Eva Made T-Shirts

At FHS there are many clubs. Some get more attention and funding than others. At tournaments Eva noticed that other schools had T-shirts for High Q. She wanted their team to have them too. So she set out to both design and make the team T-shirts. It has been a long process. She had to create a design, get it approved, get sizes, buy shirts and talk to Sister Marshall (who kindly offered to teach her how to heat press the shirts) about two to best utilize the design. It one through many iterations to be the most efficient price-wise and still look good. This past weekend the shirts came in and Eva went over to the Marshalls to finalize the design and cut the vinyl. 

Then the next day she and Jason learned how to add the vinyl to the shirts. When she came home with the six finished shirts she was very happy. Here is the designer wearing her team High Q T-shirt.

Paige's First Sacrament Talk

 Paige was asked to give a talk in sacrament meeting a few weeks ago. Bless the bishop for giving her weeks of prep time. Her topic was service. It was difficult for her to come up with five minutes worth of things to talk about, being used to speaking Primary only. I helped her out by sending talks and quotes for her to choose from and by making suggestions. I had to do a lot of following up because she was putting the talk prep off (probably because she was so nervous).

When the day came she was happy to see that Dad had to go sit on the stand for some announcements from the stake so he just stayed up with her. When she began to speak I could tell by her face that she was terrified and near tears but she kept going. As she talked she began to relax and by the end she looked much more comfortable. She let out a big sigh of relief when she was done and sat down and got a hug from her dad. 

Doing hard things and proving to yourself that you can is the first step in building confidence. She was very proud of herself for doing it.

Gila Valley Temple Trip

Today was our first temple trip as a ward youth program to the Gila Valley Temple in Safford, AZ this year. Jason is not able to go to the temple in Juarez due to military rules so he especially looks forward to these trips. He and I, along with the girls went on this trip. Brendan stayed home to be with the dog and because he had a BYU introductory activity thrown by some alumni in town. The drive is 3.5 hours each way but we had an audiobook and a comfy car and it wasn't so bad. 

We ended up having 20 youth going and lots of adult leaders to help as well. I was in charge of handing the towels to those who had just gotten out of the font and helping arrange for witnesses. Jason got tasked to be the recorder who displayed the cards and assigned the rotation of who was doing the baptizing. It was awesome to see so many of our youth doing work for their ancestors as every youth was encouraged to bring family names. Darby was even baptized for Jason's great-great grandmother. One of the people who came was not exactly a youth but a newer member of the church in his 20s. He was baptized for his father. I teared up a bit. It was very special.

To baptize and confirm the almost 120 names we had it took almost the full 2 hours. After that we all gathered outside the temple for a picture. 

Usually we would've joined them for lunch afterwards but because things took longer than expected we had to leave to get back to pick up Brendan from the BYU BBQ. It was a bummer because when we arrived to get him they weren't even done and someone else offered to take him home. But oh well. It was nice to spend some time as a family doing good works. And especially wonderful to me to see so many of our youth using their whole Saturday in this kind of service. 

Graduation Announcement Pictures

Rather than pay to take Brendan to a studio or hire a photographer to get pictures taken for graduation announcements I decided to take them myself. Sometimes I like pictures that "professionals" take but often I do not, at least not as much as some real smiles I can get from the kids. I scouted out a couple of potential settings and planned for "golden hour" when the lighting would be good. Brendan let me choose the clothes he wore but he was very reluctant to pose how I ask him to. It was a struggle but in the end he was a good sport. We took a couple in the park and then I noticed that the light was making his transition lenses go dark. I tried different spots and in the end we came home to try some backyard photos. Those turned out the best.

The next day I spent time on Photoshop getting the pictures just right. 

I sent a few to Brendan and he picks his favorite.  He really did not like the ones without glasses but I did. The one I liked best he said he hated. Oh well. I sent the same to Jason and he said that the ones of Brendan standing tall with the serious face looked "gangster", Then he sent me this. It made me laugh so hard.

The next day I created the digital announcements and also ordered some printed ones to send. They should all be ready next week and then we will send them out. Here is the digital one though I think the print copies turned out better. 

Graduation is only six weeks away! Crazy!

The Busiest Saturday

What a day! Let me tell you how it went. The youth had a service project at the Food Bank this morning and the kids had to be at the church at 8:30am. I took them because Jason left early to go on a long runs he is training for another ultra marathon. I did not go to the service project because I needed to help Jason with the Family History Fair that was happening today. On top of that the Family History Center is moving to the other church building to make way for the new El Paso Mission office and Jason was in charge of making the move happen. 

So, midmorning he and I went to a U-Haul rental place to get a big truck that the missionaries and others could load after the fair and take to the Rosemont building. I also loaded up the things I was asked to bring to display at the fair and we went to the church. I asked a youth leader to bring the kids home since I would be at the fair. 

We had a pretty good setup for the Family History Fair and I was able to talk to quite a few people about how to use FamilySearch.

I did, however, have to leave for a bit because Eva wanted to go to EPISD FilmFest. In her Digital Design class they made short films the the teacher submitted to the contest. Eva wanted to go to see if they won and also to watch the student films from the district. They had a red carpet at the entrance and everything. I left her there and went back to the fair. Meanwhile, Brendan walked to Will's house for D&D.

After the fair was over and we had cleaned up Jason had to stay to help move all the Family History Center things and so I went home. The UHaul place was not far from where Eva was and it just so happened that he was done with the move about the same time as FilmFest was so I picked them both up. Sadly, Eva's group's film did not win but she had such a fun time watching all the others. 

Jason was invited to go hunting tonight by some friends in the ward so he left soon after arriving home. After dinner I had to take Darby to babysit. She always has funny stories about what the kids do when she babysits. I picked her up around 9pm. Jason didn't come home until after midnight.

I realized later that there was not a single minute from when we woke up until we went to bed that everyone who lives in this house was in this house, and it was always a different person gone. What a crazy day!

Desert Bowl High Q City Championship

 Hi, this is Eva, and I'm going to tell you about the High Q City Championship!

The championship was yesterday at UTEP, and it was the last tournament of the year. Mom dropped me and Brendan off at Josh's (another member of High Q) house, and he drove us. Miss Mendoza (our coach) printed Josh out a parking pass and a map, but he forgot the map, so we had to wander around UTEP'S (quite pretty) campus in order to find where the tournament was.

Since this was the championship, there were a few new rules. There were 5 beginning matches instead of 4, and each round had 18 questions instead of 16. We also had to wear wristbands the entire time. Josh, Brendan, Brandyn and I were the Franklin team.

We won 3 out of our 5 beginning matches, and the ones we lost were to really good teams, so I wasn't that disappointed. Then we went off-campus for lunch (UTEP doesn't allow delivery) and ate at a pretty good chicken place.

Then we went to the finals matches! There were at least two rounds of bonus questions (after you answer a toss-up question, you get the chance to answer 3 bonus questions worth 10 points each) where they were all about Greek mythology, which is my thing. Josh, who was the captain, just designated me for all of them as soon as the reader finished the questions. It was funny. Another funny thing was that the other team got a series of questions about The Princess Bride. Man, I wish we had gotten those. They missed some but I knew we knew them all. 

And in the end, we got 3rd place!!! The team got a trophy, and each of the team members got medals. 

Then we headed home. We got a little lost on UTEP campus (again) and it took us a little while to find the parking garage. Josh drove us home, and we got there a little past 5. My brain was a little bit fried after pretty much 5 straight hours of trivia and thinking, but I was proud of how we did! It was a great end to this year of High Q.

Youth Dinner and Fundraiser

The YW Presidency and the Bishopric have been working on this fundraiser for months. The proceeds will go to summer camp. We planned a spaghetti dinner with a silent and live auction. We have organized donation signups, dinner ticket sales, a preview of the auction items and assignments for that night.  At the last minute our YW president could not come due to a family matter and so the bishopric second counselor stepped in and took over overseeing the payment. 

I went over this afternoon to help with the cooking for two hours and then picked up the kids from school. Soon after I took the kids to the Crosby home where we set up the event. We set up tables and chairs and the silent auction but we reached a stopping point as we waited for the food. It was late in arriving so we did not start on time but once it came things got rolling. The silent auction was from 6 to 7pm. There were so many services that the youth signed up to donate and a few baskets of goodies from parents and ward members. The big ticket items would be held for the live auction that started at 7pm. 

The silent auction was what I was assigned to oversee. Some items didn't get bids (no one seemed to want the math tutoring) but some got a pretty nice price (farm fresh eggs for $30). There were nearly 70 services. The wind was so gusty that we had to tape every ticket to the table. One family let their little girls sign them up for multiple things so we saw kindergarten scrawl on the tickets. It was cute. But what cracked us up was that one of them she put five zeroes! Movie tickets for 100,000 dollars? Luckily you can see that a parent caught that, crossed it out and put $20. Brendan told me later that he heard the little girls say, Mommy will be so surprised!" to one of the auctions. He didn't know which one but it could've been the overspending one which make the story more funny. 

After the silent auction closed the live auction began. I wanted to see it because Jason was the auctioneer but I had to remove (remember they were all taped down firmly), sort, organize into families, total and deliver the silent auction prizes to be paid for. I was doing it all by myself (I am not sure what the other adults were doing at this point) but two sweet YW came over and asked if I needed help. Together we got everything done with ten minutes to spare. I was able to hear two auction items - a hunting knife that went for a song and a wisdom teeth extraction which was a hot bid. I later learned from Jason that there were a few awesome adults in the audience who kept driving up prices just when they needed it. Those sweet youth parents helped us raise more money. Some items went for under their value but some went for an astounding amount of money. Some food items that are "ward famous" went for over $100 just by themselves. All of my kids' services were purchased (mostly by family friends) and so the purchasers will need to schedule with them when to perform the service. 

At the end of it all we raised over $5000. Desserts and drinks were an extra $1 each and we made almost $200 from that. We also had a ton of food left over. That's what happens when we have to guess at how many guests since people didn't sign up at the deadline. Also, some families that signed up didn't show for various reasons and some who showed didn't eat. I think the plan is to freeze what we can for Girls Camp. 

Jason bid one and won some yard work and freeze drying series and I won the sourdough bread auction. There is a lady who makes homemade bread for sacrament and I asked her to donate some to the cause. Yum!

With a few hiccups I think it went pretty well for the first time the ward has done this. It was a lot of work but also kind of fun. Many youth helped out and many ward members were generous with both bids and donations. It's nice to see a ward come together.

 

Eclipse and Choralfest

We had a solar eclipse yesterday whose path traveled through Mexico, past Texas and on diagonally until it went past Virginia. El Paso was not in the path of totality but we had an 80% coverage of the sun by the moon. Several of our friends took off work and school and drove to places where they could see the eclipse in totality. Here is a picture of a friend who stopped to see it midway between here and San Antonio. Pretty cool. 

The middle school supplied solar glasses to all students and took them out during that time to see the eclipse. It happened at 12:25pm here. Brendan is in an astronomy class so they had glasses too but it was at lunchtime so it was up to each student to see it for themselves. I did not have glasses and used a pinhole viewer. it wasn't as cool but it did get very dark for midday which was kind of creepy. 

Another thing that happened yesterday was Darby had her "almost last" choir performance of the school year. They have had three performances in the last two weeks. There is one more in May.

The honors choir was a part of Choralfest at University of Texas at El Paso. Darby had to walk back to school at 4pm to catch the bus to UTEP. A friend of mine sent me a picture of her performing. 

The bus was supposed to pick them up at 7:15 to take them back to Hornedo but the concert ran long and also UTEP wouldn't let the buses in. They had to work through that and finally the kids were eon the bus at 8pm. When I drove up to HMS to pick her up before the bus arrived I saw that the school had all the gates closed. Where would the bus park? And the choir teacher's car was locked inside. I let he teacher know this while the bus was still on the road so she could get a jump on calling whoever had the key. The bus arrived and just had to pull over on the side of the road to let the kids out. HMS is on at the end of a residential road so not many cars, if any, go by there when it's not school hours. Darby was so glad to be home, even though it was past 8:30, and super annoyed at another bus mishap. She can't wait to be part of the high school choir where she hopes these kind of things don't happen as frequently.