6/29/16 Temple Wednesday

      On Sunday, Wes Colvin, our Sunday School teacher, invited the class to do initiatory the next time we went to the temple. So that is what I did. One thing I was reminded of is that Heavenly Father expects us to be leaders and to accept stewardship. We are all at different places on our journey. There are always people we can learn from and people we can teach. 

     Speaking of learning from people Heidi and I visited with Earl Taylor. He is our Stake Patriarch. We knew that he had bought property recently similar to one we are considering and we wanted to ask his advice. We didn't know that before he founded Heritage Academy he was a real estate broker for 21 years. He had some good counsel on steps we need to take. He even gave us some of the paperwork that we will need. Heavenly Father has blessed us with some great friends. 

6/28/16 Print Job

      Yesterday the printer that I ordered for the Val Vista clerk's office arrived. I was planning on installing it on Thursday but I kept feeling that I should do it today. So Heidi and I left David in charge for a short time while she and I got it set up. The bishopric members have told me that they have an app they use for youth temple recommends. This printer will save them a bunch of time by allowing them to print straight from their phones. I got a text tonight that it's already being used. 😀

      Another interesting thing from this morning. Heidi showed me a talk by Elder Holland about mental illness and another about bipolar disorder. They were very interesting. I don't think I have either of those conditions. The videos did make me think about times when I have this totally unjustified confidence. Then other days I'm sure that I can't do anything. Both ends of the spectrum have dangers because they are not true pictures of the world. Heidi and I talked about how self awareness is like putting on a pair of glasses. The condition that causes you to need glasses is still there but the glasses allow you to see more clearly and function more like normal. Heidi actually sees better than 20/20 with her glasses even though her eyesight is poor without them. I still sometimes feel blocked emotionally from getting things done just like when I was a kid trying to write a paper. I'm grateful to have Heidi to help me see and work through those blocks so I can still get the important things done. 

      Rebecca and Sarah made progress on their quilts. I'll try to remember to take more pictures tomorrow. David worked on his iOS app that he started. 

6/27/16 A Quilting Project

     For Christmas Rebecca and Sarah were given the materials to make a quilt each. Today Heidi and the girls finally found the time to start the process. You can tell that it will be a labor of love. Above you see Rebecca and Sarah laying out the cut squares to create a pattern. 

    Yesterday I took some pictures that didn't make the blog because I forgot I took them. 

     Here is Peter "helping" with the laundry. 

     TJ's Primary teacher gave him some patriotic candy. The kids decided to make a design with it. 

     It's fun to see the kids get creative. 

     It was a fairly quiet day today. The heat seems to have killed our router. It's amazing how much we've come to depend on the Internet both for work and for other things. We hobbled along with Heidi's computer connected by a wire. This evening we picked up a replacement router and we're back to normal. 

     We also managed to get the kids in the water. Peter and Heidi practiced jumping in and getting back to the edge of the pool. This is an important skill and he's not there yet. It's a blessing that we have a pool nearby to practice at. 

6/26/16 Another Quiet Sunday

     This morning we enjoyed our weekly trip to church. Heidi worked on her project to photograph the 8 to 11 year old girls for a slide show she's making. I got to help with the microphones in Sunday School. During 3rd hour the Youth got a special treat. The Mission President and his wife came and spoke to them. They got to learn about what it's like to be a missionary and even had a question answer session. President and SisterJenkins go home in three days. Lauren, who I still can believe is 12 already, asked about whether most missionaries get to learn a foreign language. That definitely appealed to me as a kid. He had a good response. He said that many people think foreign language missions are more glamorous. When you go English speaking it is a privilege because you will be expected to teach the gospel simply and elegantly. While the chance to learn a language influenced my desire to go, I learned, while out there, that learning a language isn't a good enough reason. The mission was so hard there were times I wanted to go home. The thing that kept me out there was that I gained a knowledge that God loves me and that I was where He wanted me to be. 

     This afternoon our home teachers, Guy Turley and Jim Nelson, came by for a visit. We talked about the things we learned at church. 

6/25/16 Pool Time

    This morning Heidi went to Stake Baptisms and I helped Heidi's sister Heather make a Back to the Fuure themed video for her work. Heather went all out and made a Doc Brown costume and got the Back to the Future font for the graphics. It turned out kind of fun. 

      After that I went and set up a projector for Ryan Cash's baptism. They've been coming to church for a while now. Heidi and I would have thought he was a member already. Anyhow, it was well attended. Ryan bore a sweet testimony about learning to do what the Lord wants. 

      This afternoon, after missing a couple of days of our daily summer swim goal, we made it to the pool. 

     Here is TJ in his goggles. 

     Sarah with Rebecca smiling over her shoulder. 

     David, sporting a big smile. 

     Here are Peter and Joseph cozily tucked into the stroller for the trip home. It is nice to live just 4 houses up from the pool. 

6/24/16 So Happy Together

     Something fun that I like to see with the kids is how often they sit close together. They do this without being told, even when there are other places to sit. 

      Today we visited Gram and Papa's house to water the tree. 

     Here is Sarah taking her duties seriously. 

     While we waited for the water to flow we went to the hardware store. The boys found the buckets again. It's amazing how much fun imagination can be. 

     Peter looks cross to me in this shot but this is what his smile looks like when he says "cheese". 

     

6/24/16 So Happy Together

     Something fun that I like to see with the kids is how often they sit close together. They do this without being told, even when there are other places to sit. 

      Today we visited Gram and Papa's house to water the tree. 

     Here is Sarah taking her duties seriously. 

     While we waited for the water to flow we went to the hardware store. The boys found the buckets again. It's amazing how much fun imagination can be. 

     Peter looks cross to me in this shot but this is what his smile looks like when he says "cheese". 

     

6/23/16 Hair Cuts

     When Heidi and I were newlyweds we used some of our gift money to buy a hair cutting kit. It even came with a VHS tape (yeah VHS, I'm that old) explaining how to cut hair. Heidi has been cutting all of our hair since. Today we were due. 

     Look how happy David is with his new do. 

     TJ is looking sharp. 

    Joseph is not a fan of the clippers but he is definitely looking more angelic than before. 

     Peter looks like a satisfied customer to me. 

    Sarah and Rebecca did not need hair cuts, it was decided. Here are their Picts anyway so as not to leave anyone out. 

     Rebecca with a book. (Are you surprised?)

     Sarah ready for bed. 

     In other events, we went to Humanitarian. The kids also went to their last official day of swim lessons. There will be more practice needed but now it's time for home practice. Nice to have access to a pool. 

6/22/16 Skate Land

     Recently Heidi found a pair of skates in her size at Goodwill on half price day. She is a treasure hunter. On Wednesdays the local skate rink has free admission. You only have to pay if you need to rent skates. Now that I'm the only potential skater without my own skates the deal becomes pretty reasonable. The picture above is of Peter at Skateland. Heidi is in the background. He and I had some good bonding time this evening. Peter is not quite ready for the rink. He and Joseph helped me practice what to do when 2 children dart in opposite directions. The good news is that nobody was long out of site. We had a few nervous moments but we all made it home more than safe. I do think it will be a while before we try Skateland again. 

     Also, I was impressed that Heidi made it to the 5:30 am session at the Temple. She even stayed awake. For a gal who routinely has her sleep interrupted that's pretty impressive. 

     

6/21/16 Ha Ha Family Fun

    After a trip to the pool one of the kids suggested we play the "ha ha" game. Each person rests their head on the tummy of the person next to them. The first person then says "ha!", the second "ha, ha" and so forth. The trick is to do this without breaking down laughing. It turns out this is very tough to do. We had a lot of fun doing it. 

     Peter was tuckered out after swimming lessons. Heidi reports that he did not cry today. He made some sounds that let his mother know that he did not enjoy all of the lesson but he did not cry. This is huge progress for him. Joseph has been resisting going to lessons the past couple of times. Heidi noticed this time that in the place where Joseph's lessons happen he can barely kept his mouth above water. No wonder he feels nervous. Still, Joseph did well today. This could be part of our "we can do hard things" theme. 

       I'm still adjusting to the summer, and all the kids are home, schedule. I did help David with his math on Khan Academy. He overcame a pretty severe block by going slow and taking it one step at a time. I was impressed by how much he got done. He stuck with it for 70+ minutes when usually 30 can be a tough goal. 

     This evening David went to a first aid class and Heidi went to a meeting for her calling. I stayed home and watched Zootopia with the other kids. The behind the scenes reminded me of how much I enjoy the creative process. It made me think of my decision to follow a prompting and become an accountant. I do enjoy movie making but I have faith that in my accounting profession I am creating something more long lasting than a movie

6/20/16 Handyman

     This morning Heidi surprised me by asking me to help with a couple of home improvement projects for her parents. I almost asked her for two forms of ID. Usually she loves these types of service. I think that Peter did not sleep well last night and Heidi needed some rest. 

     The first task was to install two solar powered outside lights. 

      The second task was to install a closet door. Heidi's dad had already purchased just the right sized door. It just needed to be assembled and put in place. Gratefully both tasks occurred without injury. Hopefully each thing serves them well. It was fun to try something new. 

     After the projects were done it was time to come home. My usual meeting fell through so, after working a bit, I was able to join the family and go swimming. I remembered the other day when I wasn't feeling like swimming and chose to stay home. I ended up really regretting that decision. I decided to learn from my mistake and go. It was fun spending time with the family. The opportunity to go doesn't always come up so when it does it seems like I should take it. The kids won't always be little. 

6/19/16 Happy Father's Day

     This morning we went to church. I got to sing in the choir and sub for Doug in nursery. Peter does really well in there, better than he does at home sometimes. The only times I saw him get a little upset were when we split up the kids into groups and he wasn't picked to go to music time first and when a kid whacked him. Even those times he recovered well. This is a good side of him to see since at home he cries a lot. I think it's better than it was but it's part of why we're in line to see an ENT for Peter. Anyhow, he's a sweet boy and I'm glad he likes nursery so much.  

      Heidi worked on her calling at church. She's been asked to create a slide show with all the girls ages 8-11 for the start of the school year. Today she took pictures of the girls in our ward (Val Vista Ward).

         After lunch we went out to Grammie and Grandpa  Mangum's house for a Father's Day family get together. Heather and Matt and their families came and we video chatted with Aaron and Chris and their families. I think that it was a joyful event for all 5 of the Mangum kids and their parents to be together. 

      This evening Heidi and I went hunting for scorpions at the Mangum home. It says a lot about Heidi that she is even fun to hunt scorpions with. We found and killed some so I hope the grand parents can rest a little easier. For those concerned Heidi and I are both safe and sound. 

6/18/16 We Found Dory

      This morning Heidi wasn't feeling well so the four oldest kids and I went to help clean the church. It was us and Pierre Debelmare, the guy in charge. He reminded us all yesterday so he didn't know why the others who signed up didn't come. Happily the kids were up to the challenge. TJ and Sarah washed windows. David and Rebecca vacuumed the halls and collected trash from the classrooms. I vacuumed the RS room and chapel and restocked paper goods in the bathrooms. Pierre mopped. It was busy but only took a little over an hour. We were glad for the reminder or we would have forgotten too. It feels good to be able to serve. 

       When we got home we found that Heidi was feeling better. You can't keep Heidi down for long. We found that she had "rested" by fixing two of the broken bike tires "while sitting". She makes me laugh. She still wasn't feeling 100% but wanted to go to Brother Roger's daughter in law's baptism. We compromised and sent Heidi to represent the family while the rest of us watched the Peanuts Movie.

         When Heidi got home she reminded me that this is the opening weekend for Finding Dory. Finding Nemo is Heidi and my favorite Pixar movie so we had to catch it this weekend. We found it to be a sweet and well done movie. We agreed with the reviews that it is not as good as the original but still well worth the trip. 

      This evening we held the parent night for our animation workshop. It was the first time I can remember giving the "keep in mind animation is hard, so expect it to be short" speech. The event went well. Heidi made brownies and pop corn. Two of the boys completed the requirements for the Moviemaking merit badge. Anna Phelps, a mom of one of the boys, asked if her boy Hyrum could keep learning more. We maxed out our living room but didn't overfill. Next time we'll want to find a bigger venue. So from 12 hours of work we netted 6 minutes of animation. In reality not a bad haul. In the future I'd like to focus more on elements of story telling and maybe cover the moviemaking merit badge on purpose (rather than by accident). Hopefully there will be a next time. Maybe over Christmas Break. 

6/17/16 Workshop Day 3 Plus a Tree

     This morning early the kids and I headed over to Gram and Papa's to do

Some watering. Sadly we realized that we had neglected to water the house plant. We brought it home so we can better care for it. We're not sure if it will make it or not but we'll do our best. 

     Today was post production day at our three day workshop. Fitting all the editing, sound effects and music for 2 groups in 4 hours took some serious focus. We surely could have spent many more hours fine tuning but we're ready to show the parents tomorrow. 

     This evening David and I went to Samuel Phelps' Eagle court of Honor. He's a good kid. We're proud of his accomplishment. 

6/16/16 Workshop Day 2

      This morning Heidi and the kids helped out at Humanitarian before swimming lessons. I reordered a converter box that got zapped last Stake Conference. Luckily the extended warranty covered most of the replacement. I do feel like it was a prompting to buy it. Usually I feel like those plans are made to make money for the insurance company. 

      This afternoon I told the four boys at the workshop that they needed to finish production by 5 pm. The two older boys, Hyrum and John, needed the whole time plus a few minutes. David and Lincoln finished early and started on post production. 

     The time flew by much faster this time. It is fun to watch the creative process unfold. 

6/15/16 Temple, Workshop, Party

     This morning it was my turn to visit the temple. I snapped the picture on my way back to the car. It is important to serve even when it takes sacrifice to do so. Today was a busy day. 

     Today was my first crack at trying to run an animation workshop since Kalaheo Communication Arts. Above are the clay shoes the kids made. It was fun although the four hour block we chose may be a little long for kid's attention spans. We'll post some of the videos later so you can see how they turn out. 

The highlight for the kids today had to be Anthony Andelt's birthday party. Above is his younger brother Donovan. I didn't end up with a picture of the birthday boy. 

David took to finding glow sticks on the bottom. 

     Rebecca enjoyed the game as well. 

     Here is Sarah with a big smile. 

     TJ got into the game. 

     Even Joseph reached a floating one. 

     Peter preferred to be one of the ones throwing things into the pool. Here he is with his lovely assistant Heidi. I think it was a fun time for all. 

6/14/16 Swim Lessons Continue

     Here is a picture of the swim lesson crew fresh from lessons. Sarah, TJ, Joseph and Peter are all in the learning pool. David and Rebecca are both doing well enough that we didn't feel that lessons needed to be mandatory. 

      

6/13/16 He Didn't Cry the Whole Time

     Today was the first day of swim lessons for the 4 youngest children Sarah, TJ, Joseph and Peter. This was Peter's first ever lesson in his life. When I asked Heidi how it went she reported that Peter "didn't cry the whole time". By which she meant "there were moments in there when he wasn't crying". The other kids reported having had a good time. Sarah though, when pressed by her mother, confessed that back stroke and free style are not her favorite. The kids were rewarded for good behavior in the pool with free play time at the neighborhood pool.
     This morning I created a flyer for the workshop that I plan to put on later this week. The goal for our first outing is to simply try out our proposed model and see how well it works. This workshop will consist of Connelly kids plus a few selected neighbor kids. It should be fun but I expect it will be bumpy at first (at least until we work the kinks out).

6/12/16 Sunday for Rest and Service

      This morning I got to be at the stake center at 5:45 am to set up the projector for Stake Priesthood Leadership meeting. While it definitely could have been worse it was one of those humbling tech days. The projector randomly went to black a few times while Bob Rhyne and I were testing the setup so we swapped out the cable. We couldn't get the problem to happen again after that so we thought we had found the culprit. Turns out that was not the case. It went to black several times during President Cowan's presentation. Awkward. Still no clear picture of what went wrong. Only that the cable does not appear to have been the issue. I hope it's not the projector. That would not be an inexpensive fix.
      After the leadership meeting it was time for regular church meetings. We have a brand new elder in our ward, Elder Macbeth. No he has not read the play, odd I thought. His companion had to go to a meeting nearby and asked me to keep an eye on him. I showed him how to set up the wireless mic system for Sunday School. It never hurts to have another trained person. During Primary Heidi and I got to teach the 7 year old class. They were very well behaved. You can tell they have solid regular teachers.
     In the afternoon David kindly subbed in for my home teaching companion so that we could go and visit with the Reed family. They are 2 of Peter's nursery leaders. All of their kids are grown. He works at a dairy and she sells computer software that allows parents to see their kids grades in real time.
     After all that we got a chance for some, hopefully, well deserved rest.

(update)
      One story that I forgot to include, but feel impressed to write, happened while I was showing Elder Macbeth how to set up the microphone system before sacrament meeting. As we were setting up there is a wired mic that we sometimes use for Sunday School and sometimes for baby blessings. I confirmed that we did not need it for Sunday School today and it was not Fast Sunday when baby blessings typically happen. I was going to skip setting that mic up but I felt twice that we needed it. So we went back to the library and found the mic and cable and set them up. During sacrament meeting I got called out to tend a screaming Peter. When things calmed down and I came back there was a baby blessing going on. Had I not decided to follow that prompting there would have been a problem come blessing time and I wouldn't have even been in the room to help fix it. I am so grateful for tender mercies that bless our lives even in the seemingly small things.

6/11/16 Music Forte part 2

As promised here are some pictures of the kids performing at Music Forte. David's group was up first.

They performed an African Afreen dance that involved ribbons they twirled around.

Here is a short video. See if you can follow where David went.

The second child from the right is TJ. The kids are all wearing kimonos that Heidi custom made for this event. They turned out amazing. I'm so impressed with Heidi's skills as a seamstress. She doesn't even seem stressed (high hat please). TJ's group performed a number from the Mikado, a Gilbert and Sullivan play.

On the left of this photo is Rebecca. Second from the right side is Sarah Mei. Cousin Lucy is on the far right of the group. Our girls' group performed an Irish Riverdance style number. It was pretty adorable.

     There were several other numbers that the kids were in. David assisted in a flag ceremony. TJ rode a stick horse while wearing a cutout head of one of the Founding Fathers. Rebecca and Sarah both had solo singing parts during one of the songs. We've been very impressed with the quality of a production that Music Forte puts on with only a few days, an really only a few hours to prepare.

6/11/16 Music Forte Performance Part 1

     Today David, Rebecca, Sarah and TJ had their final performance for Music Forte. As David said "it was a long day of singing and dancing". The kids had a final dress rehearsal in the morning. 

      While the kids danced Heidi and I passed the time fixing bike tires. One of the bike trailer tires was threadbare so we replaced it. While we were at it we installed a "no flat" tire. They're a bit of a pain to get on but once on you never have another flat. Well worth the trouble. If only they had ones that worked well for regular bikes. 

    After the practice we stopped by the library. Rebecca had read all the books she checked out last time. While we were there Heidi learned about a Lego robotics class about to start. Heidi convinced the gal that David was up to the class even though he isn't quite 12 yet (the class was for 12 to 18 year olds). David had a good time and reported learning some new things. 

     My photos of the concert are on another device so I'll have to wait and post about the concert with tomorrow's blog. For now let me say that it was a treat.