Cara is Dances with Grace

I was just testing out a service that would post my photos from Iphoto to the Blog here quickly and easily so I needed to post a photo I had on the laptop. I picked this photo cause it's cute. This was taken last summer I think. Grace likes giving people hugs.

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A Late Night Hospital Trip

Ian and I had and exciting trip to Labor and Delivery at the Intermountain Medical Center at 10:30 on Saturday night.

I had been having really bad pain all day Saturday on my right side around my hip and in my lower back. I had been able to get some relief from Tylenol, sitting in certain positions, and massage. By 10:00 that night the pain was unbearable- maybe the worst pain I've ever felt. I was on my hands and knees yelling and screaming- probably pretty unsettling for Ian. He called the doctor on call and she told him to take me to Labor and Delivery right away.

Once we got there they did lots of really fun things like take a urine sample through a catheter and check to make sure I wasn't in labor. Both procedures were quite uncomfortable. They strapped me up to monitors to monitor the baby's movements and heartbeat and to check for contractions. Everything turned out to be fine- just a really bad combination of sciatica and round ligament pain. They gave me a Lortab and sent me home. I woke up feeling much better on Sunday.

The best part of the whole experience was getting to lay in a hospital bed and listen to my daughter's heartbeat and hiccups for an hour and a half. At least she was unaffected by my trauma.

The Marriage of Figaro

As you may have read in the previous post Ian and I saw The Marriage of Figaro last night at the Capitol Theater. I loved it. I didn't know the story before the performance last night, I just knew it was a comedy by Mozart. It's amazing that a story written hundreds of years ago can still be laugh-out-loud funny. I thought that the performers were all fabulous. I was quite distracted by the fact that the male character of Cherubino was played by a woman until it was made clear that this character is supposed to be an adolescent- then it made sense. I consulted WJMS's resident theater expert, Lisa Morey, about this. She told me that until about 100 years ago boys were put into these "younger" roles in the opera and were castrated so that they would keep their high voices. Now women play these parts- interesting.

Both of these photographs were on deseretnews.com. I loved the set- the back grounds were beautiful and the costumes were amazing.

The Opera

So ever since I started taking classes at the U I knew that I could buy discount tickets for certain events around town. Of course I completely ignore this benefit of being a college student until the last minute as always. So back in January I decided to buy some discount tickets for things while I still have an active University ID. I got some tickets to a symphony, 2 operas and a play. Unfortunately the discount tickets are only available during the week. So tonight me and Cara are going to the Opera at 7:30, which means we'll be out until about 11. That's about 2 hours past our normal bedtime. It's tough to do since it means a less sleep for us, which is going to be in very short supply when May comes around. But I think it's worth it to be able to see these incredible shows. Maybe Cara will do a follow up post with how the show was tonight.
Were going to the "Marriage of Figaro" by the way. The first opera we went to was "Regina" which wasn't that good. It was a more modern opera created in 1949 it was in English and just wasn't that good of a story. I didn't particularly care for it. I'm hoping this one will be better. It was written by Mozart after all.

The American Experience

The big West Jordan Middle School Fine Arts Department event of the year was "Art Week: The American Experience". We got a mini-grant to pay for everything, and it was a lot of fun. We ordered traveling art exhibits of old west era artist Frederick Remington and depression era artist Thomas Hart Benton. Our fabulous orchestra teacher, Lauren Flygare had her students perform some fiddle tunes, and they sounded great. Phil Grothaus, much loved choir teacher, had his choir perform a few traditional American folk songs. I especially loved their rendition of Johnny Cash's "Daddy Sang Bass". Lisa Morey, drama teacher extraordinaire, prepared some fun trivia questions about the old west and the depression era. Kids answered a question correctly to get a piece of candy. I took pictures and spent the evening hoping that my husband would be able to pry my cowboy boots off of my swollen feet when I got home.

Part of the Frederick Remington display.

Thomas Hart Benton
The orchestra performs fiddle tunes- they were so cute!

Phil and one his students play guitar while the choir sings folk songs.

Some sugar-starved 7th graders trying desperately to win a piece of candy from the General Store.

It was a fun event. Last year I said I would never do it again, but did anyway, so I guess that leaves hope for next year and the possibility of Jackson Pollock, M.C. Escher, and the 1950's.

Grace Likes Peanut Butter

We like giving the old peanut butter jar to Grace when we finish it. She'll spend an hour licking out every last morsel. It's adorable.

Deer Valley

A couple weekends ago I went skiing at Deer Valley with a couple friends Brad and Jessica. Deer Valley is one of the most expensive resorts in the area. Jessica got us cheap tickets through work so it was great to be able to ski at this exclusive resort. It wasn't my favorite place to ski though. Too much green flat runs. It just didn't seem like it was that big of a mountain. The did have some nice groomed runs though at the beginning of the day.

This was me and Brad trying to find our way around the mountain. The resort had too many lifts, They had 4 lifts going to the top of their 2 main peaks. It didn't make any sense. It's like they were trying to waste money.

Here I am launching off for a massive jump , I must have been in the air for like a half a second. Whoopee.

Here I'm giving Jessica a peace sign as I ski past.

MillCreek in Winter an Artistic Interpretation

Now that I posted the photos we took of us at MillCreek, I wanted to post a couple more artistic photos I took while enjoying our hike.

This one focuses on Grace but I was really enjoying the look of the blurry background with other hikers to add to the scene. I also like the curved lines of the cross country ski tracks. I think it really adds a nice visual line that leads to the hikers in the background.

This one is from Grace's point of view.

I liked these little dead seed pods as well. This one shows a blurry hiker traped between the twigs of the branch.

This one includes a blurry Grace and Cara walking away from the camera.

MillCreek in the Winter

These photos are from a hike we took up Millcreek canyon at the end of January. I posted some photos back then of our previous hike in the Fall, and figured I should finally get around to posting the photos we took of our January Hike.

Here's me and Grace, chilling by the creek.

Here's Cara and Grace. Grace wouldn't look at the camera, she was too interested in the other hikers.

And here's a shot of Cara and her belly back then.