A Peach of a Weekend

Three months ago, Lacey tried out for her Middle School musical, James and the Giant Peach. She was thrilled when she found out she made the cut and was offered a part on the cast (she's on the bottom row).  

For the past three months, she has stayed after school until 6:00 at night, typically at least 2-3 days/wk plus a four-hour rehearsal every Saturday.  This past week (tech week), her weekday rehearsals have gone until 9:00pm and she had 8 hours of rehearsal over the weekend.  It was intense!  She missed soccer, friend get-togethers and all kinds of other things. But it was worth it!

Unfortunately, there were no pictures allowed during the show, so these practice pics are the only pics I have.

But alas, all their hard work paid off and it was show time!  On Friday night (opening night) we all showed up to support her.  In addition to Dave and I as well as Tanner, Riley and Ella, our dear friends, the Day family (they lived here in Maryland for three years from 2009 - 2012 and we have remained close ever since - love them!), who came to visit us from Kentucky for their Spring Break, as well as Nana and Grandpa and Aunt Heidi and Uncle Jack and Cousin Jacque all came to see Lacey perform.

She had two more performances on Saturday and a fourth on Sunday.  It was a busy weekend! She's looking forward to having a bit more free time, but already talking about how much fun it will be to do again next year!

And we have LOVED having the Day Family stay with us Friday-today (Sunday).  They are amongst my most favorite people in the whole world.  And no matter how long it's been since we've seen each other, we always pick up right where we left off.

Emma and Lacey are the same age.  They were good friends when they lived here, but the girls hardly remember it because they were just 3-5 years old.  We showed them lots of pics of them together.  And although, they didn't necessarily remember all those events, they quickly rekindled their friendship and had a great weekend together (squeezing in any time that Lacey wasn't at her play). 

The girls....

And the boys.

Ryan was 9 years old when they moved.  Now he's 16 and 6'2!!

Dave and I went out to dinner last night with Kim and Pete and two other couples (Bob and Karen and Joe and Monica) that we were all friends with when they lived here.  We went to the Iron Rooster in Annapolis and were there for 3 1/2 hours.  We could have stayed longer.  It was just so. much. fun!!!  We eventually came home and watched March Madness with the kids and let everyone stay up  way too late watching Day/Strom video montages that they had made for us before they moved of all of our times together.  It really is amazing what we packed into those three years! And we've created memories with them since.  They moved to Korea from here and Dave and I went out to visit them in 2014.  And now that they are in Kentucky, we already have plane tickets to go out and visit them for the Kentucky Derby in May.

Three jam-packed Peachy Days ;) 

Yellow Belt

Tanner has been BEGGING me to sign him up for TaeKwonDo for ages.  I signed him up a couple years ago for a couple months but then honestly, we just got so busy with everything else.  That busy-ness hasn't gotten any better.  It's likely gotten even busier.  But the begging has continued and I finally relented.  And now, he has stuck with it long enough that he qualified to try for a belt advancement.  Here he is in front of the black belt judges waiting his turn.

He did it!

Posing with Master Kwon after receiving his yellow belt.

Posing with our neighbor Kelsey.  He has been taking all his classes with our two neighbors Kelsey and Katie and he loves being in class with them.  Kelsey earned her belt advancement as well.

It's kind of funny because Kelsey is a girl in 4th grade, Tanner is a boy in 5th grade and Katie is a girl in 6th grade.  So different genders and all different grades/ages, but somehow these 3 musketeers seem to really hit it off when it comes to TKD!

Congrats, T!

Meaning of Life

Yesterday was a busy day for us.  After spending the day in Philadelphia (see previous post), Dave and I headed to Baltimore to see Kelly Clarkson in concert on her Meaning of Life tour.

Kelsea Ballerini, nominated for Best New Artist at the 2017 Grammy's, opened for her.

And then Kelly hit the stage!  I LOVE her!  This is actually my fourth time seeing her.  I saw her in concert in Anaheim on November 15, 2002.  Then Dave and I went to see her in concert with Reba at this very same venue (Royal Farms arena in Baltimore) in November 2008.  We saw her again this past summer when she performed on opening night of the US Open Tennis tournament in New York. And then saw her again last night.  And it never gets old!  Her voice is A-mazing, her personality relatable and delightful and she knows how to put on a show!

And I love that she writes so much of her own music.  

She sang every single song I hoped she would.  Stronger, Miss Independent, Piece by Piece, and on and on.  She opened the concert by singing her winning song from American Idol A Moment Like This acapella.  Beautiful!

And then we came home to find that the kids had written a bunch of notes and set up traps for the leprechauns.  They clearly had high hopes for a leprechaun visit!

Good thing that, unlike their parents who had spent the day in Philadelphia followed by going to a concert in the city and not getting home until 11:15 at night, leprechauns somehow have enough energy to visit in the middle of the night and write responses to all the notes......

And set out a trail of gold nuggets for the kids to follow when they woke up.....

That brought them to all these treasures!

And even wrangled up enough energy to be mischievous and dye all the toilets green, the milk green, the apple juice green, etc.  Those crazy leprechauns!  They sure must love these kids!

 A full circle day.  Going to the temple where we contemplated the Meaning of Life in an eternal perspective.  Then spent time in Philadelphia learning about and appreciating all the incredible men and women who helped bring about the liberties of which make our lives meaningful.  Then we went to a concert entitled "Meaning of Life" and finally rounded out the day by coming home to......

The four meanings of our life.

Brotherly Love

Yesterday, we drove to Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, for Lacey to go inside the Temple for the first time.  In our church, once you are 12 years old, you can go inside the temple.  The Washington DC Temple is undergoing a massive renovation for a period of a couple years, so the Philadelphia temple, 2 hours away, is now our closest temple.  We visited Philadelphia while this temple was under construction and went back again and went through as a family during the Open House.  But it was nice to be back here again as a family to be with Lacey on her first time going inside a dedicated temple.  Here was the view of it when we first saw it from the car.

Meeting up with the other Youth in the Visitors Center next door.

Dave went inside with Lacey to help perform baptisms and confirmations and Tanner, Riley, Ella and I stayed long enough to watch them walk inside.

Tanner is next!  Just a year away!

Then the four of us walked around the city.  We went to the Reading Terminal Market.

And the Independence Visitors Center (that is Independence Hall in the background)

Tanner declaring his independence.

And then we went to see the Liberty Bell

Let Freedom Ring!

And went to see Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were both signed. 

None of us knew who John Barry was (the huge bronze statue in Independence Square directly in front of Independence Hall), so we looked it up.  Fun fact: this statue was unveiled in front of a crowd of 15,000 people on March 16, 1907.  Which means..... we were there on the 112th anniversary of the unveiling of this statue.  How cool is that?!  Great timing!

And, we discovered that John Barry is the Father of the Navy (fitting since we live just up the street from the Naval Academy).  He was born in Ireland in 1745 (which is probably why the "Friendly Sons of St. Patrick" are the ones who presented it to the City of Philadelphia in 1907), but died here in Philadelphia.

And then we headed back to the temple where we met back up with Dave and Lacey and took some family pictures before heading back home.

I love to see the temple!