Beach 2009

This is the path that leads from the house to the beach, crossing a wild flower covered sand dune.

Leith and Kevin play catch as the tide comes in.

At high tide, the waves were encroaching on our space, so Niall undertook to build a little sea wall- it actually did keep the water off the towels, mostly.

We love the self timer feature on the camera.

Leith looking at tide pools.

Niall on the rocks.
India plays in the surf.

Coral tries not to let the wave catch her.

Lunch on the beach.

Leith needed a boost at the bottom, then climbed right up.

Part of the beach has been inundated with a finer sand than usual- not good for tide pools and sea stars, but great for sand castles.

Cute kids!

More self timer photos....

After the self-timers,the boys didn't stick around for more pics, but the girls love the camera.

The last morning...

The path that leads from the beach back over the dune to the car to go home....
As an added bonus, here is a little video of the kids interacting with the gulls that became interested in our lunch....

Niall has been drawing a series of maritime pictures he calls 'Demented Fish'. We are all fairly amused. He is experimenting now with making a comic strip.

Coral graduated from Seminary Sunday night and from High School yesterday.

She played in the Wind Ensemble for the graduation.

Because of her first chair seat, she ended up on the big video screen often.

The ceremony was long- plenty of pontificating by school and district officials, who interrupted themselves at times to chastise the kids for batting beach balls around the auditorium. This is a photo that Leith took which captures my feelings of surreal entrapment. To be fair, my history with graduations does not predispose me to find this meaningful. But, Coral is much different and enjoyed it, and I was there for her.

As I described it all to Alison, she had the brilliant idea that this all could be accomplished by a single text message blast at a certain time on the appointed day.

SMS: "Congrats! We have double checked that you are not indebted to us for any fines and that you have cleared up all your tardies/absences in detention. Your diploma should arrive in your email box by 2pm."

The enjoyable part of the ceremony came when each of the 762 graduates stood one by one in front of the camera, appearing on the big screen above, and posed for a picture while his or her name was read before collecting a diploma cover and shaking hands with the principal. Many of the students did very funny and entertaining things for the camera. One boy turned from side to side as if he were having a mug shot taken, another held up a sign with a prisoner number on it. Several students posed as if they were busily taking a cell phone call or sending a text. There were many funny faces and cute poses. One boy mouthed 'I love you, Mom'. I connected with the idea that each graduate was individually given a moment of technological limelight in which to bask. I didn't get a photo of Coral on screen, but I understand that I will have the opportunity to purchase the photo later- big surprise.

Here she is!

I am proud of Coral and am looking forward with her to the opportunities to come!

Niall is having a lot of fun in scouts. At a recent pack meeting, he participated in a skit where the other boys showed off articles of clothing that they got from JC Penny. Niall played the part of JC Penny who came in at the end pretending to not have any clothes.

On May 29th, India participated in the Temple Celebration commemorating the dedication of the Draper Temple. The program was essentially a musical tribute to the history of the Draper area. I was excited to see the kids have this opportunity. I have seen reports of these types of celebrations around the world and was worried that because we live here, we would never have this chance. I understand that the plans for this celebration were underway over a year ago, but we didn't know about it on a local level until late in January- which gave us what seemed like an impossibly short amount of time to work on it. Our planning and preparation were combined with that of the Oquirrh Mountain Temple district- their nearly identical celebration was held the next day.

The theme of the celebration was 'Come up to the Mountain of the Lord' - taken from Isaiah 2:2. The Conference Center stage was decorated with a huge 'mountain' backdrop. During the final number, the top of this 'mountain' changed into a model of the Draper Temple.

The whole thing really was a three-month-long party of song and dance for the youth. They wore plastic wristbands reminding them of the theme, received weekly text messages and spent many hours rehearsing. For the adults, it was a blur of budgets, costumes, schedule changes and crowd control- in a festive atmosphere. Our Stake's dance number came in the 'cultural diversity' section and depicted Polynesian culture. India was a Hula dancer-she can really swing her hips and was in the very front. I sewed 'Haka' skirts for the boys.

The afternoon of the celebration, our youth gathered for a Luau before going into the city to the Conference Center. Kevin and I took the boys to watch. Most of the floor of Conference Center was taken up by the huge choir waving choreographed flags as they sang. About half of the nearly 7000 participants sang and half danced. The dance numbers were very much in the 'musical theater' tradition- loosely depicting their subject matter while having a lot of fun dancing in costumes. My personal fav was the number showing the rigors of life for the early settlers living in dugouts. Apparently they spent a lot of time dancing around their dugouts with shovels and brooms. We took binoculars so we could zoom in on India and actually see her from the balcony where we were sitting.


Before the boys fell asleep, they had fun watching the whole spectacle. The props were great- handcarts, wagons, a huge train engine, two spectacular vintage cars in the 50's number, stars and a moon hanging from the ceiling, etc.

This is a cell phone pic of the stage after the top of the mountain changed into the Draper Temple.

The associated website www.templecelebration.com has photos and video as well as the beautiful song 'Come up to the Mountain' composed and written for the event.