Our Crazy July Begins

On July 1st, Utah Ambassadors of Music rehearsals started. That meant staff meetings, sectionals, uniform passing out, and a bunch of odds and ends for this HUGE tour to Europe. Brian spent July 1-3 at American Fork High School helping out, and I bounced back and forth between AFHS, stores, and home. Lots of last minute errands, lots of last minute family time, lots of craziness! And lots of trying to help ease Kirt and Julie's stress. Hopefully we were successful in the latter endeavor. I packed lunches for the kids and brought Duplos in an attempt to entertain the kids while I helped hand out uniforms. The Duplos didn't entertain the way I hoped--the kids just loved all the attention they got from the other staff members, and Michael loved watching Papa conduct.  At one point, Michael disappeared from the room, and I didn't know where he had gone. Brian was in the room with me. Turns out, Michael had been hanging out with Papa in one of the rehearsals, up at the front, trying to conduct too. One of the staff got a picture, but in the craziness of the day, I never got it forwarded to me. Maybe I can add it later it I track it down. It was pretty cute. 

On the second day, Brian decided to bring his horn to rehearsals. He pulled it out of storage to see how it played. Michael was pretty excited to see Daddy play the horn. 

 So Brian gave Michael his first horn lesson:

 The third and final day caused me lots of stress. I needed to be two places at once. The Candy Bomber was coming to Orem as part of the Freedom Festival on July 3, and he was coming at the same time as an important parents meeting at the UAM rehearsals. Michael loves the Candy Bomber, and I knew he'd want to see it. When I mentioned my dilemma to my dad, he said, "Well, I guess we better come down and take Michael to see the Candy Bomber."  Taryn and Aaron came down early on Friday and hung out for a while. We decided to head down after lunch to check out Colonial Days and get set to watch the drop. My parents would meet us in Orem. Well, when we arrived, parking was totally nuts because of all the people wanting to see the candy drop. I ended up dropping Taryn and the kids off at the park and then finding a parking spot for my parents. Once they arrived, I gave them hugs and headed back to American Fork, knowing my kids were in great hands.

My parents kept the kiddos safe during the candy drop (which ended up being a little disappointing--too many people and too many parachutes landing where no one could get them), but Michael was excited to be there. My dad took him to all the military stuff at Colonial Days:

 And when I came back a few hours later, I took Michael and Rachel to the Colonial stuff. I ran into Lea right when I got there, so she and Danny came with me. Danny and Michael carded wool:

 and made rope:

 We also saw the cannon being fired and other fun stuff. It was also very hot. When we'd had enough fun at the colonial section, we decided to head out. On our way back to meet with my folks, we saw him: "Hal" Halverson, the Candy Bomber! There were too many people for us to go up and talk to him, but I got this picture of Michael with him in the background. We were all pretty excited about this:

 We were so close!

The next day was my birthday. As I mentioned in the previous post, I spent it doing laundry, cleaning, and packing the kids' suitcase. I went over it and over it, trying to make sure that they would have everything they needed for two-and-a-half weeks. I had a hard time wanting to shut that suitcase.

 The next morning (July 5), it was time to say a temporary goodbye to our world. My parents were so great to come down and help out. The biggest help was that they took our kids up to Chelsea's house on their way home to Idaho.

 It was really starting to hit us just how long 18 days apart would be.

 Here they are, all ready to go, and we cried after they drove away, even though we knew they were in the best hands possible.

The rest of the day was so strange without them. We went to church with just the two of us for the first time in a long time--since I was pregnant with Rachel and we went to D.C. for 10 days. We didn't know what to do with ourselves, but I will confess that we enjoyed it. We went to Lea's house for a last minute BBQ (and more birthday fun, but this time aimed more at Kirt), came home to finish up packing, set alarms for 2:15 a.m. and went to bed, excited to begin our long-anticipated trip to Europe!