plumbing work.



3. Costume repair is not too different from regular clothes repair.



4. Because rehersal can go way late you're already used to carrying snacks and water everywhere.



5. There's what you reherse and then there's what really happens, so you already have a lot of practice coming up with plan B, C, D, ect on the spot.



6. Any one who's spent any time navigating backstage, should be able to handle screaming kids during rush hour traffic.



7. All that knot tying and building will come in handy when your sons do Scouts.



8. All that make up and costume knowledge will come in handy with your teenage daughter. Not to mention Halloween.



9. You're very familiar and even comfortable with dirt and grease. And with how to clean them up.



10. And now that your such a pro at moving set, moving your furniture from house to house is old hat.

Stage managing part 1

So this is going to need at least to blogs to cover all this.

So there is this popular local community theater, called the Herigage Community Theater

And Ben has done technical theater there in the past.

Lately John and I have been talking about me getting back into theater. I had quit for awhile because I was settling into a new state, then I was pregnant, then I was nursing, then John got a job and I'm the only person home most of the time. But I was starting to get a bit stir crazy and its hard to make new friends (that are adults) when you're called to work in the nursery. So we had decided I was going to try doing a show this summer.

One day Ben gets a phone call, they need a tech crew for a show at the Heritage. So I talk to John and show up with Ben at rehersal. The show is called the Women and it calls for a cast of like 45 women. Thats not a very reasonable number for community theater, so they've double and triple cast people for the supporting and bit parts, cutting the cast down to about 25. All women. Ben and the director, Ross, are the only guys. Ben totally realizes the opertunity he has here and never goes to rehersal with out applying body spray and hair gel.

I think I should take an aside here and tell you first of all that theater is more than a hobby to me, its a core part of my DNA. I remember auditioning to be in Merry Poppins in about first or second grade before I ever moved to Utah the first time. I got the part but was encouraged to make the right choice after discovering many rehersals and performances would be on Sunday. I dropped the show, but the preformance bug had bitten me.

I continued to do backyard shows with anyone who was willing (these were terrible, but the costumes were usually good). And in 6th grade I did my first auditioned for the part show. I also built set and found costumes. I moved to Utah and auditioned for the fall show and didn't get a part. It was so long ago I'm ok with admitting that I was totally crushed, but not all was lost they needed people for the tech crew. Long story short: I sing, dance, and act but plenty of other people do it better than me (especially singing if it's allergy season). So after being just part of the chorus for a few shows, and having to help move scenery anyway, I found my calling behind the scenes. I still auditioned for the shows I thought would be fun to be in, but I wasn't crushed anymore because tech is my thing. I was in a few shows, and I enjoyed them, but even then I was doing a lot of tech.

And so I learned to do everything I could, and it was a blast all through up to high school graduation. And then for a truely inexplicable reason I traded all that to study biological engineering (science is a big interest to me and I'm good at it, but it doesn't get me excited the way tech does). My motivation was good, I wanted to study genetics and cancer, what with all my family history of it. So I quit theater and fought with engineering for 3 years. I finally came to my senses and dropped engineering for biology because with just a few more credits I'd be able to graduate. And I teched another show and fell in love all over again with the crazyness backstage.

So that seems like enough for this post. Later.