Youth Ice Skating Activity 2014

A lot of people assume that with my Minnesotan heritage that I would be good at winter sports, but truth is, I've been skiing and/or ice skating approximately 3 times in my life.    And during one of those skiing trips I was accessory to a plow-over of an innocent bystander when mine and my friend's ski braking techniques (the snowplow?) lacked a little in the direction department.    In other words I am pretty much as oxymoronic as a Minnesotan as a Hawaiian would be who doesn't like the water.  

BUT despite my snow sport inabilities….

I sure had fun helping to plan an ice skating activity for the youth at our church.  

The youth let us know that they love ice skating, but it was going to end up costing way too much to take all of them to the local outdoor rink.  My counselor and I put our heads together and figured out that we could rent out the rink for the entire night, combine with a couple of other wards (congregations) and could have a great inexpensive, but very fun activity.

Tuesday night was the night.  

We carpooled up to the Reston Town Center Ice Pavilion...

and had a fun night. 

 

You will not be surprised to know that I kept my feel solidly planted on cement covered surfaces the whole night...

and enjoyed my role as ice skating photographer.

There were a few minor injuries...

but all in all, a very fun night was had by the youth and adults alike! 

And I am proud to say...

that all these native warm(er) weather Virginians...

including my own children...

are much better skaters than I am. 

And that's probably a good thing, 

since this long and cold winter (by Virginia standards) isn't done yet

and they may all be skiing or skating to school this coming week!  

Senior Roast (and Video)

Last night was our church's annual Senior Roast, where all of the youth gather together to honor the graduating seniors.  The word "honor" may make it sound serious, but in reality it's more about having some good clean fun and making sure that the seniors know how much they are loved.

Here is the Class of 2013.  Brandon, Spencer, and Ryan have all been together since preschool.  Janessa moved in a few years ago.  They are a great group and our ward will really miss them as they all go off to school this fall.

Each person got to have a display table with some of their memoirs.  I got a little distracted and ended up just grabbing a few things on my way out the door.  My one regret was not finding a jersey from his high school lacrosse team.  Actually I did find it, but it was crumpled up in the bottom of a full gym bag that has been sitting there since the end of the lacrosse season.  I opted not to use it.

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Spencer's display ↓↓↓↓                                                 Janessa's display↓↓↓↓

 Ryan's display ↑↑↑↑                                                   Brandon's display  ↑↑↑↑

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The most anticipated part of the night was each senior's slideshow presentation.  I did not realize it when I started ours, but I ended up doing ours the labor intensive way.  Most people did Powerpoint slideshows and talked through them, while I stressed to find out how to add sound to ours.  I didn't get much sleep the last couple of nights, but in the end I liked how it turned out.  Enjoy!  

We ended the night with each senior presenting their last will and testament.  Spencer bequeathed things like his baking skills and all the young men to Cami, his sporting gear to Adam, a big hug to Ellie, and his music ability and bedroom to Emma.

We are going to miss this kid next year!

Love you Spence!

Roadshow Fun

So I've been talking a lot about the stress the roadshow has caused me lately, but not really so much about the fun of it.  Now that it's over I figured that it's only fitting that I write a more detailed blogpost all about it, so you can see (and I can remember) that it was well worth the effort to see the end results. 

A roadshow is a  conglomeration of several short performances each about 10-15 minutes long, where the 12-18-year-old youth from the individual wards (church congregations) within our stake put on a show.  The shows were all based on the theme from the Dr. Seuss book, "Oh, the Places You'll Go!"  We were encouraged  to use the thirteenth article of faith as a guide and make them wholesome (but not necessarily spiritual), praiseworthy, and fun! 

A roadshow director was in charge of each individual performance, but the youth were meant to do all of the performing and assist with the prep work, including helping to write the script, choreograph the dances, and paint the scenery. Although the youth were involved in the prep, there was still a significant amount for the adults to do as well.  Other adults helped the youth with costumes, choreography, constructing a set, planning the cast party, and gathering props.    My job was mostly to help corral the youth at the practices each week, to help the director (Sister M) with some of the details (printing individualized scripts for everyone, etc), and creating the paper program for the night.  I love paper projects like making programs, but I was a little intimidated by how to fit all the information, including the hundreds of performers' names all onto one sheet of paper and still have it look nice.   In the end I feel like it came together well in a tri-fold form that strongly resembled the sacrament meeting programs I made for several years. 

Never being much of a performer myself, I was a little surprised at how wrapped up I got in trying to help the individual youth take pride in their participation in the roadshow.  There was a good number of the youth (mostly boys) who would take any opportunity they could to bolt out of practice to the nearest basketball, but even still, somehow it all came together in the end. 

Here is the video our final performance.  It was the culmination of about 5-weeks of practice.  See Spencer as the Old Spice Guy at :45-1:35.  Emma whistles right at the end of that same scene and is in the front row (looking everywhere but at the audience) in some of the dances.  Cami is Miss Piggy right at the very end.  Ellie, who is obviously not quite old enough to be an official participant, but is always at practice with me, was so excited when the roadshow director said that she could participate.  You can see her as one of the animals in Spencer's scene and glimpses of her in each of the dances.  At the end of the performance she came bounding backstage to me (literally bounding) and shrieking about how excited she was that she'd been able to perform in "every single song!"  I sense a possible future thespian in the family!  :)

Although I am relieved that it is over, I love that it ended up being a fun experience for the whole family and hopefully for each of the youth as well.  To wrap up, I'll throw in a bunch of pictures and a list of the top ten things I enjoyed about participating in the roadshow! 

Top Ten Things about Participating in a Roadshow

10--Watching new friendships blossom between the youth.
9--Seeing fun new glimpses of their personalities.
8--Watching them help and encourage one another.
7--Watching a shy girl open up and give a performance her all.
6--Seeing how awesomely talented they all are in their own ways.
5--Getting a tiny glimpse at all the hard work it takes to perform on stage
4--Seeing how they embraced the new kid, including him in the production and in process helping him to feel part of the group
3--Hearing other people compliment your youth and their performance
2--Working hard towards a common goal and getting to enjoy the fruits of it at the end.
1--Getting to have fun together! 

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I thought our roadshows were pretty awesome, but imagine my surprise when I saw this headline on the front page of the Washington Post today...

Seriously?  How rude of them to be so judgmental against a bunch of teenagers.

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*  The video and pictures of Spencer were taken by the Nielson family.  :)