Puttin' on the ritz

After posting the Morp photos I realized I hadn't posted about Prom yet... so here goes.

One day Lisa found a bowl of Easter eggs on our porch.  It turned out to be an invitation to Prom.

Following the Easter/chicken theme, Lisa responded with some cute chicken feet cutouts.  (It was cuter than it sounds... but I didn't get a photo.)

Here are some pictures of the Big Event.

The group took pictures at Ted Johnson's place.  It just so happened his old Model T was out, which made a nice prop.

Lisa and Miho, her friend from Japan.

Lisa hamming it up.

Yumiko made the boutonniere.  It turned out very nice.

More mugging for the camera.

The students at the school nominate candidates for Prom royalty and then vote on them... and Lisa came out as first runner-up for Prom Princess!  Doesn't she look regal?

(Don't) Kiss the girl

Last weekend was "Morp," a casual girl-ask-guy dance at the high school that's kind of the opposite of Prom (thus the name...).

Lisa asked a guy using a candy scheme, and here's how he answered:

For their "day activity" they did a photo scavenger hunt.  In the evening we took photos of the group, and then they had a picnic dinner at a park, went to the dance, and then came over to our house for a bonfire and s'mores.

Here are a few photos from the afternoon...

And from the evening photo session.

Lisa borrowed a letter cutting machine from a friend and created stencils for the words on the shirts, and then each of the girls used the stencils to paint the lettering.

The dance had a Disney theme; hence the words from the song "Kiss the Girl," from The Little Mermaid.

We took the photos up at the train depot, which is a really photogenic spot with lots of nice scenery for photos.

Lisa likes making faces for the camera. :)

We tried a few jumping shots.

It was a fun group of kids.

And finally, a few random bonus photos from, of, and around the train station.

Desert Moon

Friday, April 27, the Varsity Scouts camped out at Bruneau sand dunes.  Since Daniel had a soccer game the next morning, he let me go along so he could get home early.  We took the roof off the MR2 and cruised out to Bruneau.

Here is our camp site (our tent is the one on the right).  You can see the big dunes in the distance in the background.

We cooked tin foil dinners for dinner.

After dinner the boys goofed around a bit...

...while the berry cobbler was cooking.

After that we went over to the dunes and the boys played for an hour or so, and watched a fabulous almost-full moon rise.  Then we came back to the camp site, had a campfire, and told stories until about midnight.

Saturday morning we had french toast and bacon for breakfast, then broke camp and headed home, getting to the soccer fields in time for Daniel's game at 10:30.  It was fun.

Coming Home

Andrew finished his last final of the semester on Tuesday, April 23, so we went down to pick him up and bring him home.

The trip didn't get off to an auspicious start.  In the morning Yumiko went to pick up a few things from the store, and when she tried to drive home the van wouldn't get above 5 miles per hour.  She tried to call me to come get her, but her phone was dead.  She borrowed a phone from a nearby bank, and so I jumped in my car... and it wouldn't start.  Dead battery.

Fortunately, Mom and Dad live close.  I called Dad and he was nice enough to give me a ride.  We checked out the van and sure enough, whenever it got above five mph the brakes would kick on by themselves.

I drove the van three miles to the nearest Toyota dealer.  (It turns out to be harder than you might imagine to drive at five mph down Fairview!)  We availed ourselves of Dad's indulgence again to pick me up from the shop, and then again to loan us his van so we could make the trip to Provo as scheduled.  (Well, only a couple of hours behind schedule.)

(It turns out that the van has an anti-skid system that evaluates wheel speed and yaw sensors to determine if it thinks the vehicle is sliding out of control, and then helpfully applies the brakes automatically.  The yaw sensor had gone bad, and kept judging the van to be skidding when it obviously wasn't.  Incidentally, I don't know what yaw sensors are made out of, but they're priced like they're diamond encrusted, gold-plated platinum.)

Once we got on the road the trip was uneventful.  Here we see the mountains east of Provo as we near our destination.

We got to Provo about 8:00 PM, checked into a hotel, picked up Andrew and Rachel and Justin, and set out to find a place to eat that was still open after 9:00 at night on a weekday.  That's also harder than you might imagine, but we slid into Goodwood a bit before closing and had some good food and conversation.

Wednesday morning we got up and headed up to Andrew's apartment.  On the way we stopped to check out the progress of the new Provo Temple (aka the old Provo Tabernacle).  I have no idea how they managed to dig out beneath it while simultaneously supporting it on stilts, but somehow they did.  They're working on a concrete foundation down below, getting ready to build two below-grade stories underneath the existing shell of the tabernacle.  Pretty amazing!

Here you can see one of the four peaked roofs from the corner towers.  Underneath the temporary walls on the side of the excavation you can see stones that were part of the foundation for the first tabernacle, which sat to the north of the "new" tabernacle until the early 1900s.

After our sightseeing we went up to Andrew's apartment...

...and helped him load up.

Once we got the van packed (which didn't take too long -- he had everything boxed and ready to go) we went to Rachel's apartment.

We did a bit of shopping, then dropped Rachel off at work and headed northward, stopping along the way for some lunch.

We also stopped to stretch our legs at the Malad Gorge state park.  That's quite the steep, narrow canyon.

Welcome home, Andrew!  Good job on your first year of college!