Waka Waka Eh Eh

These are my children.

Well, not all of them.

I shouldn't be up this late at night loading photos and reflecting. My eyes seem to be allergic to this whole reflection business.

We have Dance Festival the next two days and I wish you could see all the joy exhibited by these wonderful children. They have grown so much and I've taken them as far as I can and most of them won't really remember me, but this is it--the end of another school year.

Between songs, my kiddos were standing around one boy in particular advising him of the hairs that are growing out of his chin. It's almost like I can't watch them enough or listen to them enough or be with them enough. These last few days.

Poetry Slam in the kiva today...most excellent. One girl emailed her list of things to do this summer--unsolicited. Unruly ribbons blowing across the field. Retrieved. Red houses with blue doors in France. Bloody nose. Cheeky behavior. Celebration conferences complete with Smarties. Someone discovered a photo of Michelangelo's David in one of my books. "Am I missing any homework?"

Snippets of my day. Just one day. All the days piled together make a school year. And all the school years piled up make a life. My life.

Judy Two-Names

Oh, the rangers crack me up!

TR was telling me about training today. Sounds like they WON'T be doing the Wildlife Olympics program at Fishing Bridge this summer because they are getting new cash registers and that will require training and therefore there won't be time for training about how to do Wildlife Olympics or something along those lines...which is really too bad because until you've seen a grown Chinese man giggling his face off next to Yellowstone Lake after attempting many times to jump as high as a bison...well you just haven't lived!

So, in the course of explaining all of this over the phone, TR sort of mumbled the person's name who is in charge of Wildlife Olympics at Mammoth/Park Headquarters. I asked him to repeat her name. He told me her last name was hyphenated and both parts of her hyphenated last name were sort of unusual and tricky to spell and pronounce, so everyone just refers to her as Judy Two-Names!

I adore humans!

The Payson Utah Temple Open House

Stunning, of course.

Without even trying, I got to go.

K and I decided to not even try for tickets due to our annual move to Wyoming, end-of-school activities, and the fact that between our 3-4 jobs, we were never available to sit on-line in order to pounce on the next batch of tickets available.

However, my wonderful second counselor in the stake Primary presidency, Denise, texted me on Sunday evening saying her family had an extra ticket. So I emailed my principal to see if I could be excused a tad early from collaboration and suddenly I was going. Denise drove me to school yesterday and then picked me up and drove me to her parents' home in Provo. Her mom fed me (us) and off we went. Ran into a coworker and her family and then the first person I saw IN the temple hosting was the lady who does my pedicures...big hug from her!

There are one hundred steps in all on the tour, so you do climb quite a ways up. Everything is Light and Beauty. Not to be too negative, but I do think it was the noisiest temple open house I've ever attended--people were just chattering all the way through saying things like, "Wow!" I just remained silent. Other comments were made by strangers behind us which were not in keeping with the tone of the edifice, but overall it was lovely. I just happened to be sweating to death by the time I reached my one hundredth step.

So when Denise kept asking me if I wanted my picture taken once we were back down and outside again, I kept saying "no." The perspiration was still dripping off my face. K and I will go back to do ordinance work in that temple and we'll get our photo at that time. For now, the building alone will more than suffice.

And then Denise took me through the drive-through at Culver's whereupon I ordered a small hot fudge sundae which was made with custard. I called K to tell him all about it and he told me about the earthquake at Fishing Bridge. He also recertified in First Aid and CPR.

And now I need to buy safety pins for the dance festival before I head to school. Did I mention grades are due? I had three baby showers to attend in two days last week and there are two more baby showers this week neither of which I can attend due to previously scheduled appointments. The crazy month of MAY!

Oh, is that a Grizzly?

So K was looking out the window in park housing and saw a bear. Some of the pics are blurry, but he WALKED OUTSIDE FOR A CLOSER LOOK and did the best he could. Jealous! I would like to see a little bear family...from a safe place of course.

Yellowstone from K's Camera

These are some of the same pictures I took last weekend, but all of these come from K's camera (better equipment).

Student News Creatively Published

My kids have been so creative lately!

Lilies and Berries and Shaggy Elk, These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

The first glacier lily we spied was just outside the front door! Don't know what those pussy willow things are called down by LeHardy Rapids, but they were near the Harlequin Ducks--Ranger Tom calls them "clowny ducks." We saw a lone shaggy young bull elk grazing. K left a nice card and some treats for Mother's Day for me at the breakfast table. Got to see a cow bison and her new little Red Dog (I hardly ever get to see new baby Red Dogs because I'm only there so briefly to drop the Ranger off in May)! The bull bison were having their Spring Fashion Show right down the middle of their selected runway (park roads). Lotsa hair that needs to be rubbed off on all the Ponderosa Pine! They'll be handsome gentlemen again soon (before they lose their minds during the rut in July/August).