Madigan Matters: Shrek

March is always a busy month it seems like. We have some holidays and an anniversary and a birthday. This year was no different. We had all the regular things as well as some unplanned events thrown in to mix things up and keep us on our toes.

Anniversary

This year Lance and I celebrated our 17th anniversary. Lance was awesome and took me out to dinner and then to see "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum"at the Empress Theater in Magna. Neither Lance or I had see this particular show or been to this theater way out west of Salt Lake City. It was a fun adventure.

Family Time

One of the great things about living on a cul de sac is that the kids can play basketball in front of our house without worrying about getting hit by a car.

Spring Fever hit us strong and we were ready for summertime fun like back yard bonfires. It was still a little chilly but we had fun!

Crazy Hannah and her broken nose! She was still climbing the walnut tree in the backyard.

Asher

Asher can be a very caring person when he really likes someone. He just loves his 3rd grade teacher Miss Burton and wanted to give her a birthday present. He helped put everything together and wrote her a note telling her all the things he likes about her.

So I thought I was out of this stage of life. But apparently not! This would be Hannah's doing.

Sometimes this guy just needs alone time or time with just Lance or I. The other kids don't ever seem to need it as much as he does. This day he was holed up on our bed watching Studio C.

JJ

It's been a different experience this year with basketball. I think that I mentioned it in a previous post that there was sort of a draft and JJ's age group has to try out. They also have brackets at the end of the season to eliminate the teams until there is an overall winner. JJ's team went far and really gave it their all. Tournament time is crazy! 2 games nearly back to back. Both super close scores. They lost to the undefeated team and then won their second game so another they had another game the next day. I had to leave some games because it was too stressful and some of the parents had such bad sportsmanship. None of that bothered JJ. He just played hard and had fun.

JJ has really enjoyed taking Debate at the middle school. He loves the teacher and is (strangely?!?! NOT!) good at arguing. He took part in his first debate competition at Lehi High School against kids from Lehi Jr high. He did well considering his teacher couldn't be there and he really had no coaching at all.

?, Trevor Smith, JJ

One of JJ's other favorite classes has been his tech class. He has taken pretty much every one of those classes you can take up to this point. He's made lots of different things but he was pretty proud of his "souped up pinewood derby car" with a c02 cartridge. He tried some new painting techniques and had fun working on it with his friends.

As the school year is drawing to a close some of his teachers have approached him about being in honors level classes next year. We were all a bit surprised when his English teacher suggested he take Honors English in 9th. Not so surprised about the Honors Math recommendation. My biggest concern with him taking the English class was that he would complain whenever they did a unit on something he didn't enjoy like poetry. So before I would sign off on him taking that class he wrote this up for me. He still didn't commit to not complaining about poetry.

Easter

Easter seemed really early this year! We were invited by Charlie to join him and his family at one of our favorite spots South Fork Park up Provo Canyon. It was still pretty chilly when the wind was blowing but we ran around a lot and had fun. Easter egg hunts aren't quite the same without little kids but we still had one. The kids got to take turns hiding the eggs for each other. We went on hikes around the park and along the river. We had a delicious meal and hung out and talked.

Hannah made these cute cookies for our potluck meal. They were a "PIN WIN"!

Can you tell it was cold? That is Emmy, Mary Ellen, Charlie and Lance.

Jax helped hid the eggs. Hannah forgot to bring a coat so she wore one of mine.

The Easter Bunny stopped by our house!

Easter Sunday we spent some time with Jake and Carolyn playing games and having a nice dinner at home. Jake's newest obsession is Rummikub. It deals with numbers so I suck at it. The kids are all really good at it though and they LOVE to play board games.

And here are our traditional-before-church-yellfest-Easter photos. I don't know why I always try to take pictures right before church on Easter when we need to get to church early or we won't have a seat. BUT I do it every year.

Grandpa Jake's birthday

Jake's birthday is in March too and so we went to a movie and out to dinner with him and Carolyn. We saw Zootopia. I don't think the grandparents loved it too much but the kids did!

Hannah

Hannah participated again this year in the Battle of the Books. She took it very seriously and started reading the books all the way back in the summertime. She was the team captain this year. It was a good experience for her to be a leader. Her team members didn't all have the same commitment as she did so she had the experience of trying to motivate people who didn't want to be motivated. She didn't get to pick her team this year - she was assigned this team but she was glad to have Brandon Saavedra and Abbie Price on her team. Her team did ok but was beat out by another team.

Brandon Saavedra, Kenzie Fonnesbeck, Hayden George, Abbie Price, Hannah

Hannah also had her first experience with speaking in sacrament meeting in front of the whole ward. Of course she did great because she does well in front of people. Lots of people complimented her on how at ease she was and how well she did.

Hannah participated in the Spring Band and Choir concert. She has really enjoyed learning to play the flute! Carolyn hates to have her picture taken but it is really important to me that we have these photos showing how supportive she and Jake are to the kids. They really try to come to almost every one of the kids activities that we invited them to.

We attempted the new fangled way of curling hair. Not sure if it would have worked or not because Hannah pulled them out in the night.

Nose Surgery

I'm doing this all out of order but it is too hard to rearrange the photos in blogger. We scheduled Hannah's nose surgery for after the Shrek play performances were done. She would have "died" if she couldn't do her part in the play. She was VERY nervous about the surgery but Lance gave her a blessing and off we went early in the morning to American Fork Hospital to have the surgery done. It really didn't take too long but of course for me sitting worrying it seemed like eons. The nurses and doctors were great and although no one really wants to have to do surgery they made us feel very welcome. Hannah got to keep the cute St. Patrick's day pillow and the pink fleece blanket.

BEFORE

AFTER

Hannah was very happy to be home later that same afternoon. We set her up on our bed so she could watch our TV and let her have Mouse to snuggle with. She slept a lot. We had to change the pad under her nose every little while, keep up on her meds, do nasal rinses (which she HATED but got pretty good at after a while). Hannah says that it was painful but now she knows she can handle more pain than she thought she could. The swelling remained for a while but before we knew it she was able to start breathing through her nose a little better each day.

Lance

Sometimes when you are doing home improvements you do dumb stuff like put a nail hole through the main water line and have to replace that section of pipe.

This is the view from Lance's office window. Obviously winter is holding on with a death grip.

With Lance's new job he spends lot more time at the local TV stations . . . just not in front of the cameras usually.

Pack Meeting

Asher loves cub scouts so much and our Cub Masters have been doing some very fun activities!

Park Fun

A group of moms from Missy's ward started getting together at various parks every few weeks. We got to go this time with Missy and Libby. We've never been to Draper Park before and it was so fun! It is a very large park with two play areas.

Pets

No post is complete without a few photos of the pets. They are such a big part of our lives.

Muddy paws from spring mud puddles do not belong in my house!

This is pretty much Jax in a nutshell (and he is a nut for sure). He really sleeps a ton. Snoring like a buzz saw in a thunder storm.

Robotics

Asher and some of his buddies got to participate in an after school Robotics club. He was in 7th heaven! He got to program the robots to try and make them do simple tasks. It was harder than you would think but he was up for the challenge.

Pictured are Stetson Hardy, and Quinn Mallory on the left and Cash Wilson, Asher and Teddy Worthington on the right.

St. Patrick's Day

This is the text conversation I had with JJ on St. Patrick's Day. My texts are yellow, his are blue.

Hannah and Asher were much more easy going about me taking a photo of them. LOL!

Shrek!

So this is what has been consuming a lot of time out of our lives. AND it was totally worth it! The kids did amazing and Ashley McKinnon rocks as a director. She really knows how to make it fun and pull the best possible performances out of these kids, many of whom had never been in a play before.

Abbie, Branson, Hannah and RegAnn

Kiley, Abbie, Brandon, Hannah

Tate McKinnon and Hannah

Annabelle (as Fiona) and Hannah

Assistant director Missy and Hannah goofing off!

Kendall Hard (Shrek), Abby Call (witch), Hayden George (big bad wolf), Carmen Soderquist (pig), Tessa Muir (pig)

Bob Heath (pinochio)

Brandon Isaksen (Papa bear), Braylee Dyreng (baby bear)

Ben Smith (Donkey), Kendall Hard (Shrek), Annabelle Mckinnon (Fiona), Hannah (Gingy)

I worked on a lot of the behind the scenes stuff like posters, publicity, ticket sales and coordinating volunteers. I created the tickets and then had to cut them all out!