The Pollan Post: March 2012

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Catrter's Solo Ensemble Performance

Carter had the chance to learn and perform a song for his band class. The song is called Fandango. They had a judge there who critiqued the students and gave them useful pointers on how to make their song better. Carter did very well and was quite proud of himself. The judge told him to go and join the symphony. :-) But then he told him the symphony doesn't pay very well. Nice. He enjoys the trumpet more than he did the cello so hopefully he will be sticking with it for a few years. During family home evening this week he told us that one of his talents is playing the trumpet. I would agree he is very musically inclined. Good job Carter!!!

Byron's Birthday

Happy birthday Byron!!!

Love Byron's exuberance on opening all of the gifts the kids gave him. They each felt like they had picked out the perfect gift!!! Which they did.

March is the month of birthdays for us...we have so many all in a row. Byron's birthday was fun to celebrate! The kiddos and I hit the stores to find the perfect presents for their Dad. They did well. Tyler found him a Bear Grills knife. They love watching Bear Grills together and Ty just knew his Dad needed a new knife. He was right Byron loved it. Carter got him fixed up with new BBQ tools and a cool little riffle shaped lighter. Byron is a serious BBQ smoker of all things meaty and yummy. Can't wait for the weather to warm up so we can eat his yummy smoked ribs. Ali got him a twenty pack of diet Cokes and candy. Of course she was asking him to share his candy before he had even gotten it unwrapped but her heart was in the right place. For my gift I ordered him some awesome goggles for the scooter but they didn't make it in time. Actually they just got here today, he hasn't seen them yet so with any luck he won't read this while at work today, highly unlikely. I also baked him a cake in the shape, well sort of in the shape of a back country skiers back pack. He wanted a better setup to hang his skies from while he is hiking. He found one this weekend at a Black Diamond parking lot exchange event. His price tag was much kinder than my couch price tag. So he was a happy guy.
We are so lucky to have Byron in our lives! He is the best Dad a kid could ever hope for. He is an amazing husband and spoils us all. He works so hard and never complains!! I complain about how hard he works but he never does. He is amazing and I am happy to say I love him more today than ever before. My respect and admiration for him just keeps growing. We joke about how when we married I owned everything and he had nothing. That was true, his credit card was even rejected on our honeymoon and I had to pay for the hotel. It is a fun memory that we like to laugh about. In all seriousness though, I did well. I did very well! I can't possibly conceive of any way in which I could have done better. I feel loved and content. I look forward to hearing the garage door opening every night!! If three kids don't pounce on him with hugs, which they generally do, he goes around and hunts them down. Nothing could be nicer. Happy birthday honey!!! I love you.

House painting!!!

So I have wanted to paint our house for the longest time. This is actually how Byron weaseled his way into his back country skiing equipment. He traded me the house being painted for him getting his back country ski gear. I knew he was going to get the gear anyway so I took him up on the deal. Yeah! We get to paint the house. Well, have the house painted anyway. The guy on the ladder is not Byron it is Trent. He was nice enough to come risk his life to paint our high walls. While we had him we tacked on the whole rest of the main floor, the master and the master bath, oh and the stairs leading to the basement. I love it! It took me a day to decide if I did or not but I do I love it. It has been a disaster for a little over a week, we ate dinner on the floor in the kitchen twice because we had no leftover counter space, the kids loved that. It is done now and so worth the pain it was to get there. The bottom picture is a finished shot. I will try to get photos of the other rooms but not today. They are messy and I am trying to catch up on the blogging so they will stay messy. We did a little dark accent in the bay windows we have three of them and they look really great. The walls are such a warm color now everything in the house looks richer and warmer. We should have done this ages ago which is why I am calling a plumber to come and add a sink in my laundry room this week, why are we waiting to make our house what we need when we have no plans to ever move again? Byron is just hoping spring will set in so I will forget the house and my attentions will be drawn to the yard. He's lucky, by Friday it will be 70 and I will be outside again. Can't wait!

Back Country Skiing Begins

SO...this is one of those things that Byron has really wanted to do for a long time. I have really not liked the idea for a long time, still don't, but I don't tell my husband what he can and can't do. He knows I don't like the idea of it but he is doing it anyway. I'm not mad, he works so hard for us he deserves to have some fun. I just wish guys could have fun doing safer things like painting or knitting sweaters.

This was a Saturday hike Byron took with Jessie. It is just on the other side of our mountain. He goes on this hike a lot in the summer with the dogs. He said he hiked up the left and skied down the right.

This is a photo taken by Byron's friend Owen who has taught him everything he knows about back country skiing so far. They have cut into the snow to read it and see if an avalanche is likely to happen or not based on the snow layers. He took him out close to our house on a really long hike. Byron loved it but lost the feeling in his foot because his boots weren't fit right. He is having a good time learning the ins and outs of this new adventure sport. I am praying hard he comes home safe. The life insurance is current. Thank goodness spring is nearly here.

So Byron has decided he needs to get in better shape because skiing uphill is way harder than skiing downhill. We both had a good laugh at this "realization." I think he will keep at it though he seems to be really enjoying it. The man with many hobbies has yet again started another one!

Tyler gets his Wolf!

Byron's new back country skis and boots. His first time out in these fancy boots they cut the circulation in his foot off and did some minor nerve damage. It has been two weeks and he still doesn't have full feeling on the side of one of his feet. He took them in for a fitting and is confident they will be good boots now. We all like to tease him about his color combo going on there. Orange, yellow and lime green....nice!

Byron is painting his Wolf paw on his forehead!

Tyler has been working hard to earn his Wolf award in scouting. He got one gold arrow point and six silver arrow points with his Wolf. He loves scouting!! I cleaned out our junk drawer and found seven pocket knives of Tyler's in there. He is big into widdling and building cool stuff, mostly weapons. I am just grateful he has stopped talking about moving to the mountains to become a mountain man this spring.

Birthdays and Avalanche Control

Happy Birthday to over half the family in March! We had a big birthday bash for the March birthday's at my Mom's house. There are so many of them it is easier to have one big party. The cousins always have a great time getting together and being silly.

Byron got all the stuff to start back country skiing lately and we decided to head up the canyon and try out his beacon finding skills. Hopefully he will never need finely tuned beacon finding skills but he would be much better at it now than he was when we left for this activity. Up at Solitude they have a beacon course set up so you can go with your equipment and find "victims" buried around their course. So the idea is you start the box there in the picture and it turns on a beacon out in the snow somewhere and you use your tracker to locate and "dig out" the victim. You don't actually dig out the victim though. We had a great time hiking through the woods and tracking down avalanche victims. We also did a bit of Geo-caching while we were up the canyon. Fun day! The photo on top is the Beacon box, the electrical pole photo is the geo-cache find.

My Birthday and science fair

My family took such great care of me this year. They spoiled me to pieces. Carter, Ty and Ali brought me breakfast in bed. Carter made the other kids wait until 7 to wake me up for it. Thanks Carter! I ate a delicious bagel with cream cheese, granola and three coconut cookies. I had lunch with my sisters at Chipotle, love that place. Then for dinner we ate at the pizza Factory. Everyone enjoyed those delicious breadsticks. We reminisced about birthdays past where we took the kids out and enjoyed a disaster of a meal, (Cheesecake Factory) terrible birthday dinner about six years ago....nice the kids are bigger now. For dessert Byron actually baked a cake. Get off the ground I know you all just fell off your computer chairs after reading that. It impressed me but what is more is that it was in the shape of a couch!!! There is all of us (cardboard cutouts courtesy of Carter-even the dogs were included) sitting on our new couch I get to go pick out for my birthday present. If Byron had any idea how much a new couch was going to put him out he may have just gotten me a pair of diamond earrings or something cheap. :-) After much shopping, I am sure I saw every leather sectional in the entire great salt lake valley we have chosen a beautiful brown one that will be delivered in four more weeks, so right near our Anniversary. We are going to let it count for both occasions since we went a little overboard. It actually looks a lot like the cake only doesn't taste as good.

The kids were so sweet they all picked out something they thought I would like though Ali did tell me that Byron was a little "difficult" while shopping because he kept redirecting her to less Ali like things and more Mom-like items. They ended up on a pair of cute starfish earrings that I really love. Carter did a movie night package with a muppets movie, Junior mints, my favorite candy and popcorn flavor for us to try. Tyler got me some seed packs and a seed starter kit. Totally hit the nail on the head there as I am dying for spring to set in for good here. So this is what it's like to have big kids who actually get you awesome stuff. I like it!!! I think I could get used to the idea.

Who knew the sixth grade science fair was going to be so much work? We tried really hard to get a potato to light a LED light bulb but alas we couldn't make it work. I do believe it is possible we saw the guys on the internet make it work. We could get lots of volts but not enough amps. Pesky little amps. Carter had a blast working on this though so I consider it a huge and enormous success. Plus we used up the last of our potato supply so that was a good win...we won't have old potatoes sprouting in the box this spring.

Cinderella Ballet Performance

I had no idea when Ali joined her ballet troupe, Creative Arts Academy in Bountiful, UT that they would be performing an entire ballet for their dance recital. Her dance class were the mice and they were Sooooooo-o cute. They danced around with their little hands under their chins cupped in little mice shaped paws. The objective of their dance was to change Cinderella from her rag dress into a cute mice made dress. Darling! We enjoyed the whole show. I was sitting there watching all these girls perform and started thinking about what a great thing dance is for young ladies. An old neighbor of ours Jana Monson started the studio seven or eight years ago and they pride themselves in high quality dance education and clean dancing, no suggestive slut dancing. I had already pulled Ali out of two dance groups because they were teaching my five year old but wiggles and chest bumps. Seriously, she is five!!! Not that I would want her learning that at 16 either but no not happening. I was so grateful to find Jana's studio to actually live up to their word and keep it clean and keep it modest. Jana will never read this blog but I am so grateful to her and her teachers who are giving hundreds of girls the opportunity to dance and perform. It will really make a difference in many of their lives!

We went out to Nielsen's to celebrate her amazing performance. She was so glad her Papa could be there and cheer her on. Just look at her proud little face there. She was most pleased with the chance to be on stage and perform and bow and she said she wasn't even nervous. The ballet was really amazing.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Aquarium and String Parties galore

We had a great time with the cousins and Nana Pollan at the aquarium in Salt Lake. We learned they are going to be opening a brand new and three times larger aquarium in the winter. So excited to see the new one. They have added cool exhibits like penguins and otters lately. We are all big fans of things that swim and especially ocean life so we are waiting on pins and needles for the grand opening.

It was so fun to have Nana in town for a visit. We were all sad to see her go. She threw one last big surprise string party for the kids before she jumped on her plane to head to Dallas. I just love the kids when they are all dressed in their uniforms, looking sharp.

The kids made a string party for Byron and I as a surprise for our arrival home from the airport. I think they had a blast being the creators of the party. They also made us a darling welcome home sign. We felt very loved.