A Boomerang Surprise

Friday was Maddie's 16th birthday!  I wanted to do something for her at school, but I knew that she would hate balloons, and I couldn't think of anything else to do.  Finally, at 5:00 on Thursday night, I received the inspiration that I had been hoping for.  I could decorate her locker!  But I didn't know which one was her locker.  Jayd thought it was #623, but he wasn't sure.  So I asked him to give me his key to her locker.  I knew if the key fit, then I must have the right locker.  So I went early Friday morning, found the locker (it was near the classroom Jayd described), and tried the key.  It opened on the first try.  Bingo!!  So I decorated her locker with a big "Happy Birthday Maddie" sign with balloons and streamers.  It looked great.  I was so excited for her to see it.
After school, I wanted to come take a picture with Maddie.  When I talked with her, she didn't seem to know anything about the sign on her locker.  I thought she was teasing me.  She said that there was a sign a couple of lockers away from hers.  I asked which one was her locker.  She said it was 653!!  I was astounded!  I wasn't surprised that Jayd gave me the wrong number, but the key opened the locker!!  So some poor confused person had a sign on the locker all day that wasn't for him/her.  Maddie and I just had a really great laugh about it, although I did admonish her not to leave anything of value in her locker, apparently there are multiple keys and you never know when some unsuspecting mother might be snooping in your locker to post a sign for another student!   (Luckily I am honest and didn't take the money from the locker)

Our TV Show

The episode of Last Man Standing that we attended aired last week. It's called "This Bud's for You." If you would like to watch it, follow this link. We really enjoyed going to the taping.

http://abc.go.com/watch/last-man-standing/SH55126594/VD55192761/this-buds-for-you

I Love my Lips

Last week, Gabe had a great hit in his baseball game. Unfortunately, as he was stealing third, a wayward ball hit his mouth as he slid into the base. His lip had a pretty good slice, along with a raspberry above his lip. We bought a package of popsicles, and he was pretty happy that day as he was allowed unlimited popsicles throughout the day. However, they next day, it was fairly swollen and tender. As he complained throughout the day, I couldn't help but think of the veggie tales song "I Love My Lips" --beedy bop boo de beedy bop boo..... If you aren't familiar with the song, here it is on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1FGaCNN1aw

I am happy to report that a week later, his mouth is nearly returned to it's original shape, and like Larry, Gabe has a greater appreciation for his lips.

Spring Came a Little Late

Since our spring showers came a little late this year, I decided to deviate from the traditional pastel colors for easter and try a majestic purple. The dresses came out beautiful, and the boys even joined in this year with some purple ties. It was a fun easter morning.

Easter Egg Hunt

The Easter bunny still makes it's yearly pilgrimage to our house, although there was a little confusion this year with the B.I.T's (Bunnies in Training). The end result was the same, lots of hunting, and lots of candy. Here are a few pictures:

The Past Reflected in the Future

On Good Friday, Jeff had a holiday from work. So we decided to have a family day. This year we don't have season passes to any of the local theme parks, we are touring Los Angeles. So after spending the morning at the temple, we headed downtown to go on tour. We started at Olvera St. This is where the first residence in the Los Angeles area was established. Today it is more of a Latino shopping mall filled with stalls full of misc items. It reminded me of the marketplace in Mexico.From there we headed towards the City Hall Building. Originally on of the tallest building in LA, it is about 100 years old. Above is a picture of the city hall reflected in the mirrored police station building. We were able to go up to the observation deck for a lovely view of the city. We could see for miles..if there weren't any buildings in the way. One of the standout buildings was the Disney Concert Hall. It's wavy steel structure was really bright in the sun! From there we toured several of the older buildings in the city. We went in the lobby of the LA Times and read all the headlines from the past 100 years. We visited the Bradbury building (pictured left). It's lobby was truly lovely. We went in several other historical buildings that were exquisitely decorated. We also saw the first movie theatre, and went through the local market. By that time, we had travelled several blocks and were nearing the skyscrapers of Downtown. The Bonaventure Hotel grabbed our interest, so we headed there next. We rode in the external glass elevators on each of the four circular towers, giving us another view of the city from above. We enjoyed counting all of the helipads on the buildings. For a little variety, and to save our feet, we rode the subway back to Union Station. We were a little worn out by then. It was a great day touring downtown LA. We ended the day by attending the BYU UCLA volleyball game. It was full of drama as they went to a five game match. We enjoyed cheering for the visiting team along with at least a quarter of the other attendees.

It's only taken 15 years....

On Tuesday, I had tickets to go to a taping of a comedy sitcom. We were going to see Last Man Standing, a show with Tim Allen in it. Ever since I was young, I had always wanted to be in a live studio audience, but had never made the attempt until now, 15 years after I moved to LA. I had tickets, but that didn’t guarantee entrance. So I planned to be there an hour and a half early so that we would get in. Jeff was running late, so we didn’t arrive until an hour later. They told us it was unlikely we would get in. Eventually the line dwindled until there were only 6 people in front of us. But two of those people wanted to be with their friends who were behind us, so they traded numbers with us. We were finally taken in, but told that we would be sitting in single seats. Oh well, at least we would get to see the show! Once inside, the usher was taking us to our seats, but she couldn’t find the other seat. So she called “upstairs” and asked to release some VIP seats that were empty. They agreed! The usher said to us, “You better be on your best behavior because you are sitting next to Jane Allen.” We had the best seats! We were in the front row right in the middle, next to Jane Allen. Several times during the show, Tim Allen came over to talk to his wife. We didn’t talk to him, but he was only about 3 feet away from us. It was pretty cool.

The set was long and skinny, as were the audience seats. They were only about 4 rows deep, but very long. Then the crew and actors moved up and down the stage to the set they needed for that particular scene (living room, kitchen, office, etc.) We didn’t see very much of the actors during the taping. Either they were on a set that we didn’t have a very good angle to see, or there were so many cameras, sound microphones, and people in the way of the set to see hardly anything. But they had big tv screens mounted in front so that we could see what the director was seeing. I was amazed that they switched cameras so quickly while doing the live taping. It looked just like the way it does on TV. The actual show didn’t look that different. It was like watching a scene, rewinding it, waiting 5 minutes, watching the scene again, waiting 10 minutes, then watching the next scene. But it wouldn’t be nearly as fun to do this at home because you wouldn’t have the comedian at home. He kept us laughing during all the breaks. He was so funny, he questioned and teased the audience about why they were there, where they were from, we had a dance contest, he told a few jokes, we had a guessing contest, it was lots of fun. We were laughing for 3 hours straight. We tried not to laugh while they were feeding us pizza. A happy audience laughs a lot, so they kept us happy. I was a little worried that it wouldn't be very funny seeing the same thing over and over, but every once in a while one of the actors would change a line, or change their timing. Oftentimes, the second take was funnier because they would adjust according to our reaction to their lines. I am really looking forward to seeing the final episode, which lines did they keep, etc. I kept score for one of the games, so the comedian gave me a copy of the script. I wrote down all the changes so that I would know what to look for. It was a really fun night, I highly recommend it for anyone in the area. The episode we watched was “This Bud’s for You.” I will try to let you know when it is being shown, so that you can listen for my laugh. Sorry I don't have any pictures, but we weren't allowed to bring cameras, cell phones, etc.