High School Musical Week

The main event this week was Veronica's participation in High School Musical with Ovation at the Orpheum. That DOMINATED the week. But there were a few other things happening here and there so let's do this recap thing. 

I'm trying to remember anything special about Sunday January 11th. But nothing is coming to mind. I'm pretty certain that Brandon took the girls driving in the evening. Both of them are very close to getting all their driving hours. They mostly need night time hours now. So Brandon took them driving around town after dark.

Oh I should mention what happened in Relief Society. We were going over Elder Kearon's talk.  I didn't think I had much to contribute so I was planning to just listen. But then we were talking about something about God's mercy. My study of Joel had included studying Exodus 34:6-7. The scripture points out that God's wrath only extends to the 3rd and 4th generation, but his steadfast love extends to the 1000th generation. So I opened up that part of my scriptures and read the verses and then explained that we should see how expansive his love and mercy is compared to the teeny amount of time that is wrath lasts. 

I thought that would be it for the lesson, but later the lesson started talking about God giving us new hearts. And AGAIN I thought, "Oh I read about this while I was studying Joel."  This time the verse was from Ezekiel 36:26-28. It talks about God changing the people's hearts from hearts of stone to hearts of flesh. So I raised my hand and shared that scripture. I said something like, "Wow, my scripture study just happened to coincide with this lesson really well."

And if you are wondering why my study of Joel led to two completely different books of scripture - well that's just how Joel is. He quotes and references A LOT of other Biblical authors. 

On Monday my friend Kori hosted another "we survived the break" brunch. These are so fun. She has little fried egg griddles so everyone can make themselves a fried egg and add in as much cheese and bacon as they want. And everyone brings something to share. I'd made raspberry chocolate chip muffins the night before so I brought those. (They weren't as good as the name makes them sound. I want to find another recipe.)

Monday was the only day all week that Veronica did NOT have anything to do with the musical. We made sure her costume was ready. She needed black pants, a graphic t-shirt or black shirt, and a flannel shirt. She already had the black pants. Charlotte let her borrow her red flannel shirt. And we found a graphic t for her to wear. But later in the week she decided she just wanted a black shirt. She had one that she wore, but it was a little small. So I bought her a new one at Hobby Lobby in time for the Dress rehearsal on Thursday.  

On Tuesday's I usually go into work at 12:00 and stay for 3 hours. But I was still feeling kind of behind so I went into work right after I dropped Derrick off at school. I was planning to leave a little after admin meeting so I was hoping to be home around 1:00. Instead I didn't leave until after 2:00!  I worked over 5 hours. And really there was still so much I could have done. January is brutal!

At some point in the afternoon I took this picture of three different books all about the same subject. After Brandon and I had so much fun reading Into Thin Air together I wanted to read him Endurance. The Endurance was a boat that sank in the Antarctic waters in 1915. The crew had a ridiculous journey to safety. My sister Lindsey had recommended the book to me and I'd read it about 18 months ago. I wanted to read it to Brandon. 

So I checked out Endurance from the library and started reading it to Brandon. But after about a chapter and a half I was very confused. This Endurance was about the sinking of the Endurance. But it was NOT the Endurance book that I'd read. The book I'd read had been written by the Captain of the Ship. I distinctly remembered specific stories that he told in first person. This book was telling those same stories in a detached 3rd party narrator way. 

So I had to stop reading and figure out what had happened. I ended up checking out two more Endurance related books from the library to find the one that I'd already read. 

The Endurance I had read was "Endurance: An Epic of Polar Adventure" by Frank Arthur Worsley. He was the captain of the Endurance and was on all the major adventures of the expedition.

The Endurance that I'd picked up this second time was "Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage" by Alfred Lansing. It was written by someone who researched the voyage and includes a lot of journal entries from the men on the voyage. This was also the book that Lindsey had read. We had no idea that we'd read too different books!

I took a picture of all the different books. The one I recommend is the white one. That's the one written by Worsley.  

Veronica had her first tech rehearsal of the week that evening. She had to be at the theatre from 5:30 to about 9:00. At about 4:45 I started working on her hair and make up. The hair and make up recommendations were for either braids or "half up/half down" hair. We played around with a few different things. Nothing was looking right. Then I finally said, "Oh wait, this is supposed to be 2006. NO ONE in 2006 parted their hair in the middle that's a now a days thing." So I parted her hair on the side and then pulled her hair back. That did it!

Then I did her make up. And then I started having a very weird out of body experience. Every time I looked at her I was like, "Holy Crap, it's me from 2006."  I even asked Brandon, "doesn't she look like me from when you met me?  He agreed. 

For reference here's a picture of me and my siblings in 2006. Veronica was looking a lot like me in this picture. 

When she came home that night some of her bangs had escaped from where I'd pulled them back. We decided that she liked the look with the bangs out and to the side so that's how we did her hair the rest of the week. So she didn't quite look like me from 2006 anymore. But I'll tell you what she did look like later. 

Brandon dropped her off at the theatre at 5:30. She had a great rehearsal. She'd been really nervous about tech week, but it was so much fun for her. She came home so excited. 

Wednesday was my day off - but only in name. After I dropped Derrick off I went out to Filer to learn how to do the bookkeeping for Jump Company. It was like going back to Kindergarten. I felt SO DUMB as Chris Ayers was going over how to do everything. Like I know the concepts, but I had to learn so much about how to use this specific version of QuickBooks and how to get info from the bank account and the Square account. It was A LOT to learn. 

I was there 2 hours and by the end I felt like if I looked at another number I was going to die. 

I went home and had a little break and then it was back to look at more numbers! I met up with Brian Keene to get added to his campaign bank account. But thankfully I didn't actually have to do anything with that one. 

That evening Veronica had theatre again. Charlotte and Lydia weren't interested in the young women activity so they didn't go. Derrick's class was having a planning meeting. They were told to come with ideas for activities. I knew Derrick had a lot of ideas so before he went I helped him make a list. He told me 10 things and I wrote them down for him. 

Derrick's planning meeting turned out really well. The leaders were impressed by his list of ideas. He was the only boy who came with a list. On Sunday he was actually called into the Teachers Quorum Presidency as the Secretary. That list was one of the main reasons the Bishopric felt inspired to call him. I was like, "if they want someone to keep them on track, Derrick is definitely their guy. He LOVES calendars and lists and making sure that things are planned."

I took Derrick to the activity. I didn't feel like driving back and forth so I just hung out in the lobby while he was at his activity. I was kind of in the middle of reading two books. The main book I was reading was Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet by John G. Turner. I'd been in the waiting list for this at the Library for months, but it was worth the wait. It was much more readable than Rough Stone Rolling. I'd also read John G Turner's biography of Brigham Young. I'd liked that one but I LOVED this one. 

But I didn't feel like reading that one in the church lobby. So I brough the other book I'm reading. It's called The Tears of Things by Richard Rohr. It has a chapter on the prophet Amos. That's the next book in my bible study so I'm getting ready for that one. 

Derrick was done at 8:00 and I brought him home. I felt a little lost all week with Veronica gone until 9:00 every night. We often read Harry Potter books at 8:00. So every night at 8:00 I was like, "What am I supposed to do???????"

Brandon picked Veronica up from the theatre, once again she was so happy. 

On Thursday Veronica was pretty tired so I let her sleep in for first period. I took Derrick to school and then came home and got Veronica and took her to school. After I dropped her off at school I went to Hobby Lobby and bought her black shirt. The air had been clear on the way to the mall, but right before I reached the mall everything got really foggy. When I drove home the fog was still just as the mall. But later in the morning the fog was all over town.  

I checked in with all my little billing clients. At 11:00 I went to Chattertown and helped Andrea with learning more billing things. Then I went to Aspen Grove and did all the things there. 

When Derrick got home from school on Wednesday he'd been so excited to show me something he'd made at school. It was a drawing of a DNA spiral. He'd traced it from his computer in science class. Then on Wednesday night he traced a velociraptor on his Chromebook at home. He taped the paper to his screen and then carefully traced the drawing. He showed it to me on Thursday. I was so proud of him. 

Veronica had her dress rehearsal that night. There are three casts for High School Musical. Veronica is in the cast that met from 4:30 to 6:00 Monday and Wednesday. Her cast was the first to perform. (I'd signed up for this one in case we did make it into Anastasia. I wanted this play out of the way before Anastasia got too busy.) The other casts were the 6:00 to 7:30 Monday/Wednesday class. And the 6:00 to 7:30 Tuesday/Thursday cast. Each cast will take a week doing tech week and then doing three shows. The other casts were invited to Veronica's dress rehearsal. Veronica will also go to their dress rehearsals. Veronica had so much fun performing in front of an audience. When it was over the audience gave feedback. One of Veronica's friends from orchestra said, "Veronica, you were the best!"

Veronica also got her cast t-shirt. She was so happy to have this. 

For reasons that have never been fully explained to me, Charlotte has been making a deer costume for herself. She'd spent quite a bit of time making ears and a tail and antlers and hooves. Here are her antlers and ears. 

And here is her tail. 

I'd gone grocery shopping with Charlotte that night. We came home with lots of food. Everyone helped put it away. 

Friday was the big day for Veronica. But she was pretty exhausted. I let her sleep in for first period again. Then I took her to school. I'd emailed my friend Kerri who is the attendance secretary at the school. I told her, "We are trying to find the balance between the fun of theatre without triggering an anxiety attack."

I was at work for a long time that morning. And then I came home and TOOK A NAP because I didn't have to go grocery shopping. I picked Veronica up from school after her 6th period. Her 7th period is kind of a lame class so I didn't feel bad taking her out. She came home and took a shower and then relaxed. 

Brandon and I made pizza for dinner. At 5:00 I helped Veronica with her hair and make up. I took a picture with Veronica because we look similar. 

But she didn't really look like me now, instead she looked like me 28 years ago. I found this picture of me in 7th grade. I specifically went looking for this picture because I knew that my bangs were hanging down like Veronica's were. Yep, quite a bit of resemblance there. 

I told Veronica to pick which night we went to her play. She picked Saturday night. So we weren't there for opening night. But I'm told it went very well. Here's a bunch of pictures I stole from Facebook. First here's the cast list. There were a bunch of other friends in this cast. My friend Jeanette's daughter Kate was one of the thespians with Veronica. Both Finn's from our ward were in the cast as Jocks. Nora was a cheerleader. Our friends Kylie and Justin were also in the cast. 

Here's Veronica after the show. 

Here are all the kids doing a cheer before the show started. 

And here is the cast picture. 

Oh and here's another one of Derrick's tracing pictures. This is the indoraptor. Seriously there is nothing that dinosaurs don't motivate this kid to do. I could barely get him to hold a pencil a few years ago. And now he'd tracing pictures like this. 

I spent the evening watching the Era's Tour Documentary. I was working some more on my scrap books. I finished 2023 and 2024. I made it through episodes 1-4. I loved the documentary. At one point I came upstairs nearly in tears because of the new Reputation body suit. (Which sounds really dumb in retrospect, but I was so so so happy to see it in the documentary.) 

On Saturday we slept in. On Wednesday I'd had to give myself a pep talk to get out of bed. Part of the pep talk had been, "You can sleep in as late as you want on Saturday." So I slept until after 10:00.

 Brandon and I had a goal to get a lot of the junk out of the garage. I took Veronica to the theatre for her first show at 12:30. When I got back Brandon had backed the Pilot up to the garage. We started putting a lot of metal into the back. We had our old washing machine and our old oven. Then Brandon went all around the garage and found all sorts of metal that he'd been planning to take the the recycling center. Some of this was from 2 jobs ago. It was just scrap that he'd brought home to recycle "someday."

Well this didn't turn out to be someday either. We drove over to the metal recycling place and it was CLOSED. It didn't open until Monday. So Brandon drove around all weekend with what I called "the Jingle Jangle Machine."  He was finally able to take it to the recycling center on Monday after work. He got $22 for all the metal.  

We were more successful with the other load. I checked to make sure the transfer station (our version of a dump) was open. It was. So we backed the Odyssey up to the garage. Then we folded our old King size mattress in half and secured it with tie downs. We were able to fit it into the van that way. We shoved an old Twin size mattress into the van too. Brandon also put in an old TV (another thing brought home from work - Brandon definitely has an M.O.) We took that stuff to the transfer station. We paid $7 and then unloaded everything in a big bay. (We made sure we got the tie downs before leaving the mattress.) Later big trucks would scrape everything up and take it to the multi-county dump somewhere past Burley. 

Everything went so fast I never even took a picture. 

At 3:30 I picked up Veronica from the theatre. She had loved the matinee show, but she also needed a break. She was home for 90 minutes and was asleep for probably 45. 

I helped touch up her make up and took her back to the theatre at 5:30. Then I was home for a bit and then me, Brandon, Charlotte, and Lydia went back to the theatre to watch Veronica's third and final show. 

We sat up in the balcony for the first time. This was a great place to see the whole cast. We could see Veronica perfectly every time she was on stage. She was delightful to watch every time too. She had really good expressions. At one point the thespians all sing a song together. She was so good in that. 

She was really good in everything. It's so fun to see her singing and dancing with everyone. I loved watching her sing, "Stick to the Status Quo." "We're all in this together" was also a really fun number.

All the kids did great. I was so proud of all the kids that I knew in the cast. And really the whole cast in general. There was a lot going on with singing, dancing, props, scenery. 

Oh and here's a really funny thing about the scenery. At one point Troy takes Gabriella to his hide out area. It's kind of a garden area. And guess what they used? My panel from Much Ado about Nothing. AKA "The Panel we do not speak of."  Lydia painted all the panels except one. I'd painted one of the garden panels. It was kind of a "hey I'm driving you here so I'm going to help while I'm here" kind of a thing. It looked okay, but it was never the best panel and yeah, we just never really talked about the fact that it existed. It was just kind of there. 

Well it got it's turn to shine!  

I was just going to put a picture of that panel up on the blog, but then I realized I've never written about going to see Much Ado About Nothing. That's part of the unfinished blog post about the week we went to Northern Idaho. I guess I need to get back to finishing that post. 

When the play was over we met Veronica in the lobby. It was really crowded so we didn't spent a lot of time there. We went home, but Veronica stayed at the theatre. She helped everyone clean up and then they had their cast party. There were treats and the kids sang karaoke.    

Brandon picked her up at 10:00. I was in my room reading when they got home. (I'd finished the Joseph Smith book and was now reading The Lost World Jurassic Park.) Brandon came and got me so I could be with Veronica. She was crying a lot. She was so sad that the play was over. She was going to miss all her friends and all the fun. 

After she stopped crying she had fun talking about the play. She'd dropped her pencil in a classroom scene. It had looked kind of planned, but she told us that it wasn't planned at all. I was joking and saying "this scene is now about Veronica getting her pencil back."  We had some good laughs. 

She'd got the award for "Strength of Character." She also got a printed out cast picture. Later we bought some frames and she set up this whole theatre display in her room. It has things from her three plays: High School Musical, Matilda, and Willy Wonka.  

We'd planned on her taking a break after this play, but she was so sad that I asked if there was still room to sign up for Alice in Wonderland this spring. There is still room so we are taking a few days to figure out if she really does want to get into another play. 

And she is for sure doing Newsies this summer. She's really excited about that one. 

Sunday was a very chill day. We slept in again. At church I helped out in Derrick's Sunday School class. The teachers of that class the last two years were my friends Megan and Justine. Charlotte and Lydia LOVED them. Megan is going through a high risk pregnancy so she was released at the end of 2025. But they hadn't called anyone to replace her so she was back in the class at the beginning of the year to help Justine out. I was like, "What the heck?"  So last week I'd texted Justine and told her that I would sub with her until a new teacher was called because I did NOT was Megan to feel like she needed to step in and help. 

So I came to church with my Biblical Timeline Poster and planned to give an overview of Biblical history. In Sacrament meeting I was surprised when Justine was released. (She'd literally been released 30 minutes before church started. We'd been texting 45 minutes before church and she'd had no clue she was getting released.)  A husband and wife were called to teach the class. They have two boys in that class so it makes a lot of sense to call them. 

All four of us adults were in the Sunday school class together. Justine taught for about 15 minutes, I taught for about 10, and the new teachers taught for about 15. By the end I was like, "I think this 4 teachers work really well with this class." There are a bunch of boys Derrick's age so it can be a rough class. Four adults really helped those kids stay contained. 

That evening we watched Jurassic Park Fallen Kingdom. Lydia was being silly so when the Raptor Blue started fighting the indoraptor Lydia said something like, "Blue is thinking, 'how many dinosaurs do I have to fight for you, Owen?'"  We all laughed about that. We were all laughing and joking through the rest of the movie. 

And that gets us caught up for another week. Thanks for reading!