April Misc

 We enjoyed General Conference the first weekend in April. Nathan went to a live session in Salt Lake City on Sunday morning.  

Nathan needs to wear glasses now sometimes.  He dated a girl named Megan this semester for a little while but not dating anymore. He finished off his winter semester at BYU last week and is back home for 4 months this summer. 

Owen, Savannah, and I participated in a service project, packaging meals to send to Ecuador and Uganda.  The total goal was around 150,000 meals.  Each table did about 20-25 boxes, with 36 bags each.  Each bag provides 6 meals, so our table processed about 4,320-5,400 meals.  We were there for about 3.5 hours. It was tiring but pretty easy with everyone having their own part of the assembly line.  This was the 5th annual project for this group, but the 2nd year our church has participated in it.  Owen, Weston, and Savannah also did it last year.

I take the kids out to eat on minimum days - Owen chose Chipotle for his day.  He tried making Paraguayan chipa bread (cheese bread) for his class at school.

Our family went on a birthday hike with our friend Katy.  

Alex and I went for our monthly temple visit.

Owen (finally) got his driver's license!  It's great to have another driver again, especially to drive himself to early morning seminary at church.

We had to replace the light fixture and cabinet mirror in our bathroom.  This required me to paint the ceiling and the walls.  Not too exciting, but one of our recent projects.

Easter 2025

We had a nice Easter weekend - sugar cookies, Easter eggs, Easter baskets, Saturday temple session, Saturday church brunch, singing with the choir and Sunday church service, family Easter brunch, and friend Easter dinner with song devotional.

Alex and I went to the temple on Saturday morning while the kids went to the church brunch.  We got up early on Sunday morning to be at church by 8:30am to sing in the choir.  Since we started early, I decided to do a family brunch after church.  Church was only one hour for Easter Sunday, so it should have worked out pretty well.  We got done at 11:00am.  However... Alex's one meeting with an individual turned into meetings with other people, so he didn't get home until after 12:30pm.  We still had a nice lunch.  I made 72 rolls on Sunday afternoon for our friend Easter dinner.  Everyone else brought the rest of the food.  Our friends hosted and did all the pretty decorations. I think we had 29 people there.  What started as a shared meal between 2 families for quite a few years has grown to a potluck meal with several families.  

I created an Easter devotional a few years ago that has songs incorporated with the Easter story.  We did that again, although I had to make some more copies of it.  I re-did the song recordings as well, since my first versions were me playing the piano (with a few errors here and there).  Now the church website has all the song accompaniments, so I just needed to download those and put them in order into a recording.  It turned out better this year, and it was fun to have so many voices singing.  

Nathan wasn't finished with his semester by Easter, so I sent him a Chipotle gift card.  I had a little bit of things for him when he got here too. 

I sent a package to Jared and his missionary companion - snacks, candy, and a scripture Easter egg hunt.

 

March Misc

Savannah did some more painting - she likes doing the landscape pictures.  

We did some lunch outings for minimum days and friend's birthday - Chili's, Mexican, and BBQ Mexican restaurants. 

Owen and I went to a concert by BYU's Vocal Point and Noteworthy groups. They're an acapella group, so all the background sounds you hear is done by their voices.  They're really good!  One of the performers is the son of a local church member, so they had connections to get the group to come here. 

The youth did a St Patrick's potato dinner, show, and service auction night to earn money for summer camp. We enjoyed the entertainment.  The girls did a lip sync dance, Weston's group did a synchronized swimming show, and Owen's group did a trick shots video. We bought some cinnamon rolls and cookies.  Savannah offered to be a mother's helper for her service, and Owen and Weston signed up for mowing and weeding.  

                                          

Spring Break 2025

 A couple weeks ago we had spring break, where we shared a house in San Diego with 2 other families for a couple of days (Sunday night through Wednesday morning).  The house itself was pretty fun, with a tennis and basketball court (which we used for volleyball), a pool and hot tub, putting green, grill, and outdoor seating to just relax or take in the view.  The weather was pretty nice.  We played some games and hide 'n seek in the dark, watched movies, hung out, and had spiritual devotionals every evening.  We grilled hamburgers, had nachos and taco salad, along with ice cream sundaes, baked oatmeal, french toast, bacon & eggs, pizza, and ate out for lunch at a Mexican restaurant one day.  We each have a missionary out right now, so we chatted with them on Monday at various times.  Also on Monday, we went to Cabrillo National Monument, where we explored the tide pools and hiked around, went to a lighthouse, and enjoyed nature and wildlife.  On Tuesday, we headed to Balboa Park and wandered around, ate out for lunch, and went to the Mormon Battalion.  We also found a Lego store that was popular with some of the crowd.  On Wednesday morning, we packed up and headed to Newport Beach Temple (San Diego is closed right now).  It was a nice few days to spend with friends!  We pretty much tried to spend as little as possible on this vacation, so we didn't do any of the expensive activities in San Diego.

I made a little video compilation of our outings.  My friend Alison probably will make a much better one since she took more video along the way, but this one mostly captures our nature day with a little mix of Weston's running videos. He had a Mission Impossible running thing going on, but intense music didn't fit very well with my peaceful nature videos!  It's a little amusing though, because it looks like he's trying to run away from everything else to finally get to the Lego Store.