Camps

 The week after school got out, Savannah headed to girls camp and Owen and Weston went with the boys to camp.  This was Savannah's first time at girls camp, and she had a great time.  The only complaint was mosquitoes, as she got several bites.  Other than that, she had fun.  They took a bus into the camp area.  They didn't sleep in tents but did have cots.  They went hiking, swimming, polar plunging, and did axe throwing and archery.  She also enjoyed the camp songs and devotionals.  She was even brave enough to share her testimony during testimony time.  The theme was Candyland, so she was in the Starburst group.  

Owen and Weston had fun at their camp as well.  They had one day less of camp than the girls but got to go whitewater rafting.  They enjoyed hiking among the giant trees.  Weston found a spot to catch minnows.  They enjoyed hanging out and doing skits, games, and a devotional.       

Father's Day

We had a nice Father's Day.  It was fun to have breakfast together.  Usually Bishop is up and out the door in the morning before most of us even get out of bed.  No meetings for Father's Day though!  I made omelets and bacon.  After church, we celebrated the dads at church with pies and ice cream.  I made 3 apple pies and Owen made 3 key lime pies.  We took 5 of them to church to share.   

May and June were really busy... Father's Day was sort of the tail end of most of our events.  I don't know how we got through everything, but this picture sums up how we were all feeling after so many things going on.  Credit to Jared for trying to read his scriptures! 

Bakery

Jared has been working some Saturdays at our friend Donald's bakery.  Donald has been good about employing several teenagers and he makes some really good food.  Sadly, they just closed the bakery.  We went on the last day and got brunch - fruit plate and cinnamon roll french toast.  It was really yummy!  

If Jared and Grace look a little extra tired, it's because this was the day they got back from Disneyland at 4:00am and then went to work at 8:00am.

2024 Graduate

 Jared graduated high school in June!  There were a few different awards or recognition nights.  He earned the Community Service, National Honor Society, Golden State Seal, and CAASPP awards.  I'm not sure what a couple of those are, but he got a 4.0 and did amazing throughout high school.  

At church, they did a senior recognition night for two of the local wards.  We brought some things for a table display, they showed a video with pictures of each of the seniors, and also had a panel where they asked them various questions about high school, seminary, spiritual experiences, etc.  At church the following Sunday, we also set up the displays again and had a luncheon to honor the seniors.  

Graduation was good... although a little painful process for the whole thing.  We walked over around 3:45pm so we didn't have to deal with parking.  We had to arrive about an hour early to get a good seat, so we spent about 3 hours sitting on the bleachers.  Graduation lasted a little over 2 hours, and then we were taking pictures and such for another 30 minutes or so before we walked back home.  Graduation starts at 5:00pm, so it's right during dinner time.  I ended up preparing roast and veggies the day before, and then putting it in the crockpot to warm while we were at graduation.  We didn't eat dinner until about 8:30pm.  Another unfortunate thing is the other local high school does graduation at the exact same time, so if you have friends at the other school, you don't get to see them graduate.  (I included a couple pictures of Jared's friends from the other high school in one of the collages.)  Our friends without a graduate split up for the graduation ceremonies.  Donald came to help celebrate Jared, and Julie and Becca went to cheer on Grace, Tru, and Justin.  Then Donald, Julie, and Becca came over after graduation for dinner and dessert.  Jared got a family recipe book and spiritual experiences book.  They know they get a phone and laptop when they're headed to college, so the 2 books are the grad gift for now.  

Jared went to Disneyland for Grad Night.  They left the morning after graduation and returned about 4:00am the next morning.  He had a great time!  His friend Grace is the girl in the sunglasses.  Several seniors from various high schools attend the Grad Night at the same time, so even though Grace is at the other high school, they were able to meet up at Disneyland.  

School Things

Here are some more school things for Savannah. She participated in Battle of the Books, which involved about 200 students in 4th, 5th, and 6th grade.  To get there, she had to read 28 books from a Book List.  When they arrived for the competition, they were put into teams with random students from various schools.  They were asked questions about the books, testing their knowledge on the plots, characters, authors, and such.  They had 30 seconds to talk as a team, and then the captain gave an answer.  If they didn't get it right, another team can steal and get the points.  Two teams tied for 1st place, so Savannah's team earned 2nd place (out of about 32 teams).  So her team did really well! 

I went to the school carnival and open house nights.  They had a lot of fun things at the carnival, such as inflatables, popcorn, cake walk, and sno-cones.  She was excited to see her little buddy.  

Here are some other school activities and pictures with friends.  They got to watch the eclipse and do a lab visit.  Her class did a 13 colonies play.  Savannah played the part of Martha Washington and Abigail Adams. Sophia was probably her best friend in class this year, but she still had good friends in the other class that she liked to hang out with at lunch and recess.  She got to go out for lunch with some friends on the last day of school. (I was working that day... so I wasn't there for the last day of school fun.) Savannah really liked her teacher this year.  Savannah got to teach something a few times, with the most recent being hip hop dance moves.

It was a good 5th grade year!

 

Misc

Just a few random pictures... still lots of Legos, monthly temple visit, and Savannah hanging out with Kai (we're hoping Kai makes it some more years - she's now 10 years old).  

Jared and I attended an Eagle Ceremony for Evan, another of Jared's friends since elementary school.  Evan, Jay, and Jared were in cub scouts together and got their Arrow of Light together back in 2017.  

 

Art

Savannah and Jared entered art into competitions.  Savannah won the yearbook title page contest.  Her art was also chosen to be displayed in the library for another thing, although she didn't get to choose the artwork for that one.  The duck painting was submitted by her art teacher.  Savannah said it wasn't her best art, but it still was selected to be displayed.  I took her out to get cheesecake at Chili's as a reward.  

Jared won 1st place for his woodworking, doing a weave design on a bowl.  He also got 2nd place for his drawing of his track shoes.  

Seminary

 Owen completed his first year of early morning seminary and Jared finished his 4th year and graduated.  The end of May was their last day of seminary this school year. They had a breakfast to recognize the students and teachers.  I enjoyed hearing what the teachers had to say about the kids.   Jared, Grace, Owen, and Becca said a little bit about the teachers.  I collected money from parents and put together a gift and card for the teachers.  I made cards using the President Nelson quote below.  Seminary teachers help the students focus on the Savior and find joy in the scriptures, and I'm grateful for their sacrifice to teach every day.  

18th Birthday

Jared celebrated his golden birthday this year.  I did my best to do a golden cake.  It reminded me of Belle's dress from Beauty and the Beast...  We didn't do much on his actual birthday since he was working and Alex didn't get back from his trip until about 8:30pm.  Our friends dropped by and ended up joining us for cake.  I made his birthday breakfast the next morning.  

The big celebration was a couple weeks after his birthday.  I threw one last themed party for him that encompassed his past birthdays, similar to what I did for Nathan's 18th party.  I basically re-created several elements of his past parties, which was a lot of work.  I love the then & now pictures.  

I re-created his 1st birthday giant cupcake and crown.  We had Doritos and juice boxes which represented his 2nd birthday (airplane party).  I made a paper mâché cowboy hat and did the farm themed cupcakes (which I forgot to take a picture of the recent ones) for his 3rd birthday.  I decorated one of the tables with the farm theme.  His 4th birthday was dinosaur themed, with cardboard dino feet and paper dino hats.  I had them make their own dino hats, which most of them wore the entire party.  After creating the hats, we did an egg & spoon race while wearing the dino feet.  (I bought 8 boxes of pineapple from Costco for the dino feet.)  It was hilarious watching them try to walk in those things.  

His 5th birthday was Batman theme, so I made 2 cardboard Batmobiles again.  However, for his 5th birthday, we used those to sled down a pine-needle hill.  This time I wanted to put wheels on them so we could ride around in them.  I did the cardboard cars and then Alex attached the wheels on by using a furniture cart with a couple extra pieces of wood attached.  They turned out better and faster than I expected, and I'm surprised that no one got hurt.  We probably should have had helmets while riding in those things.  And the first attempt nearly sent them crashing into the wall... they were lots of fun! 

He didn't have friend parties every year so not all years are represented.  The next year represented was his 7th birthday, which was Star Wars theme.  I re-made the Darth Vader pinata filled with "darkside" purple Skittles.  The thing about the pinata is it only took Jared a couple of tries to completely whack off the head and send it flying.  I remember as little kids they each got 1-2 swings before breaking it open... not as exciting for big kids to pick up the candy either! We also did "shoot-the-Storm Trooper" with nerf guns.  One of the dinner tables was also Star Wars theme.

His 9th birthday was ninja themed.  I used that to create a dinner theme for our party.  The dinner was a new thing for this party.  I wanted to do something besides pizza or hamburgers, so I went with Asian themed (maybe stretching it a bit).  We had white rice, vegetable fried rice, spring rolls, Yakisoba noodles, Mongolian beef, and orange chicken.  I made the Mongolian beef and white rice and prepared the frozen oven spring rolls and Yakisoba noodles (microwavable).  I decided to buy the fried rice and orange chicken from Panda Express.  (I still had to work that Friday so I only had a couple hours before the party to prepare things.)  I re-made the red and black paper lanterns and black ninja stars to decorate the food table.  I ended up preparing way too much food.  We only had 7 of 16 invited guests show, but I wasn't sure how many to plan for (since they either didn't respond or replied "yes" but then didn't show up).  With our family and a couple extra adult friends, we still fed 15 people.  I re-created the Asian gift favor boxes with rice krispie treat "fried rice" and Chex muddy buddies "meat".  However, on the boxes this time, I printed out a funny picture of Jared from each year along with his name and age in Japanese on the other side of the box.  Those looked pretty cute as table decor.  I forgot to take pictures of the tables.  

His 11th birthday was Spartan theme.  We didn't do any of the challenges, but I re-made the spartan cupcakes (which I also forgot to take a recent picture of) and decorated one of the dinner tables with that theme. 

We were in England for his 12th birthday.  I made a video of his England year.  I also made 2 other videos to watch for this party.  One was pictures from each of the years (18 years video).  The other one was action videos.  It was hilarious to hear him talking and dancing and being a kid.  The videos actually took a combined 30 minutes or so to watch, so we had popcorn while watching.  (I might post links to the 3 videos later - they would have to be uploaded to YouTube first since the files are too large to directly post here.) 

His 14th birthday was Covid year, so no party.  The next friend party was his 16th birthday, which was sweet sixteen theme.  I made Twix cheesecake bars, cookies, and brownies - we had plenty of dessert! 

The other activity we did towards the end was drawings of Jared.  I found a cute self-portrait of Jared from 4 years old, so I thought it would be fun to get a new self-portrait.  They didn't spend much time on them, but it was fun to see the drawings of Jared.  He actually is pretty good at drawing, having taken a couple freehand drawing classes at school.  The other thing for this party that I did was several picture display boards and some other things about Jared.  He did a really good drawing of his track shoes (which I'll show in another post).  He also made some pretty cool things in woodworking class.  I tried to highlight his sports, Legos, and camping / backpacking trips in the photos.  He also has a pretty good collection of Calvin and Hobbes books.  I also had to find his favorite stuffed giraffe "Raffe" and display it.  Raffe has been well loved though and lost a lot of fluff so that it's pretty droopy.  

The party turned out great and lots of fun!  It was very exhausting though.  The last picture shows just some of the stuff I carted along to the party.  The kitchen was a disaster, and we spent a while cleaning up at the church after the party.  (And we stayed an extra couple hours cleaning the rest of the church building since Alex had signed our family up to do the building cleaning that week.)  We didn't get home until about 11:45pm that night.  It was worth it though to see the smiles on Jared's face. It's crazy to think this is the last friend party I'll do for Jared though, so I wanted to go out big!