March 2015 - Medieval Times, family in Utah, and a visit to the Windy City

The big news in March was that I was called as Young Women President in our Ward (in charge of the girls ages 12-18 at our church).  When I told my boss he just laughed.  When I asked him why he laughed, he said that I was nothing like them and they won't know what to do with me.  He said that he expects that they will come to me all whiny and crying like teenage girls and I will look at them like what's your problem and get back to whatever you were doing because you're wasting my time.  Ha. When I told Malori about it, she laughed as well because she remembers all of the leaders we hated when we were that age.  She reminded me that we particularly hated it when leaders wouldn't let us sit in the back row.  Dad gave great advice to let them be leaders--give them responsibility.  I'm already realizing that that is hard, especially the letting them fail part.  One of the girls was supposed to line up a service project for us at the Food Bank (her request) and despite my talking to her about it in person on a weekly basis and texting when it got closer, she never called.  I even told her that she could delegate and have someone else call if she wanted to as long as it got done, gave her specific deadlines, and many other responsibility tactics and nothing happened.  5 days before the scheduled date, I finally broke down and intervened, calling numerous community centers for hours and then creating an entirely new service activity from scratch because all of the community centers were booked and we had about 40 people coming to the service project.  Ahhh.  Giving people responsibility is hard!

The Young Men planned an incredibly fun Medieval activity a few weeks ago.  The highlight for me was jousting with broomsticks on rolling trash bag carts.  Epic.

The Young Women were in charge of the food, so we decided on this:

 Sword fighting and then my attempt at jousting:

Another incredible highlight in March was having the Lunas move to Utah!!!!  WE ARE SO HAPPY!!!  It is wonderful, wonderful, wonderful to have more family here and for the kids to have cousins to play with.

I'm just realizing as I look back that March had a lot of highlights.  I must have forgotten how exciting it was.  I had a wonderful trip to Chicago with Anne and I wish we could do it twice a month all year long.  I flew in Thursday night and we started the day Friday with bizarre Chinese massages.  They would lift up our legs to at least a 45 degree angle and just completely drop them.  Multiple times.  Then they would pick up our arms and wiggle them like a worm.  It was strange.  The part where they actually massaged my back did feel very nice, though.  It was really, really cold and windy on Friday so we spent most of the day hiding and only ventured out a couple of blocks in every direction.  We did manage to walk like 20 minutes to the movie theater and then treated ourselves to deep dish pizza after.

The weather was so much nicer on Saturday, so we spent most of the day walking and exploring.  The Bean was on my bucket list and I'm so glad we got to see it.  It took us about 30-40 min to walk there from our hotel if I remember, and then we walked for over an hour through old Chicago to a glass blowing class.  It was so neat to see so much of the city on foot.  I loved it!  And glass blowing was absolutely incredible.  I can see why Anne loves it so much!  We both made beautiful glass bowls.

I also got my Panera fix on Saturday, so I was a happy camper.  Saturday night we went to Blue Man Group, which was fun and entertaining.  We were really close to the front and had to wear ponchos, which was exciting.

I didn't fly out until Sunday afternoon so we did a fascinating Frank Lloyd Wright architecture tour in the morning.  I found it way more interesting than I would have thought.  Anne and I both lamented that his waterfall house is apparently in Pennsylvania because we both wanted to go see it.  Next sister's weekend maybe...

Honestly, the best part of the trip was being able to give Anne a hug in person.  Man, that felt so good and I wish I could do it much more often.

Luckily, I made it home on Frontier.  They are getting worse and worse!  On the way out, the flight kept getting delayed for no reason and they charged a ridiculous amount if you ask for a cup of water while in flight.  Also, they now charge $30 for you to bring a bag on the plane plus a minimum of $6 to get a reserved seat, which is a requirement for booking a flight.  On the way home, their website went down so no one could check into their flights online or at the airport kiosks, meaning the line to check in at Chicago O'Hare was hundreds of people long and all of their flights were delayed and people were mad.

When I got home, Kyle and I had a really fun date night.  We went to a painting class and butchered it a little, but had a lot of fun.

To end, here are some quotes of the month:

Alexa: "Mom, I love you, but sometimes you look kind of funny."

Granny: "Well, who wants to play Scooby Doo?" (Skip Bo)

Me: "Tyler, what's your favorite animal?"
Tyler: "A black jaguar."
Me: "Who is your favorite princess?"
Tyler: "A horse."
Me: "Where is your favorite place to hide?"
Tyler: "A crocodile."

I came home from work the other day and the kids were playing superheros.  Alexa was "Belle with Elsa's ice powers," Tyler was "Captain American Batman with super shield power," and when I asked Alexa what my super power was she said that my power was "to twirl really fast and kill bad people."  Be afraid, bad people.  I will not hesitate to twirl really fast.

I have the most adorable welcoming home party when I walk in the door from work.