Alright. Once again, I have definitely been slacking in the blogging department. However, I promised my dear friend Lauren that I would catch up on my blogging today. So, without further ado, here is my summer 2014 update! And man, it has been a crazy one so far.
I came home and was greeted by a lovely bout of allergies. I kind of forgot what it's like to live with so many green things. There are trees absolutely everywhere. And on top of that I live with two cats and two dogs. The first couple of days that I was home, I was basically rendered useless due to the allergies. But I'm better now and hopped up on tons of allergy meds! Anyways. I started off my summer squeezing in some more volunteer hours that I need for applying to the College of Education. I spent an entire week with the cutest, brightest, funniest 2nd grade class ever. I love them so much and I've only spent two weeks with them! I can't imagine what it'll be like when I have my own classroom. I surprised the kids the week after I was done volunteering and joined them on their last field trip of the year. We went to the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley and it was so cool! They learned about crayfish and then we went crayfishing! (They put them all back in the pond afterwards, no worries)
I was surprised at how brave they all were!
Once second grade wrapped up, I headed off to work at the good old law firm. Three days a week you can find me scanning papers at the Law Offices of Jeffrey B. Kahn. It's awesome.
We got Dewey an outside bed because he LOVES sleeping in the flower garden. Unfortunately, he still loves sleeping in the dirt surrounded by the flowers. The bed isn't good enough for him, but maybe one day he'll come around.
Jackson (Dallin's little brother) never had a 9th birthday party, and his 10th birthday is coming up in August. He wanted a Harry Potter themed party so they had a 9 3/4 party in June to celebrate! It was awesome, and I stepped in as Professor Trelawney. I led the kids in tea leaf reading. Who knows how into it they really were, but I sure enjoyed it!
I even helped Dallin style his wig (which used to be a Cleopatra wig) into Snape's hair. I gave him an awesome haircut.
The gaggle of boys was awesome. So many boys. Growing up in a house with just me and my sister, we never really had this craziness. We had different kinds of crazy haha.
The next day was Dallin's 18th birthday party!!!! He had a costume required pool party, so naturally he and his BFF MJ dressed up as Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy. We also braided the Snape wig for an added touch.
Everyone at the pool after swimming! This isn't really everyone, some people left early.
Katniss and Mermaid Man!!! As you can tell, our footwear was awesome. Didn't quite match with our costumes.
Adding to all of the excitement, we then went to Dallin's seminary graduation. It was so cool because I never got to be in seminary so I lived vicariously through all the kiddos!
Dallin and his seminary teacher, Sister J. She is the sweetest!
The next week was full of Powder Puff and Pops concert. Dallin was a Powder Puff cheerleader and I think everyone who was there would agree that his halftime show was the highlight of the game. On the way there, I took a selfie with Elder Slavens Bear (who stands in as Chancellor at important family events).
Directly after Powder Puff was the first night of Pops concert. This was an extra special Pops concert, because Mottaz is officially retiring from Cal High. She changed my life in so many ways, Cal High will never be the same. I can't even imagine getting through high school without having choir. It was hands down the best part of my four years of high school, and I owe it all to Mottaz. We all wish you the best of luck in Chicago!!!!
Slavens + Steph + Mottaz
The next night of Pops was the last night of Pops ever! The new teacher might do Pops again, but it was Mottaz' last so we celebrated it like it was the last one ever. We organized an alumni song (Thank You For The Music by ABBA, a classic) and there were way more people than I ever expected! I was super worried there would only be like two alumni going up there to sing, but it was amazing.
Look at them all!
And the classic post-concert pictures. There were extra ones this year due to it being the last.
I snuck myself into all of the high schoolers photos.
Me and my boo thang Mottaz.
The picture taking took so long I got a little antsy and had to take matters into my own hands.
After the concert we went to the Oberhauser-Lim's house. It was a staple for choir parties when I was in high school and they are continuing the tradition now. I was the only girl who even got in the pool or the hot tub! At one point we realized that I was the only girl amidst a ton of boys, so I had to take a picture, as I realized that my lifelong dream had come true.
Saturday marked something that is a true tradition to the Slavens. The Amazing Race party! It's a graduation party that we had when Chance and I graduated, so this time around I helped Kristi out a little bit. I wasn't even in any photos because I was running around helping with different stations all day. But it was so awesome! The kids had a ton of fun and I am still so surprised that Kristi was able to pull it off.
One of the stations that I led was a hackie sack/missionary match up combo.
They had to hit the hackie sack 6 times, with each team member hitting it at least once.
The missionary match up proved to be a little harder than we thought, but the teams all eventually got it perfectly!
Then on Monday night, we had the Choir banquet. We've never had one before, but they pulled out all of the stops for Mottaz' last year! It was awesome, and I revived my role as medal-passer-outer for the third year in a row.
Some other stuff happened, but I don't remember everything. On Thursday I went back and visited the second grade classroom so that I could say goodbye to them and celebrate on their last day of school. We had an ice cream and board games party and it totally rocked!
Friday was Dallin and Kelly and all the seniors' graduation! It was so weird to go back to Cal High and watch the graduation. But it was also really cool because when I graduated, I was distracted and didn't get the chance to soak it all up.
Me and Kelly after they graduated! I'm not actually this short, she was wearing wedges.
Me and Dallin! We all wore Dallin-inspired shirts to celebrate him. My shirt had photos of all of the Slavens boys' heads on Gladiators bodies. He's not wearing wedges, I really am that short.
Dallin had to take pictures with like hundreds of people, not really but he is definitely a super popular guy. It was hard to sit there forever so Kristi and I took our own pictures while we waited! Her shirt of choice was I <3 Dallin.
Oh and since Dallin didn't want to put BYU on his cap, he went a slightly different route. And it totally paid off because he had the best cap ever. Not only did it make it way easier for us to spot him during the ceremony, but it was a throwback picture of him with tons of babies crawling all over it. Shoutout to Kelly for giving him the babies for his birthday.
Graduation selfie while the grad was leaving for Grad Night.
On Tuesday Dallin and I went on a geocaching date. It rocked, and before we went out we had dinner with the Elders. Always a treat!
Last Saturday, my mom and I did something pretty crazy. We are a part of the East Bay dachshund meetup group, and they were planning on going to the wiener races at the horse track. My mom and I decided that we would sign up Dewey just to see how he did.
It was so cool! I hadn't been to a race track since I was little, so I didn't even remember what they were like. It was so big and I felt like I was super classy.
Watching the horses before Dewey's heat was up for racing.
Dewey was way more into the social aspect of the whole event than in prepping for his race.
We were lucky number 8 with a very, very manly color.
Looking very hopeful before the race began!
The race went like this: I held Dewey on one end, my mom waited at the other end with a squeaky toy in hand. She called his name and squeaked the toy to get his attention, and went the ref flagged us to start, I let go of Dewey. And.....he sat there. There were a few other weenies in his heat that didn't run and they ended up socializing. I ended up walking across the finish line and he followed me, so he didn't come in totally last which was good! But we were laughing it up the entire time.
On Sunday after church, my mom and I went to TJ Maxx. It proved to be a super eventful experience at the store. We were in there for around an hour, and we did a lot of good shopping. As we were making our way to the checkout, we stopped in the housewares section. I picked up a box of glasses to look at since they looked really nice, and I wanted to show them to my mom. When I picked up the box, the bottom gave out and they all fell on the ground and shattered. They were made of really thick glass, so when they bounced back up and hit my ankle, it left quite a gash. We went to the bathroom to clean me up and discovered just how bad it truly was.
There was seriously blood everywhere!!! I had to throw my shoes away.
The weirdest part hadn't even happened yet. We left the bathroom, decided I couldn't walk through the store dripping blood on the ground, and asked a lady for a bandaid. She brought back the store's first aid kit and started trying to work on my wound. Of course, my mom was there so she was handling it, but this lady stepped in and started pushing and pulling at the edges of the wound with her bare hands. I've taken enough first aid classes to know that you aren't supposed to touch someone else's blood with your bare hands, and that you shouldn't pull the wound apart. It was crazy. As we were leaving the store, we were stopped by the manager who had to input some information for the accident report. While we waited for him to come back with the form, an elderly Greek man started talking to my mom and I. He was super creepy and we just wanted to get the heck out of dodge. It was crazy, but the insurance company said they would send me a TJ Maxx, so I guess it wasn't all bad!!!
This week has been busy with Dallin packing up for college, they left this morning to drive up to Utah for BYU's summer session. I've also been prepping for Camp Summit by doing a lot of artwork and creating a blog for the camp. It's been fun and I am so so so excited for camp to start on Sunday! Hopefully I can keep up with my personal blog more often as the summer goes on....
