Flakes Around the World

 Saturday Leah had her ballet recital.  I'll see if Levin can post video of her actually dancing later, but here are some pictures.  The recital was just her class and was well over an hour long.  They showed us their floor exercises.
 Their barre exercises which took forever because they had to go in groups of 4 and they went up 3 different times!

 Then they did four dances.  Each one had a different costume.  Leah is the 2nd ladybug from the right. She and her friend Kalyn kind of missed their cue here and were standing instead of ending the dance.
 Back "behind the scenes changing costumes.

 This last dance, the duckling dance, the costumes were pretty immodest.  Leah was the last one out and all the costumes showed quite a lot of their stomachs.  Leah had her skirt hiked up all the way so her stomach wasn't showing, but as the dance progressed things got how they were supposed to be and poor Leah spent a lot of the dance trying to pull her shirt down to be long enough instead of dancing.  She does understand modesty!!  I was so proud of her when she walked out with her skirt all hiked up.  The girls had never practiced in their costumes so a lot of them were talking about how silly/funny it was their belly buttons were showing. This was the only wardrobe change I hadn't been in the back helping her change.  Maybe that was a good thing.
Oliver slept through the whole recital which I thought was a blessing because if I ever go in during Leah's practices he wiggles out of my arms to go play with the girls so I have to take him out.  Later when he threw up all over at the restaurant we were eating at we realized he was actually sick which explained why he was so sleepy.  We had to leave a nice tip to our waitress as we ran out of the place.

 He took a taxi to Volzky to he could see his families he baptized.

 The above family have a daughter that just moved to Eagle Mountain that I'm excited to meet this summer.
 Here is Oliver in his sweater and hat.

And not pictured is the sweater she made for me and our baby girl.

 Jaron, the bronco buster
 Cowgirl on "Bronco"
 Jaron at Snowflake, Virginia

 Vets at W.W. II memorial in D.C.
 Girls in front of Tidal Pool, yesterday

Inspirational Thought

"[R]eligious freedom cannot be reduced to freedom of worship or even freedom of private conscience.  Religious freedom means that religious groups as well as religious individuals have a right to exercise their influence in the public square, and that any attempt to reduce that fuller sense of religious freedom, which has been part of history in this country for more than two centuries, to a private reality of worship and individual conscience as long as you don't make anybody else unhappy, is not in our tradition.  It was the tradition of the Soviet Union, where Lenin permitted freedom of worship (it was in the constitution of the Soviet Union) but not freedom of religion. ...  This is not the American tradition, even though it is now argued by some Americans that it should be."

—Cardinal Francis George, O.M.I., Archbishop of Chicago
Catholics and Latter-day Saints: Partners in the Defense of Religious Freedom, Address at Brigham Young University, February 23, 2010

Mom hasn't aged a day

These are pictures of the apartment complex where Grandma & Grandpa have been living.  She wanted me to take these as a memory for them.

In case there is any doubt, this is a blue-eyed girl.  We finally got one.


The second picture is her "photo-face."  She has become a ham at the tender age of 7 months.