2011 in Review

Today is the last day of 2011.  It has been an amazing year.  It's definitely one we want to remember.  These are our highlights of each month.

January

January's highlight was the FIRST Lego League Competition.  London has been on a team for a couple of years and this was the first year Utah held a competition.  Our team, PiPod, was kind of the flagship team and helped get a lot of the other teams started.  Everyone knew who we were, and there was a lot of pressure.  The team did a lot of work and we were expecting to win something, but when the awards ceremony came, they didn't call our name and we thought we hadn't won a thing,  until they called the overall winner --- PiPod--!!!  We won!!  We get to go represent Utah at the World Festival!!!   We were in for more education and adventure!

This is an awesome group of boys and coaches that I'm glad London has the chance to associate with.

February

My highlight this month was the Regency Romance Ball that we attended for our Valentines date.  It was held at the Masonic Temple.   Here we are all dressed up and ready to go.  David won the 'Mr Darcy look alike contest'.   It was a lot of fun with dinner and dancing and several friends there.   We are looking forward to it again this year and we have several more friends who will be attending with us.

March

In March David won 'Utah CEO of the Year' from Utah Business Magazine.  This is a picture of him giving his acceptance speech.  He is amazing and I'm so proud of him!   Nathan and London also gave speeches, and debates this month and they did very well in their competitions.

April

April brought my 4th Shakespeare production "Much Ado about Nothing".  And let me tell you,  there definitely was 'much ado' to make this happen,  though it wasn't all for nothing.   For one thing,  I made all the costumes this year.  That was a lot of work, but it was a lot of fun, and now I have a good costume closet to work with.  The kids were fun to work with and I am always amazed by all of their hard work and what we are able to pull off!

April was also the PiPod trip to World Festival.  It was held in ST Louis.  It was a lot of fun to travel with the PiPod families.  We flew into St Louis about an hour before a tornado hit the airport.  It was exciting, but we missed it.  We rented a car and headed to Springfield IL and and had pleasant, clear, drive the whole way.    The Thygerson's who were on the same flight as us didn't get out of town as fast and saw some of the storm.   We were worried the airport wouldn't reopen in time for our other team members to arrive, but it did.   We got to see the destruction when we flew home.

We spent a few days before the competition touring Springfield, IL,  where Abraham Lincoln lived and is buried.  Then we went to Nauvoo and met up with most of PiPod.    The competition was exciting to be a part of.  There really were teams from all over the world there.   The international teams were older than us, around 16 years old.   We didn't win anything here, but we still learned a lot and had an amazing experience.   I should mention that these boys learned a lot to get ready for this.  Since winning the competition in January, they had to fundraise $12,000 to go to the competition.  They did it by marketing their team and giving presentations to Venture Capitalist and people interested in Diabetes research.  Their project was an implanted blood glucose monitor that can send info to your smart phone and runs on a blood battery.

May

May brought more Shakespeare adventures.   I took my troop up to the Utah Renaissance Faire where we performed for 3 days.  I drove the RV up there all by myself to be our base camp.  That was an adventure in itself.  We camped out with the gypsies and watched the night time fire shows.  Quite exciting.

We also went to Shakespeare Showdown for two days in May.  That is always fun.   I flew to London immediately after coming home from camp to meet David for Memorial weekend.  He had been traveling a lot, and it was fun to catch up with him for the weekend.  When it was over, I flew home and he stayed in New York.

Raven turned 11 this month.

June

Fusion-io IPO!!  This was pretty exciting.  David took his company public on June 9th.   It was a lot of work getting ready for this and we didn't see him much before this.   We all got to go to New York for the IPO.   This first picture is of the New York Stock Exchange with a giant Fusion-io banner draped in front of it.   It was very impressive.  And kind of surreal.  When we started this little thing 5 years earlier we didn't even imagine it getting this big this fast.  

We got to go up on the podium and ring the opening bell.

Again, quite exciting.  We had a breakfast in a giant boardroom before this and then we got to go down on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange as trading got started.  It was a very neat experience, and I'm glad we got to take our kids.   Nathan turned 15 this month.

I just have to post this picture from June as well.  David and I went to a Civil War Ball.  This picture was taken by the Salt Lake Tribune.   We made the cover of the Utah section of the newspaper.  It's become kind of infamous now, showing up all over the place.

July

 At the end of June and early July we took a road trip in our RV.  We went to Mount Rushmore and to Yellowstone.   The destinations were lovely and the weather was perfect for our trip.   It was fun to camp right in Yellowstone, and not have to make an hour trek in and out of the park each day.   But my favorite part of the trip is simply being together in the RV.  It's a slower pace of life and it's fun just to be together in our cozy little home.  It was a nice way to regroup as a family after the crazy months we had going a million different directions before this.

I'll also post about Zumba here, though this was an
all year thing, not just July.  I became a certified
Zumba instructor in February and have  been teaching this year.  It is a lot of fun!   I also lost 30 pounds this year, which I'm quite proud of.  I teach in my house now, and I love to have friends come 'shake it' with me!



August


David and I celebrated our 19th Wedding anniversary by buying a new house!   This was kind of a big deal and it happened very fast.  I wasn't even considering moving at the beginning of July,  we had found the house
and closed on our anniversary on August 15th and were all moved in
by August 29th.    It was hard to leave our Shady Meadow neighborhood.  We have loved living there for over 15 years.   We do love the new house and the new neighborhood.    We are closer to our homeschool activities and I don't spend near as much time driving anymore.   It is a fun house to have gatherings in and we are enjoying having family and friends over.

September

It was London's turn this year for the 'me and mom' trip.   We went to Huntsville Alabama to Space Camp!   It was a lot of fun!  We learned a lot about the space program and the astronauts.   We got to do fun simulations, like walking on the moon, and anti-gravity, and a spinning one that the astronauts had to do to train on to reorient themselves.   We went with a bunch of other home-schoolers from around the country, mostly from the east coast.  The food was awful, but everything else was great.

We also go to go on our book group retreat with our friends to St George.  We rented a house that had 2 swimming pools.  We pretty much just hung out there most of the time enjoying the facilities and the company, but we did head out one day to hike a slot canyon and do some repelling.    With our PiPod trip, the New York trip, London, Hawaii in August (I forgot to mention, Fusion-io club trip) and this trip,  we did a lot of traveling with other people this year.

Nathan started at Paradigm High school this month and London, Raven and I started at our new homeschool co-op, Renaissance Academy.  They are students and I am teaching two Shakespeare classes.

October


We got an email from the Glenn Beck show requesting home schoolers to come be on their show.
This has been a dream of Nathan's,  so at 4:00pm on Tuesday we said, "Carpe Diem"  and booked flights to New York for 8:00 am the next day.    Nathan and I had a lovely evening in New York.  We had dinner at Shake Shack and then went on a walk through Central Park and then to the Lincoln Center to see 'War Horse'.   The next morning we did some more city exploring.  Unlike the suite we had last time we were in New York, this hotel room was not much larger than the bed, so we didn't spend any time there.

We had to be at the studio at 1:00 for the show.   There were about 30 kids on the show.  It was kind of a panel discussion about homeschooling.  Nathan did very well.  He spoke up and had great things to say.  In fact, we've been getting almost weekly calls from them asking him to come back.   We're trying to fit that in our schedule when we can,  but New York isn't exactly close.

November


My 5th Shakespeare production "The Merchant of Venice" was held in early November.  This was with my class that has had 1-2 years experience.  They are a great group and they really wanted to be there, so it made it a lot of fun.

David has been traveling again. Ok still.  So it was nice to take time off with him to go to Kauai for Thanksgiving.


I'm really liking traveling at Thanksgiving time.  I think we should make it our tradition.

London turned 14 this month.

December

I did something very strange this month.  I stayed home and slept in my own bed every night this month.  I know, weird.  I think that is a first for a very long time.    I was supposed to go to China and Japan with David,  then it got changed to just China, then it got cancelled.  I was okay with that.  December is a busy time to travel without the whole family.   We also spent our first Christmas in our new home, and this is the first Christmas in a few years that we haven't been traveling over the holidays.   We took the opportunity to hold lots of parties with friends and families in our home.   We have loved spending time with those we love.

We are looking forward to 2012 and seeing what adventures await us, both at home and abroad!

Pi Pod Trip

We decided to take advantage of the Pi Pod trip to St Louis to explore the surrounding area.  We flew into St Louis and immediately rented a car and had an uneventful drive to Springfield Illinois.   We found out that we had just missed a tornado that hit the airport about an hour after our plane landed.  The Thygersons, who were on our same flight didn't get out of town as quickly as we did and got to hear the tornado alarms and then drive in a storm all the way to Springfield.

We spent a day exploring Springfield, IL.  This is where Abraham Lincoln lived for 25 years and where he left from when he became President.

Here is my family recreating the picture of Lincolns home that was on our ticket.

Lincoln's Tomb

It's supposed to be good luck to rub his nose.

His whole family, except one son are buried here.

 Our next stop was Nauvoo.   Here we are with the Payne's and the Fox's in front of the Nauvoo Temple.

It was a lot of fun to go on vacation with our friends!

 
We stopped in Hannibal MO next.

                           London is white washing Tom's fence



Here are the kids in front of Twains home.    I love his insights and words of wisdom.   One of my favorites is "Travel is fatal to prejudice and bigotry"




Our circle ended us back in St. Louis in time for the competition.    We were able to do some sightseeing in the city as well.

 We had fun in the Science Museum.  London was even able to join us for this.

He was busy when we went to the zoo.   This was our favorite animal.    We called it a Zonky.

The last thing we did before heading home was to ride to the top of the Gateway Arch.

Riding in the pod.

The view

It was a fun trip!

Pi Pod goes to the World FIRST Lego League Festival

This is old news,  but I need to get it recorded,  and I do have pictures of this, so here goes.

London has participated on a FIRST Lego League team for the past two years.   They have amazing mentors in Adrianne & Steve Thygerson, who have put a lot of time, energy, and home space into this project.   The first year the boys competed, we had to go to Pocatello because Utah didn't have a competition.   We won the project event in regionals and got to go back to Pocatello for the State competition.   This year Utah hosted a competition for the first time.    Since our team was experienced, we were asked to 'coach the coaches'  this year.   Our boys were impressive and encouraging and really did a lot inspire coaches to start other teams this year.    Because we were well known, we were in the spotlight during the state competition.    All the teams were looking at us.   Kind of intimidating.

We were only able to watch the robot games portion of the competition.   Parents and leaders were not allowed in the other competitions, so we really had no idea how we were doing.   We knew we were about 14th in the robot games, out of 56 teams.    Then came the awards ceremony.   We weren't winning anything.   All of the awards were given to other teams.   It was getting frustrating and depressing.   At the very end,  they announced the overall winner who was going to represent Utah at the World Festival - Team Pi Pod!!   I think we were all shocked.    We thought we would at least win something,  but we really didn't think we would win it all!   It was pretty exciting.   We had a fun team dinner at Hires after the competition and concluded that we were all going to St Louis for the world competition.

For the rest of the teams their Lego League learning was done for the year.  Ours was just beginning.
We had to raise money to fund this trip.   The boys got a great education in marketing and presenting.  They gave their presentation to lots of different venture funds,  companies, diabetes groups etc.  Here they are meeting the Governor.

We had to make new T-shirts,  get trinkets to hand out,  make a 'pit'  and plan a trip.   I also found out that the competition was the same weekend I had scheduled to perform "Much Ado about Nothing",  so I had to reschedule and rearrange all of my Shakespeare class plans.    We left for St Louis the morning after our play closed.

We got an interesting welcome in St Louis.   There was this nice welcome sign.    The airport also got hit by a tornado an hour after we arrived.

Here is a picture of our pit.   It was a booth where people could come learn about our team and where we were from.    We were between Malaysia and Australia, and across from Korea and behind Jordan.

The boys also put on a skit for the opening ceremony.  They were from 'The Pi Zone'  and could only talk in the number pi.

Two people from each family were able to go in to watch the presentation portions of the competition this time.    Here we are getting ready.

It was interesting listening to other countries sing and play the violin during their presentations while we were in other portions.

Here is our team coming out to the tables for the robot games portion of the competition.

Our team didn't win anything at the World Festival,  but they had a good time, learned a lot, got to rub shoulders with the top World Lego League teams and made us all proud!

Many Wonderful Adventures

We have had a lot of adventures lately.   So many back to back that I haven't had a chance to blog on them yet.    In fact, we are currently on another adventure,  but this is a more leisurely trip, so I am hoping to catch up.  Here we go!

One problem.   I brought my camera, but not the cord to connect it to the computer, to get the pictures off.  We'll see how far I get.

Kid Trips

A few years ago I started a tradition of taking one of my kids on a one-on-one trip each year.

This year it is London's turn,  and I just booked our trip today.  We're pretty excited about it,  but I don't know if I want to unveil it yet.

Here are some pictures of previous trips.

Two years ago Raven and I went to San Antonio Texas.  We remembered the Alamo, and looked for the basement.   There wasn't one.

We went to Six Flags theme park.

We went to Sea World, where we had lunch with Shamu and swam with Beluga Whales.

It was a great trip!

Last year Nathan and I went to Washington DC.  We got a tour of the White House and the Capitol.

 I got to stop at the Folger Shakespeare Library.

An the highlight was Glenn Beck's Restoring Honor Rally.   We got great seats thanks to Nathan asking some people who were camping out if we could sit by them.   It was an amazing experience to see so many people come together from all over to share and support these values.   It was a very peaceful and inspiring gathering of at least 500,000 people.  And when we left, the place was spotless.  Not trash anywhere.  It gave me hope for America. 

Before this I have taken each of the boys to Boston.  They were each only 8 at the time, so I think we all need to go there again.   I think I have stored those pictures somewhere else.

Look for pictures of this years exciting adventure coming in September!