Science Fair & Erased

It has been a good day, but the main thing on my mind right now is that I'm sad cause something happened on my phone around 2pm today as I was out running errands. I was entering in that Abi did a DI run for me, and that I was returning wedding stuff, and I was confused cause it didn't show that Owen had trumpet today. And it didn't have hardly anything on all the other days of the week in the whole month. Upon further research for the next hour, I discovered my whole calendar for the past 2 years was GONE. Mary and Alive's birthdays were not entered in anymore. Everything for the past year was gone, and things that ended and had been deleted this past year were back, like my weekly coaching calls with Laura Dixon. Those ended like in March 2025. Anyway, I'm super bummed and sad and mad. I'm sad because I had lots of notes on there of things that I wanted to keep track of so I could record them here, such as where we went on each of our Friday night date nights. It's all erased. So now I guess I'll have to go back and look up bank transactions, which is going to be a pain. Or I'll just not write them down. I'm still catching up on the blog - I'm caught up through May 2025, but June through today have posts missing here and there. When I'm catching up, it's already hard, cause sometimes I can't remember what happened just from the photos, so I'll go look up messages over text, whatsapp, and messenger to try and help me get my facts straight. And I USED to use calendar, but now that's not gonna happen. And so iphone/apple calendar, I just want to say I'm mad at you and we're breaking up. I'm not going to use you anymore for important things. I'll be using whatsapp to text myself. Goodbye. 

Ok, so today was the usual school morning, and I drove Owen over for safety patrol and he took his science fair tri-fold because today was the science fair. Then Abi left with the car at 9 for seminary (it's her only class for the rest of the year on Tuesdays and Thursdays) and she was coming home after that class, but I still didn't have it to drive over, so I was debating if I had to go. I already knew what his project was about. But I did go, and I'm glad I did. I pushed K in a stroller and we found Owen and he was ready to tell me all about his experiment. 

I couldn't hear him at all cause it was noisy there in the cafeteria, but I nodded my head and pretended I could hear. A nice grandpa came and listened intently after us. I shall try to be a grandpa like that. I decided to go look at other kids' projects and try to ask them questions to pay it forward and show my gratitude to that nice grandpa for taking an interest in my son. 

K and I walked home, we were gone for a little over an hour. After I got home, I had to work on Lily's sourdough. She slept in and thus didn't get it done before school, so I told her I'd do it and she texted me detailed instructions on how to prep the rolls from her dough (60 grams for each). It was sticky. I worked on that for 30 min, then Abi was back and we loaded up the car with donations for the DI. Abi took it down, which was great. That's been the big hurdle in clearing stuff out of this cluttered house. I can get it in a pile, but then I don't move it out. But now it's done, and new goal is for me to clean every Wednesday like I did yesterday, then on Thursdays when Abi is home, she'll do the donation run. Yay, this will be good. While she was gone I worked on the second bowl of sourdough. After Lily got home, she was pleased with my work, and we gifted rolls to two elderly neighbor families, the Hubers and the Ogles, and then Lily gave a third bread (not rolls, from a bowl I was instructed not to touch) to our next door neighbor. Lily is a good baker. So after getting the sourdough ready, I left to run my errands of returning wedding stuff - ribbon to Walmart, flowers to Michaels, then I went to turn in the violation paper I got last week from a cop in Midvale, after going by Winco - I got pulled over cause my brake lights were not working, so I didn't have to pay anything to Midvale City, but I did take it in to Burt Bros last Thurs to get the lights fixed, which was $114 bucks I think. After that I went by savers to return some clothes, but I didn't have my receipt, left it home, I'll try to find that later, then back to home to take Owen to trumpet. Got him ice cream at Macey's on our way home from there. Abi had made dinner, I cleaned a little more in the basement, registered Sophi for high school, and now I'm blogging so yay, good day except for the things that will never be recorded on earth because K did something to my phone or maybe it short circuited cause my storage is full again, ugh. Such problems. Well, things are actually good here at home, which is more than I can say for our country - it is all insane! Ok well good night.

Peter is 7!

Happy Birthday to Peter!

I'm honestly a bit sick of 6-7 jokes, but I did smile this morning when Abi said "Today is Peter's 6-7 birthday!" Yesterday he was 6, today is is 7. I'll allow it. Sweet little Peter was asking me for a party before the wedding. I said not this year. Then after the wedding he asked again. Honestly told him I just don't have it in me to throw another party right now. Then after school on Monday, he and his little friend Lucy made invitations. Darn it, their little drawing were too cute to say no to. 

Ok ok, you can have a party. But just fyi this one's gonna be lame and last minute like last year's was, in true Tiffanie style. I texted his friends' moms yesterday to see if their kids were available to join us for cake and ice cream after school today. They were all available, lucky boy. Natalie made a brownie cake last night - cake and frosting both from scratch. She and Peter started to make a pinata too so we wouldn't have to waste the money, but I told them it was ok, I could buy a pinata. I was actually impressed with what they had done though! They could have done it.

I saw some pinatas at Winco on my midnight wedding run last week. So I went to Winco at midnight last night (I took an hour+ power nap around 7pm last night when I got tired helping Owen with his science fair project, so I was ok to do a midnight errand). I got ice cream, a dinosaur pinata, and candy from their bulk bins. I love that they're open 24 hours. Really helps a woman like me who does not have it all together. Natalie had trouble with her hair this morning, so she stayed home to fix that and was thus also here to help stuff the pinata before school.

Peter took a thing of Costco chocolate chip cookies as his snack to share with his class (leftovers from the wedding reception, it works!)

So I didn't have to really get anything ready, cause Natalie was going to do it. So I went to work to continue putting things away after the wedding. Flowers and stuff in the basement, then I organized most all the ski stuff from skiing last week - coats and snow pants and boots all put back on the shelves, yay. I had a GREAT day cleaning in the basement and I listened to Closer Look with Seth Meyers and other news-ish stuff while I cleaned, then thought I'd check in on Vegan stuff, listened to Vegan 2019. I've been out of the vegan news for a while, so thought I'd see what I've missed these past few years. Katharine's friend Scarlet came over to play at 1, and they played until it was time for the party. Scarlets brother came, and Scarlet stayed for the party too, so she and Katharine had a 1-6 playdate!

Zach, Scarlet, Katharine, Peter, John, Brynn, Lucy, Daniel, and Evan. Caden and Beck were upstairs playing legos for the pic but they came down with Owen for ice cream. 

Peter blowing out the candles.

Natalie cut the brownie cake, Sophi served up the ice cream.

Opening gifts.

We waited for one last friend to come before we did the pinata. He was at piano lessons. After Arnoh arrived, we held up the pinata. Natalie on top of the closet, and I held the other end of the rope. Peter was the first one up, and the pinata broke on the first hit by Peter. 

He broke it's neck, so the body was down, and they shook it all out. 

I guess I should have let Natalie and Peter make it! It would have been more sturdy than the t-rex. Oh well. Kids stayed and played with Peter's new legos sets or wherever, moms came and got them between 6 and 7 (oh great, I just did 6-7). Peter and his two friends Beck and Arnoh look like identical triplets! With their straight dark brown hair. Peter and Beck are in the same class at school and their teacher and classmates often get them confused from behind. 

Wayne came over to give Peter a gift when these friends were still here, and I think Wayne mistook Beck for Peter too! But it was ok cause he called them both "Alice", that's Wayne's little way to always play it safe! Wayne took Natalie to get her phone screen fixed, but they were about to close and needed 2 hours to do it. Plus it would be over $100 bucks, so we'll see what Natalie decides to do about that since she's paying. Wayne brought her back and then he left. Abi took Peter to In N Out for a birthday burger, and took me to drop me off at Momentum. Mel called Peter to wish him happy birthday on our drive there. They saw Spiderman in Hawaii and they got a video with him, Peter Parker wished our Peter a happy birthday! 

They are having a great time in Hawaii! I went climbing with Corey and while we were there, Abi sent a message that she and Peter ran into Wayne at In n out - Peter said "I see grandpa" and Abi thought he just saw an old man, but then saw it really was Grandpa! 

Corey and I did top rope at Ft Union and just got back at a decent time, going to go to bed tonight at a good hour, yay. I hope you had a good day Peter! Happy happy birthday!

Science Fair Project

Now that the wedding is over, and our ski trip, and Christmas and family visiting and etc etc, it is finally time to focus on the 5th grade science fair. 

I actually thought this was due last week while we were skiing and I was ok with Owen just getting a zero score on it. He'd still be admitted to junior high, so I don't care. I didn't know the due date cause I haven't read anything in the parent packet book that they sent home in November with all the details, cause I resent the whole thing. But when I texted his teacher telling her we hadn't started and I had a wedding so I wasn't going to do it, she said it was actually due this week and that's fine that we didn't work on it over the break as long as he was ready on Thursday for the science faith. Ugh, ok I guess we get to do this. So that meant that today was crunch time. We worked on it right after school until now - just finished at 10:30pm. We cranked it out and it's done, and I hate the science fair. I don't feel burning hate, just annoyance. It is stupid, but I hope that the one kid in the 5th grade who might have their college trajectory altered by this stupid collective effort gets where their science passion leads them. So, as we made out plan last night, Owen said he needed a poster, so I went to buy a poster at Dollar Tree at 2:30, then went to boulder for an hour, and then picked him up from school. The plan was for me to pick him up after safety patrol and we'd go to Waterford, so the "research" and then have the data he needed. 

We each kicked the hard psi ball 5 times and we measured it with me walking and using my feet at a "foot". Then we let some air out with the inflation needle, until it felt softer, then we each did it 5 times again...

More air out until it was really flat, then we each did our last 5 kicks. Very scientific, I know. That's what this 5th grader came up with. 

I kept track of how long in "feet" each kick was, and Owen's job was to retrieve the ball. He got in his steps. So we each kicked a soccer ball 15 times, 5 times with high psi, 5 times with nice regular psi, then we let more air out of the ball and kicked it with low psi. We didn't measure the psi specifically at all, cause I don't care.

The internet helped with the hypothesis. I did all the typing up and bs-ing of words for the introduction, research, methods and procedures, materials used and conclusion. The one thing that was not bs'd was the date from our research at Waterford, where Owen and I went to kick the soccer ball. We were going to kick smaller balls (miracle balls) to gather more data, but it was cold so I said let's just do the soccer ball and call it good. Got our numbers, went home, uploaded the pics we just took, sent those to Walgreens, took Owen to activity days. After he got back from that, we gathered the stuff and that's when we saw in the packet about all of this that I have not read from until today, that he needed a trifold, not a poster, so then I went to Walmart to buy that. $2.99. Katharine came with me, and I bought her conversation hearts and a cupcake purse. If I take K with me, I usually end up buying her stuff. That's the trade off if I have to take a toddler. Got home, typed stuff up, printed it out, taped it on, done. I'm glad it is complete, and it's due Thursday, not tomorrow! Look at us being done early, woo. I feel confident that he won't be advancing like darn Lily did in 2020 and made me do even more work after it was supposed to be over. I remember learning from Hyrum's science fair in 2014 that we had to be sure to word the hypothesis correctly. Ai helped with that. Lily asked why I was helping Owen, she did hers on her own. I told her I was confident that Hailee's mom helped them a lot. Hence the advancing. Wesley's project in 2016 was more my style. He did it himself, good job. Sophi in 2023 and Natalie in 2024 - I don't remember helping any of them, so that is good. Abi's must have been very low key cause it didn't even make the blog! Ok. WELL, next item of business - Peter's birthday tomorrow. I told him I didn't want to do a party, but then he and his friend Lucy made invitations yesterday, so I guess this is happening....

I texted his friend's mom's to see if kids are available tomorrow after school, and they are, so we'll be doing something from 4-6 tomorrow. Peter's sweet. He and Natalie were trying to make a pinata too. I told them I'll go buy one. I saw them at Winco on my midnight run last week. I'm going to do another one of those right now at 12:20am. Gotta love that Winco is open 24 hours! Abi is taking the car tomorrow, so this is my chance. 

Melodie & Christian ~ est. 2026

We are back home after an amazing and perfect day as we celebrated Melodie and Christian's wedding.

I knew today was gonna be busy, but the historian in me wanted to keep track of events while still trying to be as present as possible. Thus I didn't take too many photos, though I did take a few (that's what you get a wedding photographer for, right?) I did keep my own timeline as things unfolded. 

• 6- alarm - wake up
• Get boxes/ containers to hold the bread
• Ugh, Corey's car is already full, get some of the stuff out so I have room for 30 loaves of bread (three sax's, two barstools, one bag)
• 6:20 on my way to get Lily and bread
• Lily shows me her labor of love (she was awake until 4am!!)
  

• Lily and I bag 30 loaves of bread
• Get all the bowls and put them in the car
• And flour and glass jars of sourdough starer and Dutch oven
• 7:02 on our way to Terry's to drop off the bread
• Drop off bowls to Sybrowskys and Kofoeds first
• Drop of 12 bags of bread to Terry 
• 7:30 back at home
• 1 Apple for breakfast, Abi his helping Mel get ready

• Realize that I need to be Melodie's escort to the temple. She wants to leave at 8. I hurry and get ready in 20 minutes and give instructions to the girls to get everyone else ready and out the door on time, fingers crossed!
• 8:14 on way to temple with Mel
• 8:49 arrive at temple, sealing is at 10.

• I park the car, got a spot that was close, yay. Mel texted that she forgot her makeup, I go back to get her makeup bag. 
• 9:02 - Mel and Christian are ready to go! 
  

• They sign the marriage papers and get witnesses to sign. Christian's dad Eric and I walk with them upstairs. I help Mel get her temple robes on, she and Christian go and I go to the marriage waiting room. Some of Christian's family is there. Others come in an join us - people that I recognized first were my parents, then Beka, Hyrum, Wes, Neil & Amy, Wayne, Corey is here, yay, then Joseph & Eliza, Ethan and Bella, all of our party is here. We head into the sealing room at like 9:55.
• Christian's Grandfather was the sealer. He shared some beautiful remarks before the ordinance, testifying of how this really is a gift from God, and invitation to become like him, for Mel and Christian to become a king and queen and receive eternal life and posterity, according to their faithfulness. Such marvelous promises
• 10:23 back in Bridal room after sealing (Bridal room is the second prettiest room in the temple!! Celestial room is first, then bridal room - gorgeous chandelier, flower carpet, pink couches, we were both thinking how much Katharine would love this room. 
• I text to see if girls have flowers - I need to go get Mel's bouquet from them. 
• Finishing touches... 
  

• 10:40 Mel is ready to go greet everyone! Celebrate ~

Yay, everyone made it here! Katharine is wearing the socks and shoes I would not have chosen, but it's fine 

• 10:49 - still trying to get the boutonnière to stay put

• 10:51 - they come out, hooray!

• Photos on the east side of the temple, it is COLD!!! 33 degrees, video here of cute Mary staying warm
• Photos photos photos ~ video here
• 11:45 I go get Corey’s car to help warm up the little people

• 11:49 in car with Mary while they do wedding party pics
• 12:20 arrive at chapel for lunch, it all looks amazing!!

• 12:30-1:00 Practicing fiddler dance, got to teach it to Joseph and Ethan

• 1:20 Mel and Christian arrive
• 1:35 help K get her food
• 1:40 get my food
• 1:43 eating lunch

• Practicing bottle dance more, this is gonna be really fun!!

• 3:20 leave luncheon
• 4:00 at venue
• 4-6 SET UP!!! We tried not to freak out at Aidan going up to the top rafters with his ladder!!! 

• I didn’t panic, but I was watching the clock. GO TIME. Corey went back home to get the drapes which we had left there, doh. Arrived back in time, everyone was so so helpful, I'm amazed it all came together just in time. Terry and Aubrey were the refreshment miracle workers.

It all looked so beautiful and bountiful!

We did it!

• 6:20 - string lights are on, so we turned the overhead lights off, APPLAUSE!! It looked AMAZING! We’re ready!
• 6:25 - Mel and Christian arrived, their jaws dropped when they saw the room, amazed at what we had done. It was even better than they had envisioned!

• 6:30 to 9:30 - Party party party!

Our miracle workers - the Gilberts and the Jensen

• 8:30 - dancing - the highlight of the reception for me was Joseph, Ethan, Hyrum and Wesley doing the bottle dance from Fiddler on the roof, video here, so funny!

• 9:30 - send off
• 9:41 - Mel called with Christian's phone, she doesn't think she has her phone, I go check upstairs, yep it's here
• 9:44 - on my way to meet them at Macey's and pass off her phone
• 9:53 - back at Venue to help clean up
• 10:53 - finished mopping, all done!!!
• 11:08 - back at home
• Talk, laugh, watch the bottle dance several times via Marco Polo and videos that other people took, so fun
• 12:05 - they are still talking, I'm headed to bed. 

It was an amazing day, and I'll say again that I think everything that we did at the venue is a MIRACLE. It was all Mel and Christian had imagined, I'm amazed we pulled that all off for them. We did it! yayyyy, good night

Mel's Bridals and Bridal Shower

I am back from Park City because we had a bridal shower for Mel tonight, hosted by my friend Kathy again (she's so nice). We got a preview of some of Mel's bridal photos yesterday, so I was glad to print a few of those for people to see!

The photos look SO AMAZING!!

I mean WOW - the frost on the trees in the background, the misty clouds, the dark behind their head for the dark/light contrast, which changes with the show where Chrsitian's dark suit becomes the dark against light background, Mel's dress blending into the snow, and she made that bouquet too!!!

Just amazing amazing, so perfect! Thank you to their photographer who has such an amazing eye, wow.

So yeah, I think the pics are amazing. And there was one "bridal" we saw that was of just the bride. I guess Bridals now are mostly couple pics though.

Oh this one too ~

Love love love!! I didn't get bridals back in 1999 cause I didn't want photos of just me, I wanted Corey too, so we had to wait for the wedding day. I'm glad the groom is part of the bridal photos now, and that they get them taken before. Hopefully in eternity I can go back and get a re-do of some things that I wish were part of my life. Anyway, it was fun to show them at the shower, and the shower was very nice. 

We have such generous friends. They did a group gift of a KitchenAid for Mel, wow! I didn't get a photo of all of the ladies that came, doh, but a few I remember - there was Jill, Katie, Toni, Terry, Elasha, Stephani, Nancy, Rexine, Amy R, Amy S, Kathy, Stacey, and my sister in Law Amy came with her mom too. Terry and Amie got in a conversation talking wedding details. Terry is our food head for the reception and Amie has made some beautiful decorations, so they were coordinating. Tomorrow morning, Terry and I are doing our Costco run for the food. We were going to go by Winco too, but I think I'm going to go there tonight. I'm gonna head out and climb at Ft Union, just for an hour of bouldering, then I'm going to go by Winco tonight, cause I just checked online and they are open until midnight, yay, that works!

So the trip at Park City was great, but I'm grateful to be back now and to be able to focus on the wedding. Ski pants and coats and gear area all in a pile downstairs, we'll organize that later next week I guess. I took as much down today as I could, cause I didn't leave until after the kdis were done skiing, and they are not going to go again tomorrow. Corey's still up there in room 5315 with Owen, Daniel, Peter, and Katharine, and I brought home the girls with me so they could come to the shower. I had wanted to leave as soon as our timeshare presentation thing was done, but the kids were still out skiing, so then I packed up stuff while I waited for them to come back. Owen was up and ready to go this morning. 

The girls were not...

Peter was next to be ready with some help from Abi. 

The rest of them got up and ready pretty quickly. I went with them to get their skis at the valet and then to the townlift. Group pic! 

We kept Katharine with us and I sent them off with a prayer. Abi was instructed to stay with Peter, and Owen and Daniel were allowed to go free if they stayed on Payday and Homerun. Lily wasn't too far behind them.

K with us at the timeshare presentation. 

We got $150 bucks out of it, so that will help with buying some final things for the wedding, yay. Kids all made it back safely from skiing. Abi called me to tell me they had been waiting at the top of Payday for 20 minutes or so and hadn't seen Owen and Daniel. And then O&D knocked on the hotel room door. They made it back alive, yay. Owen's foot was hurting him, so he was done. Then ALSNP headed back too. The town lift takes it's own sweet time though, so I knew that despite my anxious-ness to get on with wedding prep, I wasn't leaving yet. I went outside for a walk to calm my nerves, and called Nicole and Patrice. Abi Sophi and Peter made it back at 2:15

Lily and Natalie close behind them at 2:27

Then we packed up and headed home. K, it's 9:40, I'm gonna go climb now. I don't feel tired at all, my brain is kinda going 100 miles an hour thinking of all we have to do. But I'll take a moment to exercise, so yeah, off to climb for a few, then an quick errand to Winco for chocolate covered pretzels at the bulk food bins, and more errands tomorrow. I hope I'm able to sleep tonight.