Chritsmas Concert.

It's finally over. I love the concert but it's so stressful getting to it. My students did so well and I am so proud of them. This year I decided to combine chamber with show to make them sound bigger and give them some confidence. It sounded amazing and even though show didn't get the music very early it turned out well. Bel Cantos (my girls choir) sounded amazing. They are getting bigger and better every year. Really they did everything I asked and watched my conducting. It was so moving listening to them.They sang Gesu Bambino one of my favorite christmas songs and I can't even describe the feeling I had when they were singing it. I hope that the audiance got the same feeling.  Then I have Show Choir. They are probably the most creative group I have had this year and they talk alot because of that. They did amazing we had one mess up but I will take the blame because they probably were watching my mouth and I said the wrong word. After that we did amazing though. They sang Breath of Heaven and it was so inspirational. You could really feel the spirit as they sang it. We also sang White Christmas and Charlie Brown and everything just was so good. I am so proud of all my students, I can't wait to start on some Duke Ellington with Show and Some amazing 20th century music in Bel. The Girls are getting used to the 20th century and about half the girls love it along with me and the other half hate it. There is no inbetween. I will have to post a recording of it when it's finalized so you can hear it. I sang it in college and it was one of my favorites.
Have a great Christmas and see everyone soon in OREGON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Christmas come soon...

I want Christmas right now. Not because I want presents but because I want to be in Oregon, I really wish I could be at Springfield high Schools Christmas concert. I miss Oregon so much around this time of year and get so home sick. Then you add the stress of a Christmas concert and everything else that went wrong today to the list and I am just a mess. Hopefully my concert will pull together in the next two rehearsals I have.
I haven't been taking pictures because my camera is pretty much shot and I am waiting to unwrap the one under my tree. I am hoping by the end of this week that all the stress and anxiety will go away and I can enjoy the holiday season to it's fullness. I love Christmas I love the feeling you get, the decorations, the giving, smiles, snow (only around Christmas). Right now though it is just so hard to get into it.
I shouldn't complain becuase some people have it so much worse then I do and I really am blessed. I just needed to get some of it out so that maybe I will feel a little better.
Jaden, Natalia, and I decorated the real tree right after Thanksgiving week. It is so pretty and I love my Noble Fir. I pay a pretty penny for it but I love the smell and the look. Tyson is so tolerant of my little quirks. He knows that a tree is really important to me so he has always found a way for me to get one. It makes me feel a little closer to home because our tree is always from Oregon. It's obviously a farm tree but at least it's real. 
Natalia has been really good about not touching it. She did a couple of times, same with the sheep in the Nativity and quickly learned that she wasn't aloud to touch it. She also took the liberty of unwrapping one of her presents. It was in pink princess paper so obviously it was hers. I walked into a little girl with the biggest smile on her face, I wish I could have gotten a picture of it.
Jaden, with Jessicas help wrote Santa a letter and put it in his mail box. We have this massive mail box with a massive santa on it infront of our Museum. Jessica took pictures for me but they are on her camera so it might take a while to get them. He asked for alot of things and alot of them he won't be getting. Kids always want the most expensive stuff and being teachers, well that just isn't going to cut it for expensive. But, we got him some of the things he wanted that were good deals and I think he will be very happy with what he gets.
As for Natalia as long as it's dolls, or anything to do with a doll, blankets, and shoes she will be in heaven for hours. She hates having socks on but she loves having her shoes on.
In a week and a half I will be in Oregon and I can't wait. I really need to get away from here. I might even turn my phone off once we are done driving just get to get away from all of Idaho. I really need a break. I love my friends here and I love my famiy around here but I just need some time away to regroup myself (and not from my friends and family, just with my situation right now). Not that it's bad but anyone who knows me, knows that I like things to go perfect and if they aren't going perfect I get stressed and when I get stressed my blood pressure goes up and then I'm cranky and then I'm crying or something so I just need a break.
I hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday because I know I will. Hope to see lots of people in Oregon while I'm there.

What do you do when ....?

What do you do when the power goes out at school? Well you sit around for an hour with your students with the flood lights and don't do anything becuase you can't see your music well enough. Then your school decides to cancel school and 1 minute later (literally) the power comes back on and the students yell hurry and they sprint to the doors. Then, we have school even though we cancelled it and have fun trying to get kids back into class when there's an hour left of school.
This happened today at Shelley High School. This actually is the second time this has happened at our school. It happened last year at the beginning of the school day and we deicded to cancel school then too after 30 minutes and then the lights came on a minute later. So, I sat in the office during my prep answering phone calls to very angry parents because we told kids they had to come back to school. What a mess. Well, what are the odds that this would happen to us twice? Probably not very high but it's happened twice. It was such a mess and kids were so mad. And, I think it's kind of pointless. Luckily my students were smart enough to realize that missing choir isn't such a smart choice since they are not even close for there concert in a couple of weeks. I only had 4 people missing. The problem is when you make them come back after you told them to leave they are done for the day so it took some pulling teeth and bribery to get something done. But, we did get something done and I'm feeling a little better about the concert. Just a little though.

Halloween

I got to do my first school Halloween party. My mom always did ours and we loved them. I did the classic root beer in a black cauldron with dry ice that makes it look like witches brew. Then I made ppj sandwiches cut into bats, and finally a fudge striped cookie turned upside down with a hershey on top to make little witches hats. That was snack. Then for the activities I had three stations. One was a bean bag toss, second "S" is for spider, where they decortated a s into a spider, and third cupcake spiders. The way we seperated them into groups was I took my amazing cricut and paper doll cartridge and made little witches, cats, and vampires and had them laminated and put a pin on the back and the kids were all given one and they went to to their groups. It was so cute and they loved the pins. I'm sorry I didn't get any pictures but I don't know how anyone handle 22 kindergartners. I go crazy. Then in the evening we had a school carnival. My friend it the PTO president and my other friend is the activity coordinator for PTO. Well the one friend in charge of activities is moving and I have been elected as the new activity person for the PTO. So I felt like I really needed to be there to help out. Well good thing because people didn't show up to help like they signed up for so I was all over the place. It was ok I just didn't get any pictures again really, except for Natalia in the bounce house becuase I was there at the time working it. It was so busy and the PTO did a great job and the made alot of money. It was so busy.

I put my hair in dreadlocks for fun during halloween. People thought it was so cute and so me. They said I look like the hippy type. Now, don't worry I quickly explained that if you wanted to see real hippies you would have to go to Eugen and then you would realize that I was anything but a hippy. I also told them not to let my dad hear that. But it was fun to have dread and they were pretty cute. It took lot of hair spray and time though, and I don't want real ones by any means. I don't know why the pictures keeps on flipping sideways sorry.

Yeah Oregon Won!!!!

Natalia loved the bounce house.

I was asked to donate a cake fore a Carnival in Shelley Idaho for their cake walk. This cake was to be the grand prize. The week that it was to be picked up was super busy and I didn't want to make it to early because I like my cakes to be fresh. So the night before at 10 PM (the only chance in the week to make it) I started my cake. I finished it by four in the morning and it was picked up at 10:30 in the morning.

The whole cake is edible except for the pipe cleaners that I used for legs. The cake was a white almond cake with chocolate mousse and raspberries for filling. The outside frosting was french vanilla buttercream. I decided to not put fondant on it for cost reasons and time but I was acutally happy I didn't because the cake looked better without it personally. The spider was rice krispie treat covered in fondant and the orange border was fondant with some shine put on it to make it pop even more. I was way excited with the results. Like I told my mom when I finally started decorating I got in the zone and couldn't stop. It was a great feeling. I can't wait to hear what people at school have to say about it tomorrow. I know that's kind of prideful but it's fun when people learn new things about yout.  and the winner was the person who picked it up. If you want to see more of the treats I have been making lately I made a blog for all that stuff. It's elisescakeshop.blogspot.com it's on the side bar of this blog if you want to just click on it.

Then on Saturday we had a war chilli cook off and trunk or treat. Everything halloween was done on Saturday because today is halloween and we live in mormon country. I was actually really happy to see that even the mall did their little thing on Saturday. I know people were upset about it but I think it shows the community what is really important. That's just my opinion. Sorry I don't have any pictures of the ward party but tyson was in charge of the camera. I think that explains everything.
I don't have pictures of Jaden becuase he was all over the place in his Spiderman costume. He wanted to show all his friends and he wanted the darn candy. So half the time I didn't even know where he was at. I tried to get one picture once but he wouldn't stay still.

Halloween Box

My mom sent the kids a halloween box. I got a picture of Jaden with his stuff before I got a picture of Natalia but I must have accidentaly erased it so I will have to take another one.

Natalia decided to read herself a book.

Natalia getting on the chair to read herself a book

She loves that singing dog and the headband. Thank goodness it's almost dead.

Like I said she loves it and carrys it all over the house.

Natalias Personality/ Pumpkin Patch/ butternut squash meatballs

Natalia loves the camera and every time I want to take a picture of her she moves in close. I need a camera that takes pictures quickly so that this doesn't happen all the time. She is constanty talking to her own pictures like right now as I am typing this. She loves looking at herself in the oven door and is very entertaining. But, this sweet little girl reminds me so much of Tinker Bell because of her attitude. So, for Halloween it will be perfect since her costume is supposed to be "Tinker bell"

So Sweet....

Then so stinkerish. Do you love the dress though? My Aunt Cheryl got it for her.

So one evening while my grandparents were here I got a new cook book and I wanted to try a recipe from it. We tried the meatballs. The cook book is alled Deceptively Delicious. What you do it you hide vegetables that you normally don't eat but know are good for you and hide it in food. These meatballs have a whole butternutt squash in them. The reason I wanted to try this is because we get this thing called bountiful baskets. We pay $15 every other week for a laundry basket full of fresh vegetables and fruits. Some of the things are things I don't really like and for a while we were getting alot of butternut squash and I really don't like it. These meatballs were amazing, even Jessica liked them. You would have never known they had squash in them. Anyway, if you want to know more about the book just let me know. I am totally converted. I also made casserole bread (my favorite. Thanks mom for the recipe), and homemade pasta. They're green beacause they are spinach noodles, but  Jaden loves them because they are green noodles.

Last year I went down to Boise during Spud Harvest and took the kids to an amazing corn maze and pumpkin patch. Where we are pumpking patches aren't very popular. Simply because it's to cold here and the birds eat the pumpkin seeds I guess. So the one in Boise was huge and te maze was the shape of the Boise State Bronco. To see a picture of it click on th site. http://mazeplay.com/linder-farms-llc. It is absolutely AMAZING. So this year I did find a small pumpkin patch (very small)  in Firth down by Shelley but the kids had fun with it. The corn maze was amazing here to and I want Tyson to take me again because I didn't get to go through hardly any of it because we had lots of little kids, which was totally fine. I just want to go again so I can go through the whole thing. This one is of a scout, again if you want to see a picture click on the link.  http://mazeplay.com/wild-adventure-corn-maze Some of you might be wondering how they do this now that you have looked at the pictures. I didn't know until I asked a farmer. Tractors have a GPS in them now and that's how they run the tractors. Well you get these coordinates and you put them in your GPS and it stears your tractor and you just sit there in the tractor while it does all the work.

Natalia found her Tu-tu when I took out the Halloween stuff.

Rough Week

 I am so glad that last week is over. I'm not sure that I want another week to start though because I am pretty sure that most of what happened last week is going to carry over into this coming week. Let me give you an outline of the week.

Monday- Somebody decided to make life rough for me and that's all I will say about that. I didn't work but ended up being at the school the last half of the day beacuase of cross country and meetings.
Tuesday- I had to work and everything from the day before is still going on.
Wednesday- Locked my keys in my car and didn't realize it till Jaden needed to be at school. So we walked Jaden to school and he was ten minutes late, then walked to my friends house, barrowed her car and drove to Ammon to get Tysons keys and drove back to Rigby and walked home and unlocked my car just in time to pick Jaden up from school. Then I went and colored Temalas hair (which wasn't part of the bad week). Then I went to cross country practice.
Thursday- Natalia throws up in the middle of the night twice and then is ok. Drop her off at the babysitters in the morning and she throws up all over her couch. She calls me, get things squared away so I can leave school and go pick up Natalia. Thank goodness she didn't throw up anymore that day because I really hate the stuff. Made soup for a relief society thing and went to that in the evening.
Friday- Tyson took the day of incase Natalia was still sick because it was cross country districts. It was niceto have him home. Natlia was better but cranky and a little weak. I woke up at 8 and went grocery shoppng finally since we got payed on wednesday. While I was out I got lots of phone calls. What were the phone calls about? One of the students from the high school comitted suicide that morning before school. Unfortuantly for the cross country team most of the girls were friends with him and it hit them pretty hard. At the end of the day 2/3 of the student body checked out of school. I ended up having three girls not show up so I didn't have a full team. The other coaches were very understanding about the whole situation which I was grateful for. However, our principal came and supported our athletes even though we were small in numbers and gave them some goals to reach. They all reached there goal and he now owes them a candy bar. It was nice to see  him come and support us even though it was a rough day at school and it really meant alot to our athletes and to me.

So that was my week and I don't want to repeat it at all. I just hope that we can move on at school tomorrow.

We are home now

Well, we have been home from our trip for a couple of months now. Life quickly caught up with us once we got home and we have been busy ver since. On our way home through Montana we saw a grizzly bear on the side of the road. I have never seen one in the wild and it was so amazing. I'm just glad I was in the car when we saw it.
Since our trip Jaden started kindergarten and I completely forgot to take a picture of his very first day of school. I started work back up and have been swallowed up in school functions. I think it's finally starting to slow down now that cross country is over. The weather is finally changing and it is rather cold outside. We are supposed to get snow in the night, but it's supposed to melt off during the day. All I have to say about that is I hope it melts.

Dinosaur Museum

I have to say that one of the coolest parts of the trip, especially for Jaden was the Dinosaur Museum.

This looks like a tiny building from the outside and kind of is but when you walk into it you are in heaven. If you know Jaden he loves dinosaurs and knows almost all of them and why they look certain ways or why they have sharp teeth. If you want to know something about these "creatures" Jaden is the one to ask as Grandma Arnold found out on her tour.

This was the only interactive part of the Museum and Jaden played with it for about five minutes and then moved on to the cool stuff.

 Nataila Showing off her digging skills. Yes she is wearing Oregon on her shirt.

I still love rocks and minerals. I got to take a geology class at BYU-Idaho and loved the lab part of it. They had some pretty amazing minerals in there collection that I am rather jelous of.

I really want this one. It looks like and egg and is all spotted and then the inside is all sparkly.

Fossil Starfish or as Jaden called them "Swimming Stars"

Fossiled Sea Urchins

Natalia really liked the dirt part. She kept on going back to it. She could care less about all the big skeletons

Natalia being cute and funny.

It's a turtle. (Speaking of which, Jaden tried to dig up poor Tommy the Turtle to show to George, our neighbor the other day. Luckily I caught him before he found it. )

This picture needs flipped but you cn kind of see the excitement on Jadens face. He loved all the dinosaurs

Janie asked why this dinosaur had a funny looking head. Jaden quickly answered and told her that it made music to call to other dinosaurs and then proceeded to make the noise. What a smart little boy.

Look at his face. He is jumping with joy inside.

These are fish. These heads are the size of an adult body. I wouldn't want to run into one of those in the water. Look at those teeth.

The picture of this fish doesn't do it justice. I am not over exagerating when I say that this fish is the size of a medium size whale. It gives me shivers just thinking about it.

Jewel Cave

We went to this amazing cave in South Dakota. It's called Jewel Cave. I believe they said it is one of the largest caves in the world, and they are still finding new parts of it all the time. There is several differant tour of the cave. We went on the five mile tour. It was amazing but also terrifying. I do not liketight spaces and the idea of being 500 ft. under ground was rather nerve racking for me. I am also afraid of heights and so there were times where we were on a bridge over a black hole and I'm not kidding. Amber would not have made it through. She would have had a heart attack. For those of you that have been to the Oregon Caves this was is alot differant because, it's underground (you take an elevator and have to go through special doors because of pressure), and it's a dry cave. Some parts of it have limestone like the picture below but most of it is very dry. I only took a few pictures. I as to focused on walking across black holes.

This very last picture doesn't do it's justice. I highly recommend that you google jewel cave and it's bacon strip. You can kind of tell from the picture but as you walk past this spot. There is a piece of limestone that looks like a oversized piece of bacon. The strips on it look like bacon, it has the ripple of bacon. It looks like bacon, it's very cool.

I am glad to say I survived and didn't fall into any black holes and once I was out it was a very nice experience. Now some of the other tours take you through to this spot that the space is so small that only certain people can get into this amazing room. I think by there measurment I would barely fit at the time we were there. Now, I probably wouldn't fit because I haven't been working out lately. I don't want to go there anyway.

South Dakota and Mt. Rushmore

South Dakota was crazy when we finally got there. The huge sturgis rally was going to be the next week and there were harleys everywhere allready. It was way fun and so pretty where we camped. It kind of reminded me of Oregon with all the trees and hills, and it wasn't so humid.

We went to Mt. Rushmore one of the days we were there and it was cool. It's not something that is mind blowing really. It's really neat and amazing all that they could do and I'm glad that I went because now I can say I've seen it. But there isn't much to do there then look at the mountain. There are some trails that would be cool to go on but when you have kids that doesn't work out so well. Now, the crazy horse monument is going to be amazing. It's alot more money to go and see but you can see it from the road and they say that there is alot of interactive stuff there. It's not done yet but it was amazing so far just from the road.

Us in front of the mountain

This is inside the museum. It gives a history of everything

This is what the whole thing was originally supposed to look like but one they ran out of money and two, Lincoln fell apart while they were making his face so they had ot move him to where he is now.

This is the man that started the work on Mt. Rushmore. I don't remember his name sorry.

Joseph Smith Buildings

It is so sad how little the Community of Christ doesn't acknowledge the presents of Joseph Smith. They talk alot about Emma and then there son Joseph Smith III. I guess it's becuase they really started when he passed away but they are missing so much. Anyway, we went on a tour of the Joseph Smith buildings. You have to pay $3 to go on the tour (to go inside the buildings), which are poorly taken care of anyway and you only go into three of the buildings. The Mansion Home the Homestead duplex and the upstairs of the Brick Store. The rest you can see from outside. The other thing is you can't take pictures. I felt like the whole time we were on the tour they talked down the prophet and then how amazing Emma was for just staying with him.

They have no idea what they are missing. Joseph Smith was a great man. We have learned from so many journals of his dimeanor and his service to the saints of the church. We also learn of his serving nature and understanding with those that persecuted him so much.

So all the pictures I have are from the outside that I drove around right before we left Nauvoo and took. I know the Mansion House above is hard to see but the sun was right behind it. I really like that you can see the actual sun rays in the picture though.

This was going to be the Nauvoo Hotel. The Smiths lived in it for a while but then the Mansion home was built for them and they moved over there. We didn't go into this building because the Community of Christ rents it out for parties and family reunions. I'm not sure how I feel about that. If you walk to the other side on of the windows has blue curtains and they say that is where Emma took her last breaths. I really wish that they would have stopped pointing out all the cool little facts and tell me more of a story of everything that happened in that home. Kind of like what the church does in all of there buildings.

These next pictures are of the Smith cemetary. Not all the graves are marked and they say that some of their dear friends were also burried in here. Emmas second husband lays to rest in the cemetery as well. They told a story about how the remains of Joseph and Hyrum were burried here unmarked for fear that the mob would come and dig them up and disrespect the bodies. A couple years later the river was flooding and someone was digging down by the river to keep it from coming up onto the land and they found the remains of Joseph and his Brother Hyrum. They are now in their final resting places that I took pictures of.

This is a list of who they now are in the cemetary.

This plaque is right in front of their grave sights.

This is the homestead duplex something or other. The smiths lived here for a while before they moved into the Nauvoo Hotel.

These are the grave markers for Emma, Joseph, and Hyrum. When you stand in front of these markers you can feel the spirit so strongly. Cemetaries are very peaceful places with alot of spirit and to add a Prophet of the Lord to that just makes it that much more amazing. I can't describe it. I can tell you though if you have any doubt that Joseph was called of God as well as Hyrum and Emma. All your doubt will dissapate standing by their graves and you will know in your heart that they were true messangers of God.

They rest right next to eachother connected. It represents to me of what the hereafter will be like. We will be right next to our family, side by side for all eternity. Emma never once left her husbands side in everything even at the hardest times. I hope to be as faithful as she was not only to my husband and family but to the church and to our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ.

As we ended a tour. One of the ladies on the tour asked whey Emma stayed in Nauvoo. The answer that this girl gave upset me so much. She said that the reason Emma stayed was becuase of Polygamy. She just couldn't except it and couldn't go on with the church. It shows how little they think of the church but also of Emma, Joseph and the love that they had for eachother.

No one can say why Emma stayed behind but I do know this. Emma knew that polygamy was called of God and even though she might not have liked it. (Who wouldn't like it) She trusted and had Faith in her Father in Heaven and in her Husband that she loved very much.

If I were asked to give an opinion of why Emma stayed behind it would be this. She went through so much and had lost so many children on the way that she just couldn't leave the last love of her life on the trail and who can blame her.

The community of christ came a few years after the saints had left Nauvoo. I really feel that for the majority the saints that stayed behind in Nauvoo had no intention of starting a new church. But, all the leadership had gone onto Salt Lake and they needed the church. So trying to do the best they could they started a church but without the leadership it became what it is today. Now I could be very wrong and I know Emma had some problems with Brigham Young. I just have a really hard time believing that Emma just hated the way the church was ran so she decided to do something differant. After all it gave her Joseph and gave her the knowledge and ability to have them for all eternity.