Easter Surprises and Iron Men

I sat down to write this post mainly so I could put up some prom photos and videos of the kids singing and suddenly it hit me that I haven't even posted Easter pictures yet. Oops. I also haven't said anything about my surprise news that isn't really a surprise to anyone who knows me anymore, as well as pictures from Forrest's trip to Utah. So I think this is going to be a two post couple of days. Let's go chronologically.

Here are our Easter pics. I'm always in such a rush before church on Easter, but I'm always so glad I make the kids pose even if they don't want to. After all, you gotta have a few pictures when bow ties are involved!

Looking snappy!

On that very Easter Sunday our ward was split. The meeting itself was wonderful, but the split itself was bittersweet. Although it was hard to lose some of our good friends, our ward was getting so large that it was tough to know everyone. I was heading out to the parking lot feeling wistful when a member of the Stake Presidency stopped me in my tracks. At first I thought he was just going to ask me a few questions about the upcoming Mormon Prom, but then when he asked me to step into another room I knew something was up. As Oprah says, "Never let them take you to a second location!"  I was floored when he released me from the Stake YW since we had such a full schedule coming up (Prom, camp, youth conference) and Brooke, the second counselor, is in Europe all summer, poor thing. I got to spend the rest of the afternoon wondering why I was released until the bishop called and said his family wanted to bring over an Easter treat. While his kids covered our lawn with Easter eggs, I was called to be the new Relief Society president and properly dumbstruck.

So that was Easter.

My calling as the new RS President put our plans for the following weekend into flux. I had been planning to go to Utah with Forrest because he was running a half Iron Man with his MN friend Dan and his Utah friend Cody, but I was also truly excited to go spend time with my Dad to celebrate his 65th birthday and official retirement. It was going to be a surprise. And then my brother Andrew and my sister Amy were coming. It was a whole THING. We were planning to leave the kids by themselves for four days, which had rattled my nerves a bit to be honest, and it was also the second to the last week of school and I had just received 70 research papers that needed to be graded by the Thursday I was to return. But I was willing to deal with all those issues so I could still go. And then . . . bombshell. The first Sunday as a ward and the day I was set to be sustained was the Sunday we were going to be gone. That next week, I had to work with the bishop to call a brand new Relief Society program (counselors, VT supervisors, Enrichment ladies, teachers) and set up the entire visiting teaching program. And it was still the last two weeks of school and a week wherein I was somehow supposed to grade and comment on 70 6-8 page research papers. I had to face it: I wouldn't be able to go. I was so disappointed, especially once the pictures of everyone else having fun without me started rolling in, but there really wasn't any other way to deal with that two week period of my life.  Looking back, I'm glad I didn't go because there's no way I would have survived May 5-22. I barely survived as it was.

As far as the calling goes, I'm enjoying it so far. I would have been much more freaked out about being the Primary or the Young Women's president. Of course, I'm still plenty freaked out, but I'm also looking forward to getting to know the women in the ward on a more personal level--that's the best part. I could use your prayers though.

And Forrest had an excellent time in Utah without me. Here are some pics of him at the race and with our family:

Early morning, getting ready to race with hundreds of other crazy people.
When you go to a true Iron Men event, all sorts of people show up!

Forrest and Cody. We miss Cody!

Dan, Forrest, and Cody. Dan kicked it in the swim portion (6th place in his age group) but Forrest *almost* caught him at the end. Always good to have someone to chase. Forrest and Cody were lucky enough to find each other on the run and spent the last hour of the race together. I was tracking them online and was so happy to see that during the last hour of that 5 1/2 hour ordeal Forrest had the company of one of his favorite friends. 

Forrest and Dan celebrating at the end of the race. 

Although I would have loved to have been there to cheer Forrest on, what I really missed was seeing family. Look at these beautiful faces!

These kids are growing up without us. Sniff.

There are lots of great photos of the whole Sweat clan on my mom's blog (and Amy's and Andi's) but here's one from Forrest's very own phone. My happily retired Dad, my happily retired (kind of???) Mom, and my husband who has about 25 years left to go. But we don't talk about that. Enjoying a little Mexican food at the Red Iguana--my fave! 

Tomorrow I'll finish the update.  Prom! (I know you've been waiting for those pictures.)  Solo singing! Stay tuned.

Happy Kid Update

Right now I have four pretty happy kids. We've had a nice little stretch of good luck and decreased stress lately--in fact, I'm loathe to write this down in case I jinx things. But gratitude outweighs jinxiness, doesn't it? Plus I've been a parent long enough to know to enjoy the good times--helps you ride the wave when things are tougher.

Here's the happy stuff for each of the four.

Wyatt Dean is mostly just chillin as a happy 7-year-old. He's thrilled that it's warmed up outside so he can go out and play with his friends, He's also been pretty much tic-free since mid-November, and although that definitely doesn't mean he's out of the woods (he's cycled in and out of tics for a couple of years now) it's been nice to have things calm down for a while.

I snapped a pic earlier today after he managed to invite four friends over to play. He called one friend and no one answered, so he called another friend and no one answered, then we got a hold of the third friend who said he could come and play, then five minutes later friend number one's mom called me back, and five minutes after that friend number two's mom called me back. The truth is, though, at this age they play so well in bigger groups. One on one the kids can get bored and rely on Mom to come up with fun ideas. But in a group of four, they're just off to the races. Here they are enjoying a healthy snack (juice boxes, potato chips, fruit twists--and yes, Mindy, I'm saying "healthy" ironically :).

Goof nuggets. I like how his friend Clifton came over to play wearing a space suit. Ethan had some theatre friends over in the basement writing a script for the year-end banquet at the same time Wyatt had friends over, and none of THEM were wearing space suits.

He's also in the thick of scraggely-toothdom. Look at that big boy mouth! Makes me wistful.

Jonas Leo just finished a fantastic run of Lake Middle School's production of Seussical: The Musical. Jonas played "boy" and got to utter the first lines of the show (see video clip below) and he was also a Who from Whoville. It was a darling show and Jonas had so much fun. I wasn't sure if he'd be interested in the theater, but he decided all on his own he wanted to try out and has loved it. The video is of the opening scene and there are some photos from cast photo day too.

The photo below is of Jonas and Makenna, a girl from our ward. They were both in the show and were particularly excited to have a bunch of Beehives from the ward come and watch them perform.

Such a cute photo. Jonas really likes these girls. The group of Deacons and Beehives from our ward get along so well; they voluntarily get together once a month to have "Beacon" parties. Which makes the fact that they're splitting our ward tomorrow tougher. As Jonas said, "It's like 'Happy Easter!' Now say goodbye to all your friends."  But the whole ward split thing is for another post.

Jonas also got the "Lake Award" for the outstanding student of the month of the "house" in his middle school (they're separated into two houses). The award came with a gift certificate for a child's meal at Chili's . . . with the purchase of an adult meal. (Hey, Chili's! Methinks this is a corporate scam to get people to come to your restaurant. We are on to you.)

We also found out today that his contact lens prescription, which is two years old (whoops!), is way too weak for his deteriorating eyes. He popped in the new contacts and kept exclaiming about how awesome the world is. It is awesome. Especially when you can see it clearly.

Elise Julia thinks the world is awesome because she got asked to Mormon Prom. The boy is the son of the Stake YW Pres. I work with and he's sweet and fun. He came over, brought her some flowers, then unzipped his jacket to reveal the shirt below:

I like how you can see the blush in her cheeks. We quickly decided to order a prom dress online, a trick that Mormon girls outside of Utah have been trying in order to find dresses that meet the modesty code. We used a website called dhgate.com--it's Chinese and sells just about everything. It's almost like eBay, with a ton of individual sellers or small businesses. I think the business model of the dressmakers is: steal photos of prom dresses and wedding dresses off of the internet; offer to sew them to fit the customer's measurements for much less than the dress would cost in a store; sit back and wait for the money rolling in (especially from the Mormons who like the fact you can search for "cap sleeves" and come up with a bunch of options). We were a little nervous about it, but the dress came in TWO WEEKS. Order received, dress made, mailed from China, boom. Those Chinese businesswomen are quick. And Elise loves it! We'll have to take it in a bit in the bodice and hem it, but overall it works great. 

Elise also had a great experience performing at Solo & Ensemble (a vocal competition) for the first time ever. She got one point below Superior, the highest rating, but was very happy with her Excellent. Her voice has come a long way in the last year and I'm so proud of her for singing an adjudicated solo--nerve wracking stuff, and she handled it with aplomb. She also just found out that she made it into East Ridge's top choir--the Minnesota equivalent of the Madrigal group that I loved so much in high school. The last two years she's been in women's choirs and I think she's going to love the mixed format (for more reasons than four-part harmony! :-). 

Lastly, she performed on Sunday for the Young Women's "Celebration of Christ" program. She decided to write and perform her own song. Although she plays her guitar and sings in her room all the time, she'd never attempted to write a song until now. She wouldn't let me hear it until the day of the event, but I'm glad I got to be surprised. It's a beautiful, heartfelt song, and it touched so many people in the room. It's so fun to see a daughter stretch herself and grow. A video of her performance is below, but the lighting is very low and the audio isn't that loud (taken on my iPhone in a dark room). But I think you can still hear it well enough.

I was also proud of her because we'd found out at church earlier that day that our ward was going to be split. Her three best friends live in the southernmost part of our ward and we live in the north; it's almost certain that they won't be together. When she heard the news she was very upset--and I understood. These girls don't go to the same high schools, so it will be harder and harder to see each other after this. Elise wasn't sure she could perform that night, but she pulled herself together and delivered a beautiful performance. I'm so glad they had the event that night--I think it was comforting for a lot of them to remember who we can turn to when life doesn't go the way we'd like it to.

Finally, Ethan William got some good news of his own. A few days ago we found out that he got a 1/2 tuition scholarship to BYU. We're so proud of him! And I think he's particularly happy because he can now, in good conscience, refuse to work in the Origination warehouse for the summer and instead stick with McDonalds even though the pay isn't as good. (Dad was pushing hard for Origination. Dad is a man and he is tasked with raising manly men. I, however, am a softie and I'm glad that he doesn't have to go shovel mud for 8 hours every day in an overheated warehouse that smells like turkeys.) 

Not to say that I don't try to force Ethan to do things as well. For the past two years I've been trying to talk him into going to Prom and he's been intractably opposed. Hates dancing. Too expensive. Goofy. Stressful. I finally had to throw my hands up in the air and say, "Whatever, dude [even though your refusal to go to Prom is weird and depriving me of the opportunity of posting cute pictures of you in a suit with your friends and a date on my Facebook page but WHATEVER!!]" But the Gods have smiled! Ethan is on Youth Council and since they're also involved in pulling off this Mormon Prom, he decided to man up and go. He's asked a great girl in our ward and has given his mother the gift of agreeing to hold still and pose for at least one awkward picture on the front lawn.

So tomorrow is Easter. And ward split day. I also have a huge pile of essays coming in on Tuesday--the longest ones of the semester--so who knows when I'll get around to updating the blog again. I'm guessing once the semester wraps up in mid-May. Until then!

Birthdays and Eagles

We had a busy weekend last week. First, we celebrated two big birthdays. Happy birthday(s) to my handsome boys!

Forrest had his eyes closed in the first shot and Jonas did in the second, so I thought I'd make a little collage and you can cross your eyes and imagine that I photoshopped somebody's head. And Wyatt likes being in photos as much as possible, especially shirtless. I wonder if this will last until his 13th birthday? 

You can't really tell, but the cake is 2/3 chocolate and 1/3 German chocolate. It wasn't very pretty, but Forrest wanted German chocolate frosting and Jonas wanted chocolate, so I sacrificed beauty for practicality.

We also went to Buffalo Wild Wings--it's become kids' choice for birthday celebrations. I think I now have three or four photos of all the kids at this restaurant. It's like the Mirror Lake photo of the Hallstrom family!

Here's a great one of Wyatt and Forrest. You can't really tell in this photo but Forrest is getting quite skinny in preparation for his upcoming Half Ironman. I was glad to see him eat some wings AND half a cheeseburger.

Jonas was actually a super good sport because his real birthday occurred on Sunday, which was also Ethan's Eagle Court of Honor. I asked Jonas a number of times if he was okay with his laid back birthday and he kept saying yes, yes. He was happy to get a few presents, but even happier to get some money. He's such a good kid. See? He's even happy at the Court of Honor when very few people are paying attention to him! He's holding up the big 1-3. (Or 3-1. I don't have the wherewithal to photoshop heads OR flip photos around apparently!)

And now I have three teenagers in the house. THREE! Jonas doesn't quite count yet. He's still too reasonable.  It did make me a little misty eyed on Sunday, though, seeing my middle boy reach one milestone and my firstborn one reach one as well. We did the Court of Honor with three other families--a GREAT idea, saving us time and money and enjoying the night with a bunch of other people. Here are the handsome boys in a little photo shoot we did the Sunday before:

One of the moms used the photos for our yummy Sam's Club cake, so the kids had a good time eating their brothers' heads.

It was a wonderful evening, and so fun to celebrate that Ethan was FINALLY DONE!

Random people and decorations

Posers

So handsome!

Tough guys

Nerds

"Hey Ethan, take a picture with Jonas on his birthday!"

"Hey Elise, can I take your picture too?"

Caaaaake!

Lately Wyatt has been a total goof-nugget in most pictures. I promise he's still a very handsome boy.

Next up? Jonas's play, Seussical Jr. Closing night is tonight and he's done such a great job!

A Few Fun Things

The first fun thing that's happened in the last few weeks is Elises's 16th birthday. It's hard to believe that Elise is now the same age as I was when I started dating her father, but it's true: she's met one of the biggest milestone birthdays around. She celebrated her 16th at the Mall of America with three good friends. I gave her my credit card and the four of them went and ate at The Rainforest Cafe like grownups--although she had to call and ask me if she's supposed to give the server the credit card again after writing in the tip. (A good question, actually. The things we just do without thinking about them.) Here they are, looking cute in a candy shop:

And here Elise is, trying to pose with her birthday cake in a dignified manner. Then her dad showed up.

Love that girl. It will probably be a few months yet before she attempts the driver's license. The winter has been so treacherous she hasn't done all the driving she needs to with her permit yet . . . but I'm happy to put that one off a few months, especially since she has a brother who can driver her around.

And speaking of Elise and her brother, today was the last day of their speech season. They've both done a great job, learned a lot, and grown. And I'm very happy that the days of waking up at 6 a.m. on a Saturday are now behind us. I went and helped judge at the final meet today and it was bittersweet seeing Ethan up there getting awards. It's been a great four years for him on the speech team--a defining element of his high school experience and identity--and I'm so glad that he's had this opportunity. Here's a shot of the whole speech team, and then Ethan holding a his brother (while his brother holds his trophy).

 
As a matter of fact, while I type this there are dozens of speech students in our basement, laughing and stomping around. I took a photo of all their shoes in the entryway, then snapped a quick photo of a bunch of them watching Frozen and singing along (I tried to make sure no one saw me, then skittered back up the stairs. That's one reason the photo is not of the highest quality: my clandestine photography skills aren't so great). Anyway, speech parties are the best non-Mormon parties you ever want your high school students to attend.

Aaaaand speaking of going to MORMON parties, it looks like Ethan will be attending a few in the future, since he's decided to go to BYU (go Cougs!). He's excited and so am I. He gets to go to COLLEGE. My favorite!! And walk around on BYU campus with the mountains so close and listen to the bells ring. There are few places in the world I like more than a beautiful college campus in the fall. Everyone is so young and alive and interesting, and there are trees and pretty buildings and people lying on the grass reading books. Love it love it. Of course, the transition to college can be hard sometimes too, but I think Ethan is ready. He gets to pick his room this Friday: Helaman or Heritage? Will his roommate be a "night owl" or an "early riser"? So many interesting questions.

Now for the younger two, a few fun things as well.  Both Jonas and Wyatt went skiing at our local "resort" over spring break. I put resort in quotes because it's nothing like a Utah ski resort, but that said, it's one of the nicest in Minnesota and has some hills that are fun, especially for those who don't need to ski down black diamond trails. Unfortunately I don't have any Jonas skiing pictures because he went with friends in the ward--I am certain he looked dashing heading down the mountain. But just so Jonas will get a little photo time, here's a cute shot of him trying to eat the sugar ribbon off of Elise's Sam's Club birthday cake (it was hard as a rock):

Now you tell me: should I worry about getting this kid braces? It seems almost de riguer these days, but his teeth are pretty straight if you ask me.

Anyway, back to skiing. We did get some great shots of Wyatt. He went twice: once for an official lesson, and the again with dad.

 Getting on the "magic carpet" on his first day of lessons:

Figuring it out:

Practicing "pizza" with his class (headed by a teenager named Ethan):

And on the lift for the very first time. All by himself! With NO RESTRAINTS! It made me a little nervous, I've got to admit.

But he looked pretty happy about it:

Heading down the "bigger" hill for the first time.

After the lesson Forrest thought he caught on quickly enough that he could go up with just dad for an afternoon, so Forrest got off work a little early and took Wyatt for a few hours. He was pumped to get some Dad and Wyatt time.

This time, he got a traveling companion on the ski lift:

And Forrest took a great video of him swooshing down the mountain. Those kids, they learn fast:

We have a big week ahead of us as well. Forrest's birthday, Jonas's birthday, and Ethan's Eagle Court of Honor on Sunday. I'm just proud of myself that I got two posts finished in the month of March. I have a feeling my next post won't be for a while. A huge crush of paper grading awaits. We'll see though: maybe I'll surprise myself and become super organized somehow. You never know!