Quail Orchard Park

 Over the past couple of years, as Josie and I have driven down Canyon Road on our way to and from Orem Public Library, we have dealt with construction traffic and watched housing developments spring up where orchards once were. One welcome development recently--this summer--was watching the creation of a new park, with the interesting and puzzling name of Quail Orchard Park. (The orchard was growing quail--quail trees? There were a lot of quail who lived in the orchard, who no longer can because people shooed them out to make a park?) 

When Nancy and family were in Utah, the park was not close to completion, and once it was, I could see that it was a spectacular park that the kids would have really liked. So many play areas! Such a variety of cool things to do! And that was just looking at it while driving by!

When Michelle and I were texting prior to their family's visit to Utah, I found a little video of the park and sent it to Michelle, and her kids, particularly Rachael, were pretty excited to go there. That outing was planned for today, so we planned to meet at the park at 3 pm. I went a little bit early to do my twenty minute walk at the park. (I took the day off work to take Josie to the airport--the timing was awkward; I worked from home in the morning, including a Zoom call with a student.)

I drove on Canyon Road, just like I was taking Josie to work, and drove past much of the park, finally parking my car facing east near the last covered picnic area--there are three or four of those in the park. And I set off walking east, being able to see from this vantage point that there was a walking path (or running, as some people were doing) around the entire park. And I was surprised to find that the street on the east side of the park was Timpview Drive, which is the street that our little loopy street opens onto!! I had no clue the park covered all that area.

Here is a picture of one of the covered picnic areas:

This is the one that is attached to the public restrooms (which are closed for the season, since it is winter. Though a lovely 45 F day today!) I thought it was interesting because this is how all the roofs are constructed on each of the picnic areas--unattached like you can see in the picture. But overlapping the open edge, so theoretically, the rain would be kept off, but there would be a breeze.

There are three large areas of playground equipment, with a nice variety of things to climb on and do, though I honestly do not remember seeing any swings. Here is one of them:

People who are familiar with this area know that scattered throughout neighborhoods there are green spaces that are shaped like bowls where children can run and play, but if there is a flood, these bowl things are places where excess water can run, a low spot to collect water so that it can do less damage to homes. Well, in this park they created that kind of space (and when  you are standing and looking towards the mountains, you can see that the park is directly in front of a crevice where it looks like water would potentially flow from if there was serious spring melting taking place) only they used the slope of it on the higher side to build a variety of slides coming off the slope. Very cool. No need for ladders to climb--children can just walk right up to the slides and go down them. There are also climbing apparatuses in that area of various kinds. Here are two views of this play area:

Scattered in various places, there are musical toys to play with. This xylophone has very resonant sound, and like a gangsa, you have to dampen after playing if you don't want the sound to bleed.

There are bongo drums in the corner of one of the play areas.

I had taken all of these pictures of things, and no people! Because Michelle and her family did arrive, and the kids were very busy playing!! Also Michelle's friend Elizabeth, who has recently moved from Fargo to Spanish Fork, brought her three boys and the kids were having a blast! Not so much the older two, who both needed the restrooms (which were locked) and finally consented to coming to my house to use the facilities, after which playing was easier. Matthew, who does cross-country, went for a run. I told Michelle and Alice to climb onto a play structure so I could take a picture with people in it!! Michelle looked at me in surprise and said, "Me?" (I would so have been climbing around on these things if I was the mom!! Weird to do it when I am not the grandma of the children that were there!)

She was glad she did, because there were these awesome bells to play, again with really resonant sound. Like, they sounded real, not tinny or cheap. Here are Michelle and Alice experimenting with the sound.

My goodness! Alice's profile looks very like Rachel's (Heiss) profile, I think. On this same play structure, if I am not mistaken, there is a hydraulic elevator that carries children to the top, and then goes back down again. It works so slick!! 

Now for some action shots of Michelle's other children. Here is Benny:

And here is Leon, with Rachael visible in the background, too. Leon had been very cold, and finally consented to go to their vehicle and get his coat. But I notice that he did not decide that shoes were necessary! 

Rachael was very busy noticing things that were lost and setting things right. She found a lost cell phone, and went to all the adults at the park (there were many) until she found the owner. She found a lost child, and stayed with him until other moms helped her to figure out that the child's mother was playing on the pickle ball courts. (What even is pickle ball? I know it is all the rage in these parts, but I am clueless. Those just look like tennis courts to me!--I have no pictures of them, but there are four of them.)

Here are several of the children climbing around together. Rachael is set to go down the slide; Alice is directly behind her, and Leon and one of Elizabeth's sons are behind her.

And Matthew is such a good sport! He was feeling too grown up for the park, preferring to run, but climbed on the play equipment gamely so that I could take an action shot of him! He is certainly growing into a very handsome young man.

The children had so much fun at this park! The kids were getting hungry. I had brought fun-size Wunder bars to share, but those did not amount to much. Michelle was planning to make spaghetti at their AirBnB, but Leon said, "Go and make the spaghetti and bring it here to eat!" Even though it was kind of chilly, he did not want to leave! This space with so many things to play on made these children very easy to handle--go play! And they did!

Michelle and I decided to take some selfies. 

This one is pretty good of both of us, I think. Except--look at my neck skin! I forgot to do the tongue trick that Rosie and Josie taught me. I asked for a do-over.

Better neck! The tongue trick really works!

And then I bid them adieu, with a few hugs for Michelle--the children were too busy having fun to interrupt their play to hug an old great-aunt they hardly know! And then I left, stopping at Edgemont Pharmacy to get my Covid booster on my way home. (I like them because no appointment necessary! CVS makes you go online to make an appointment. I do not like to go online to make appointments!) 

It was fun to see Michelle and her children again, and to be able to experience the new park, which is so big and beautiful and filled with fun things to do! (There are dry creek beds around too--I think there may be some water features during the summer season.) I will go back again--I need to. Michelle, the person who majored in landscape design, or at least that was part of her studies, wants to know what they are going to do about the gravel on the slopes. Clearly, this design choice is not working now that children are actually playing there. She asked me to report back about what they will do. They use also rubber that is shredded to look like wood chips, but is actually rubber and very springy to walk on. But not on some of the slopes. So I will be back to check out the changes in the future!

Family Night

 Hey, everybody, it's Family Night!

We had a fun family night last night. Michelle and her five children are in town from Fargo, North Dakota. (Their professor dad is at an academic conference.) I wanted to get together with her while Josie was still here--she leaves to visit Patrick in Austria today. So I contacted Kelli and my brother Bruce, and so we were able to spend a fun evening together.

I was super grateful for how much help Kelli and Josie were, because the three youngest children are quite an exuberant handful!! They were so nice to help with games, and allowing the children to play the pump organ, and calming them down sometimes. 

We had pizza--which Josie ordered for me because doing so is extremely stressful for me (thank you!)--and fruits and vegetables. I got small water bottles so I didn't have to have a pitcher or anything. It worked well, and people had a chance to visit.

Here are some pictures:

Clockwise starting with Kelli, we have Josie, Alice, Rachael, Matthew, Leon and Benny.

Meanwhile, in the kitchen, Bruce and Michelle were having a good chin wag. So I thought I should memorialize that moment. It has been many years since they have had the chance to chat.

Then, Matthew B. arrived. Matthew R. was playing the organ, and I called out "Hi, Matthew!" which startled Matthew R. momentarily, and then I introduced the Matthews to each other.  I thought it would be fun to get a picture of two Matthews with their two Mothers.

Because we were doing this, of course the other children noticed, so they scurried into the kitchen so they could be a part of a photo opportunity.

But not Benny--maybe this was when he took advantage of a moment to sneak off in search of the nerf guns (which Kelli had brought in case it was nice enough to play outside, but then we secreted them away in another room) which I found evidence of later at night, when all had gone home and I found a nerf gun in my house where no nerf gun had gone before!

Later, Allen took a picture of the group except for my husband and himself. (Bruce was hiding out because it was a tad loud and action-filled in the house! I was proud of him that he didn't just leave! And when he did leave for work, he did take a moment to say farewell to people. I missed a photo opportunity.)

It was a fun Family Night!

Good days.

 I had a couple of good days this weekend.

On Saturday, I went to a dance concert in the afternoon that was pretty unique. It was all contemporary dance, but they were doing King Lear. See Better Lear, to be exact. There was a play, too, in which a Shakespeare Reading Club was reading "King Lear"--they pretended that the audience members were new members of the reading group, so we all were given books, and they would sometimes tell us page and speech citation, and also pass around Starburst from time to time. It was kind of cool and immersive. They were discussing the question "who is deserving of redemption." (Answer: EVERYONE.) One of the players was deaf, or that was the premise (no actually, he is IRL a deaf actor), so the whole show had ASL translators, sometimes as a part of the play, sometimes on the side. Like, if the dancers danced to a song with lyrics, the translator was translating that. And the president of the club was an older man who could also juggle! And they used juggling to explain the relationship of Lear with his daughters and Gloucester with his sons. I didn't always understand how the dances done related to the storyline (although sometimes I did) but all in all, it was pretty cool.

It had been a BYU football day, so I drove over and parked in the School of Music parking lot, and walked to the RB (15 minutes) and then walked around down there for 5 more minutes before going in (to my front row, center, seat) and then just a 15 minute walk back to the car.

Last night, my nephew Michael texted me to see if I wanted to watch their stake conference today--well, he said specifically "Josie or anyone"--but I decided that I would do that. He also sent their Saturday session link (it was by then over), which I watched this morning at 8, and then went straight into their Sunday session.

I guess it is because I usually go to church alone that it was so nice to recognize Craig's head behind the organ, and Jocelyn sang in a trio. 

And I knew some of the speakers, like all my life, so there is just that feeling of connection. It was just a very good meeting, very uplifting. And I needed that.

And then straight on to this morning's meeting, where I also caught a glimpse of Michael (with whom I was texting during the whole thing!) because after the children sang, they did a slide show of all the children in the stake--individually or in small groups--accompanied by beautiful piano music played by Corbyn Pilling, our cousin Malissa Navratil's husband. And I just felt that feeling of connection again. It was very beautiful. (They had the children go sit in the audience so they could watch the slide show, too.)

I could not stop the film for that brief millisecond when you could see Michael's face, but here on the far left is the back of Michael's head, and on the far right is the top half of Craig's face:

This was just as Michael was handling the tech to run the slide show, and all the people are turned to look above and behind their heads at the screen.

So. I really enjoyed the feeling of being at home, surrounded by my people for a few hours today.

I had had a disheartening communication with one daughter, and felt in need of a pick-me-up--but then the tables got turned and prayers got answered, and the same daughter sent me a positive communication in the morning, and she had actually listened, thought, and acted upon my words. Which was both surprising and made me very hopeful. Because, you know, when I was this daughter's age, my mother was about halfway into her process of dying. I know that all my kids need to learn to be resilient and to stand on their own two feet, but just thinking about her age now and my age then--that brings it home. But today, I feel hopeful.

UDEO Conference 2023

 Today was Remembrance Day, and I didn't even wear a poppy or celebrate the day at all. I forgot to be silent for two minutes at 11 AM because I was at a conference.

It was the Utah Dance Educators Organization conference, and it was the best conference I have gone to in person in a long time! Every session was interesting and refreshing.

The conference was held at Westminster University--which until recently was Westminster College--in Salt Lake City. I have been there for a UDEO conference once before, but this year the program was much more enriching for someone like me, who is not a dance educator, but instead a librarian who partners with dance educators. 

I had to leave home at 8 AM, which I did, and drove and parked more easily this year than last, since I sort of knew my way, though I found a better parking lot. Well, except that last year on this day it was snowing, and I found covered parking, so that was better then. But the uncovered lot was perfect for the sunny day it was today.

The opening session, by Ashley Anderson, was on the conference theme: Shaping the Future of Dance. She talked about some of her own experiences, and then she had us do this exercise around "Imaginary Dance." This exercise came about because once upon a time, she had a group of dancers on the stage of a dark auditorium when the lights went out, and they had no light and no sound, so while people were waiting and wondering what to do, she told the audience, "I know the dance! I will describe it to you and you can imagine it." That kept people engaged until the power came on and then the dance continued, but it was of course different from how the audience had imagined it. Then, in another experience, when the lights went out, the backstage crew found flashlights. They, dressed in black as backstage crews do, followed the dancers around shining light on them. So, again, there was the dance they had hoped to do but couldn't, the dance they actually did, and the bonus dance created by the movement of the backstage crew with their flashlights. So, she started deliberately using this idea with classes.

For us, she had us close our eyes, and she told us a dance in two minutes. Then she asked us to get in pairs, and one person was to tell an imaginary dance in two minutes. Then the partner was asked to retell the dance in only one minutre. Then she asked for volunteers to come up--five people. We, the audience, were asked to furnish the venue of the dance. Someone chose an empty swimming pool with zero level entry. Each person had one minute to add to the imaginary dance. We started with dancers entering the pool at zero level and ended up with dancers lying at the bottom of the pool which was gradually filling with water. Then she switched up the order of the people on stage, and the audience gave another venue--a parking garage empty of cars at night--and another imaginary dance was created.

When the people sat back down, she asked us to talk in our same pairs about what would be the perfect dance class, and we both had to respond. And our last activity was to talk about our current jobs and what would be the one thing that would make them the best for our students. It was very good--people were very engaged, and even I put my hand up and said something!!

The second session were break-out sessions. I chose to attend the one by Roxanne Gray about "Mexican Dance Histories." So interesting! Roxanne is a biracial, bicultural dancer, but she doesn't speak Spanish and was raised to "blend in." She danced Folklorico style as a young girl, but wasn't that interested in the dances of her mother's people until she took a dance history class and chose this as a research topic--which she is now turning into her master's thesis at the U. (of U.) So interesting! She had a bibliography and all the nerdy stuff that librarians love!

The third sessions, I chose to attend "Miracles, Magic, and Method: Supporting Well-being in the studio." This was given by two women representing Arts for Life in Utah. We had to get into groups of two in this one as well, first talking about a really important dance memory. I talked about Alberta Family Dances, and the Butterfly Dance in particular. Then we had to get a new partner and dance the memory instead of tell about it. My partner for this one was a guy (one of only four males at the conference) from UVU, and his story through dance was so good! Ballroom - stop - ballet - stop - contemporary - stop. That had been his path to dance. He started dancing ballroom in junior high to please some neighbor girls, and then stopped. As he tried new dance forms, he kept stopping, until he realized, no really, I love to dance and that is what I want to do. The last partnership, we had to dance and explain at the same time. 

Then it was time for lunch, and I chose to eat in my car because I didn't "know" anybody, even though I had met quite a few. I was glad I made that choice because my veggie wrap was full of impossible to bite pieces that it would have been embarrassing to eat in front of someone!!

So, then I went on my walk, which was about a half hour instead of my usual 20 minutes. Because Westminster's campus, though it is in the middle of the city, is very beautiful and feels very wild, in a cultured way. (Last year, I walked while there but it was snowy, so I didn't venture into the more wild paths, which I could because of the sunny weather today.

Last year I only walked across this long covered bridge, but this year, I went down to the path that I had only seen from above. I love the way those trees, growing with roots down by the creek bed, curve above the road like that. Imagine how pretty this would be earlier in the year, with green leaves!

A close-up view:

Those branches that are growing straight up look to me like watersprouts that were allowed to grow until they are so big that they just look interesting. On a fruit tree in a garden, those would have been nipped in the bud.

 Emigration Creek runs right through the campus--well, across the bridge is student housing, with this lovely trail in the coulee (which in Utah they do not use that word. But that is what it is!) for some natural respite from busy city life.

This little fellow crossed my path, then ran to this tree and stayed there looking at me!

Nice little amphitheater right beside the creek. It would be such a beautiful summer setting for a performance! 

The stairs I walked down to get to the amphitheater, from the bottom looking up:

Some signs explaining what we see on the trail follow:

The trail led back to civilization, and I was at the end of my walk and it was time to return to the conference, hoping the afternoon would be as interesting and engaging as the morning had been. 

By the way, Westminster dates from 1875, and this building is so very lovely.

We first met together as the entire group for the awards ceremony, which this year honored Chris Roberts, an elementary school teacher from Provo and Nebo School Districts. (I swear that one of the pictures looked just like the school Nancy's children attended--it was an interior picture and it looked just like their gym, I thought.) Chris had been an ordinary elementary school teacher when his two daughters took a dance class that was so enriching that Chris felt like all kids needed it. He began to learn to be a dance teacher, and after his first ordinary 12 years, has spent an additional 30 years teaching dance to children. Here is information about him.

My next session was with Kim Luke who spoke on "Building a future: Possibilities for private studios." Everything Kim taught was interesting, but I found things about her personally quite fascinating. She was such an engaging speaker, and even though she was talking about herself, she was never grandiose or stuck up. Just really nice. When she was 14, she had an opportunity (with a scholarship) to go to study in New York (from her home in Kansas) for a month. While she was there, a movie producer visited the class, and Kim was offered the role of the lead in "Flash Dance." Except--they found out she was only 14, and the role was just edgy enough that they were required to have a person who was 18. But they really liked her, and wanted to offer her a supporting role that was less edgy, but it required figure skating. Knowing now that she was a minor, they called her mother, and her mother said NO!!!! Because Kim didn't know how to skate. (Kim would have said yes and then got herself some skates!) When she grew up a bit more, she went off to Oklahoma City University, where her roommate and still good friend was Kristen Chenoweth. 

Last session was Chanel Smith Sorensen teaching "Movement is the Key to Learning" which was all about the brain and the various parts and how movement is so important to brain development. We had to get up and do some moving in this class. Not dancing, but moving around in various ways. Super interesting!

So that was my day! It was a very good, relaxing day of learning. I was glad I went.

PS!!! I learned what "break a leg" means! It is when you extend your arms and take a bow--you bend one leg, ergo "break" it.

More photos from Dia de los muertos 2023

 Photos courtesy of Teresa Gomez

So much participation from the campus community. It was beautiful!