Birthday Mission

Wow...has it really been almost a year since I last posted? Sad...very sad.  Well, time to fix that.

First, you have to understand one of the most epic moments of my childhood. When I was in the sixth grade, we went on a field trip to an Elementary School with a space center in it.  They gave us Star Trek vests, put us into "space ships" and sent us on missions.  I was Captain of the star-ship Odyssey and my mission involved blowing up asteroids, getting attacked by space creatures, and negotiating with other alien species. It was terrifying, and awesome, and fantastical.

Next, as you may or may not know, I was in BYU's production of The Winter's Tale earlier this year.  I was mentioning this childhood memory of mine when one of my cast members told me that this place still exists...and that they do missions for adults!  I was like, yes, this is happening.

So...my birthday was coming up and
I decided to find this space center and make a booking. Google is so accommodating.  I found it instantly:  The Christa McAuliffe Space Center. This was soooooo happening.

The day of the mission came.  Once again, I was the Captain of the Odyssey.  And this was my noble crew:

1st officer: Soren Barker
Operations: Brian Randall
Flight Operator: Caitlin Moser
Sensors: Linze Struiksma
Tactical: Ryan Pack
Engineer: Andrew Moon
Communications: Bryn Randall

Captain and crew of the USS Odyssey

I cannot say enough for the experience we had.  It was a BLAST.  It was a 2 1/5 hour mission, with things going constantly wrong.  We had to problem solve, work as a team, and make hard decisions. It also involved a bit of acting.  Each crew member had their own monitor so that they could do their jobs. I had a nice comfy Captain's chair (which I never sat in because I was too busy). A "medical officer" (actor) was also on board to help us out.  We thought he was a spy for a while...but he totally wasn't...and then we felt bad for treating him so suspiciously. Honestly, it was like living an episode of Star Trek.  We had to find a bomb on the bridge and get it off the ship, fight of pirates, save a ship from running out of air, locate pirates and steal back a weapon, and blow up a giant battle ship.  To say it was epic, just doesn't do it justice.  And my crew was just fantastic. There was also a great deal of decoding messages, and dealing with engines overheating.  One thing that's terrifying is that it's possible to lose your mission/die.  We almost died at the end, but the odds were in our favor and we survived. Woot!

Moral of the story: if you're looking for something fun to do with a group, and you're around Utah County, check out the Christa McAuliffe Space Center.  'Cause it was the bomb.

31 Days of Halloween

Okay, so it's more like 27, days of Halloween (we don't do it on Sundays).  Here is the sum up of my costumes for the month of October 2014.  Some of Soren's are included too. Comment below and tell me which one is your favorite!

Mime

Juliet O'Hara from Psych

Rosie the Riveter 

Gadget and Dale from Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers

Indiana Jones

Carmen San Diego

Miss Piggy

Li'l Red Riding Hood

10th Doctor (yes, I'm standing in front of the mini globe in Cedar City)

Barbie

Rose and the 10th Doctor

Alice in Wonderland

Hermione Granger

Emma from Once Upon A Time

Eowyn from Lord of the Rings

Steph and Freakazoid from Freakazoid

Magic Carpet

Elizabeth Bennet

Ninja Turtle

11th Doctor

Phineas from Phineas and Ferb

Team Rocket from Pokemon

Kim Possible and Ron Stoppable

1920s Flapper

Red Crayon

Miss Frizzle from The Magic School Bus

Rogue and Gambit from the X-men

So excited for next October!

Quebec

Soren and I were in for a treat this Summer.  Because Anne and Alan are amazing, they took Kj, Ivan, Ari Jo, Soren, and me on a trip up to Quebec.  It was so much fun to go up and experience the city with the whole fam.  Soren and I have a special connection to Quebec, since that's where we went on our honeymoon.

If you aren't familiar with Quebec, I will tell you a little about it.  It's in Canada, about 5-6 hours north of Boothbay, and it's the cutest, prettiest little city.  Okay, maybe it's not so little.  Because it was settled by the French originally, everyone speaks French there and just looking at the architecture and how things are set up, you'd swear you were in France.  Beautiful.

The history of the city is fascinating.  Let me explain...no, there is to much...let me sum up:  French colony, big battle, now English colony, eventually Canada.  Ta da!  Seriously though, the museums there are awesome.

We stayed in the old city at a cute little hotel.  Most of what there is to do in Quebec is shop, eat, go to museums, eat, and shop.  It was a lot of walking.  The most exciting (and most expensive) thing Soren and I did was go into a Medieval boutique where we bought some awesome costume pieces.  

Since a picture says a thousand words, here's the trip:

Inside our cute hotel room.  Love the exposed rock!

Outside the hotel.  It was also a restaurant 

Looking down a Quebec street

Soren and the Chateau

This is my favorite shopping street: Le Petit Champlain.

An interesting art exhibition was going on throughout the lower old city.  This was an alleyway stuck with pool noodles.  

Arianna learning to fire a cannon

Enjoying the beautiful morning.

They have interesting addresses here.

Here's another part of the art exhibition

This is "the silly pig." It's my favorite place we ate.

An adorable toy store we found had a swing inside it.  Heck Yeah!

The Boardwalk was Ari's favorite.  She could run and run.

 What a wonderful place Quebec is!  I highly recommend it.

Happy Birthday Harry Potter

Okay, okay, so Harry's birthday isn't until the 31st of July, but we had our celebration a little early this year so that Kj could be a part of it. Let me just say, it was epic.

We had a lot of fun decorating.  Kj is a master!  We put up banners and signs and the like.  The house became "the burrow" and was the center of all the madness.

Floating candles in the entryway 

Magical candy that can help fight off the dark arts

There were also puking pastils and licorice wands

A few weeks before the party, Soren, Anne, and I took some wooden dowels and transformed them into colorful wands.  The first 20 or so guests were able to select a wand (or rather, the wand selected them).

There were surprises all over the place.

When people first arrived, we tested their Harry Potter knowledge with some tricky trivia (written by yours truly).  We also had some gnome tossing action going on in the back yard.

The first real event of the evening was Quidditch.  Soren and Alan made the hoops out of sticks, hula-hoops, and PVC pipe. The morning before the party, Soren and I sprayed the lawn to mark out the field.  This was muggle Quidditch, so there weren't any brooms or flying involved.  The Bludgers were water balloons (thrown by the beaters), the snitch was a person (who had to be caught by the seekers), and the chasers could only take three steps once they had the Quaffle.  It was so much fun.  The first round ended pretty quickly, but the next two rounds were long because it took the seekers so long to find the snitch.

After Quidditch we ate...and there was a lot of good food to be had.  Aebleskivers made for golden snitch pancakes, we had meatballs, bread, beans, butterbeer, and lots of yummy fruit.

Check out the totally legit cauldron!

After Quidditch/during dinner, people tried out the zip line.  It really is so much fun, but we did have one friend biff it pretty good on her way down.  We gave her a special prize for her injuries. This next video is me going down the zip line with the camera to give you an idea of how epic it is.  Warning: it's a little shaky.

The next event was diving in the pond.  Soren and I attached 6 rocks to pool floaties and spread them out throughout the pond.  One of them was spray painted gold, but you couldn't tell which because they were wrapped in rags.  The swimmers had to pick a floaty and hope it was the right one.  I got out on the pond in the canoe and was able to watch the action from the water.  The winner was our friend Tom from South Pacific.  He was pretty stoked.

The third event was probably my favorite.  Soren mowed a maze in the field next to the Barker's house.  My first time through it took me about 6 minutes...so it was pretty hard.  We sent people in at intervals while we timed them from the road.  The fastest time was under 2 minutes.  WOW.  He was fast.

The evening concluded with the award ceremony, where prizes were given to those who won events.  The prizes were all awesome.  There was a Marauders Map, Time Turners, a pocket watch with the deathly hallows on it, head boy and head girl pins, etc.  Then, to end with a bang, we set off some fireworks.  And not the little sissy fireworks, the big rock 'em pop 'em sock 'em fireworks that shoot way into the air.

In the end, a good time was had by all.  It was so fun to get together with our friends to embrace our nerdiness.