We had Nathan at home for a full week but only 5 days with Jared. Jared had a lot of boring stuff to do to get ready for college. He went to a dentist appointment, eye doctor, and two doctors appointments. We went to the bank, bought some clothes & shoes, and got him a phone and laptop. He had to do a lot of sorting and packing. He spent a couple evenings showing us pictures and talking about his mission. We had a couple of his favorite meals - German pancakes, scalloped potatoes, and lasagna. Savannah stayed home from school one day to hang out and play games with Jared. (Owen and Weston had too much stuff to do at school.) We went out to eat a couple times, for Mexican and tacos, since he had been craving Mexican food. We played ping pong, pool, and air hockey at the Institute one evening. Owen won our ping pong tournament. We watched a movie (F1) at home, took some family pictures, and played at the beach one day. It was fun to watch them running around like little kids. We re-created one photo from 2014. I did get in the water too for a while, but the waves were so rough that it wasn't very relaxing trying to avoid getting pummeled by the waves. Some of them were too high to jump over. The water wasn't that cold either, so everyone had fun.
We had a full day on Sunday. Jared had an early meeting to report about his mission before church. Then he spoke in our ward and then went right to the singles ward to speak there too. Owen, Savannah, and I joined the choir in belting out "This Little Light of Mine" for the musical number. We had a Linger Longer lunch after church. I had made lots of rolls the night before. Some were for lunch and some were for dinner. I also made 3 lasagnas to take to our friends' house for Sunday dinner. In the afternoon, we headed about an hour north of us for Savannah's Patriarchal Blessing. It was her special day! She had the honor of having all of us attend with her during her blessing. It was really amazing. One of the highlights of Savannah's blessing was hearing "opportunity to serve a full-time mission". That's not an obligation for girls like it is for boys to serve. She had been wondering whether she would receive any guidance on whether she should serve a mission (because she wants to). We almost gasped when we heard it so specifically in her blessing. I realized that I still had 5.5 more years of being a missionary mom... We took a picture with the Stake Patriarch this time. He was able to give blessings to all our kids, and every experience was just amazing.
We had dinner with Donald and Julie on Sunday. Their boys Nathan and Shawn were home, so our boys got to catch up with them. When we got home, Alex gave school blessings to Nathan and Jared. Then Nathan blessed me and Jared blessed Alex. It was a little overwhelming day with feeling the Spirit.
It was hard to send Nathan and Jared off on Monday morning, but they had to start college on Wednesday. They drove back together, stopping to see my aunt and uncle in southern Utah along the way.
