It's Not An Event Without Technical Difficulties: REWIND

Christmas Party. Overall, a resounding success. Especially because I just planned the kind of activity that I wanted to have. I left at 3 to pickup some last minute supplies and met the crew at the church around 4 for setup. We had tablecloths and lights and a bomb photobooth. Andddd all the sound/tech stuff. (Thank the heavens Matt Prine exists.)

Squad goals.

We ate Olive Garden lasagna, breadsticks, salad, and homemade punch for dinner. Plus all the candy strewn on the tables. Then we kicked off the talent show. Which was fraught with technical difficulties, but somehow we made it through. (Videos to come.) Voila, the act that started it off:

Then Alex was the literal best Mormon deejay I've ever had. One slow song the whole night, crazy remixes, bumping' bass. I was so wild I ripped open my sutures. And we had it all cleaned up by 11pm.

jk - THIS is squad goals.

Old Men. My favorite genre of human. And I got to see plenty of them (and old women) when I shadowed at an inpatient clinic for 5 hours Saturday morning.

Friday Night Lights. My dance squad met up to practice. Then the crew + Cen/Brodie came over to not play games and watch Pirates.

My guy Tyler, 3rd place for ugly sweater comp.

AT Coverage. I covered a HS basketball game in my *spare* time. It was infinitely better than football. But the home team crushed the visitors by 80 points and their coach was still yelling at them. For the wrong things, I thought. If my kids missed that many layups, that's all we'd be doing at practice. And running.

Institute. Rod taught an interesting interim lesson this week. Nothing new, but some misunderstood and confusing stuff, especially because it's hard to picture life in the 1830's from my bug-free bed in my air conditioned house.

So cute.

Let me tell you something about Mormon history for a sec. Mormons, from their inception (or restoration), were very progressive. In a time where slavery was still a thing, we accepted and loved our brown friends and treated them as equals. They got the priesthood, interracial marriages were a thing, and life was pretty good.

Except that the world still saw black people as a different species, as savages. Associating with POC's was thought to decrease civility and cause a return to barbaric tendencies - and light skins who married dark skins were seen as declining their race. And you could kill blacks/their families without consequence.

90's Rap style.

Which was a problem, because there were already laws in place allowing people to kill Mormons on sight. So our intermingling with POC's only enhanced the issue. Which is why, we kind of took a step back - and stopped giving blacks the PH for a time. An unfortunate and awful restriction, but necessary for the survival of the church. Glad we're over that now.