February

Alex got home from New Zealand just in time for dinner on Valentine's Day.  We had roast, potatoes, carrots, rolls, jello with strawberries and whipped cream, lemonade raspberry sherbet drinks, and chocolate pie.  I gave the kids some of their favorite candy.  Alex brought back a pearl necklace that he gave to me.  

I taught youth Sunday School on the 15th, which was on Noah's ark.  I thought it would be nice to take treats that also coordinated with the lesson theme.  I found some cool looking rainbow jello cookies online and thought they'd be fun.  However... they didn't turn out anything like the online photos!  We had a good laugh about it.  Nailed it... I made some other cookies but let them try the rainbow ones if they wanted to.  The jello gave them a tangy flavor, which reminded me of Nerds candy or those sugar straws.  

I went to an activity with the church ladies, a "Galentines" dinner, which was fun.

Owen, Weston, and Savannah went to a church dance on the 7th of February.  It was Savannah's first dance (since she needed to be turning 14 this year to go).  She had her brothers watching her closely.  They snapped a couple pictures of her.    

The random photos:  Savannah made pie and Weston had "a little bit" of ice cream with it.  He also was being silly with his glasses.  I made cinnamon rolls, eggs, and bacon for a birthday breakfast for one of our friends, Becca, who comes over on Tuesday and Thursday mornings after seminary.  Owen did "valograms" one day at school, singing in small groups with other members of the choir.  They sang to people who had been gifted a song and treat, paid for by family or friends.  In this photo, they sang to one of the teachers.

Alex and I got our monthly temple visit in.  I helped decorate and make a cake for an Institute night celebrating 100 years of the program.  We had pizza and salad, along with cake, and listened to a broadcast of Elder Kearon (Quorum of the 12) and his wife.

I've been enjoying my Saturday morning jogs along the coast. I've been jogging about 4-5 miles (walking a little bit).  I took a few pics one morning.

Nathan has been having fun, enjoying sports and a little more social this semester.  His roommate Devan posted an Instagram photo with them and a group of girls.  I don't know what a Roblox Meet up is... I think they were just going out for dinner / ice cream though. We spotted Nathan at a BYU volleyball game and a basketball game.  He had pretty good seats for a couple games, thanks to one of his friends inviting him to use one of their "VIP" seats.

BYU Sophomore

I don't get a lot of pictures from Nathan.  He'll often send me a picture like the first one below that shows where he's sitting at the BYU game.   He's really been enjoying the sports, when he's lucky enough to get a ticket.  He had to buy a ROC sports pass to be able to attempt to get a ticket, but they're still not guaranteed to get one.  They opened up the ticket portal on Tuesdays at noon before the Saturday football games.  He learned that he had to be in the "queue" online right at noon and then hope he got a ticket.  They were all gone immediately - you couldn't wait even 15 minutes to get in the queue or you were out of luck.  A couple times he had 3 different devices ready to increase his chances, and he'd get a ticket from whichever device got in the system first.  He got tickets to all the games when he remembered to get online at noon.  He had a couple friends that he'd usually go to the game with.  The BYU vs Utah game was particularly exciting as BYU won by 3 points.  I was watching it on TV, so that's my picture of the TV screen at the end of the game.  He didn't go down in the crowd, but the whole field was a sea of blue.    

Sophomore year has been harder than freshman year, as expected, with tougher classes. He had to study more to keep up with everything.  He's been working on a computer science degree so far, but he's thinking of switching to accounting if he can get in the program.  He has to take a couple accounting classes before he can apply for the program.  And then the acceptance is about 60% I think, so that's not guaranteed either.  He's thought about some different majors - economics, statistics, and some other fields, but accounting seems to be the most interesting to him.  

He continues to work on campus part-time during the week as a cybersecurity and systems technician.  He really likes his tech job and the people he works with.  

It also was a little different experience living off campus and not being right in the middle of all the social activities. A couple of these pictures are from a conference he went to with speakers and a concert.  They do have opportunities to go to several events or devotionals to build their spirituality, which Nathan has enjoyed. He continues to attend the Provo City Center Temple once a week and also serves in the temple one evening a week.  I think he also currently serves as the Elders Quorum Secretary in his ward.  He's been really busy, and unfortunately not leaving much time for girls! Maybe this next semester will be better for social time. Keeping up with everything has been a bit overwhelming for him, but I think he's doing amazing. 

Utah House

 The end of July, we bought a house in Provo to be used as a rental for college students.  The process has been a roller coaster.  We first went to look at houses the 1st weekend in June.  There wasn't much to look at in our price range and location.  The house we originally intended to make an offer on was already pending by the time we looked at it.  It had sloped floors though, so it likely had foundation issues anyway.  We did end up making a low offer on a 4 bed 2 bath house that we had looked at and really liked.  We offered 40k less than asking so they didn't take our offer.  During our trip to Italy and Georgia, we were doing video house tours with our realtor.  We then decided to put an offer on a 3 bed 1 bath house within our price range, and our offer was accepted.  We were pretty excited about that, although we knew that we wanted to put a 2nd bathroom in to make it a 3-2.  So we were a little worried if we would have time to get that finished.  However, after the inspection there were some important things we wanted to get fixed before we bought it.  The seller wouldn't fix anything, so then we backed out of that one.  It was the 1st week of July at that point, so we weren't sure if buying a house was going to happen.  As a last resort, we put a low offer ($21k less than the list price) on a 3 bed 2 bath house, not expecting it to be accepted.  However, they did take the offer without even a counter offer.  By the 2nd weekend of July, we had completed the inspection and everything looked good.  We were excited because although it was listed as a 3-2, there was another space that could be used as a 4th bedroom.  It doesn't have windows or a closet, so it couldn't technically be a 4th bedroom.  Our plan was to put Nathan in that bedroom and rent out the other 3 bedrooms.  We could comfortably fit 5 more guys in there with Nathan.  The house was just over a mile from campus.  Everything was moving forward smoothly.  

The last couple weeks of July, I started buying used things and furniture to furnish the house.  We got a couple of nice mattresses for free, along with a dresser.  I fixed up a couple of nightstands that I found for $2 each.  I got quite a few kitchen and house items for really cheap from Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, and Estate Sales.  The first week of August, we drove to Utah with a trailer and truck full of stuff.  We basically had one week to clean and get the house ready, furnish the place, build an extra area for parking, and set up a bank account for the place.  We had a pretty good start with the small items, but we needed to find 4 more beds (and 2 more frames), kitchen table and chairs, 5 more dressers, nightstands, and at least 2 couches, along with several other items.  

The boys got to work on the parking area.  We had one narrow driveway with the place, which can fit a couple cars, but you would have to move the last car to get the first car out.  So it's not too efficient of a space.  The back yard is a decent size, so our plan was to use some of the back yard for 3 more parking spaces.  It wasn't too hard to get the chain link fence out, but then it turned into a bigger project than expected due to the sprinkler system.  Alex and the boys had to dig up the yard to find the pipes and cap some of them off.  Once that was complete, then came leveling it off and bringing gravel in.  We thought about doing concrete, but it was too expensive.  Our realtor had connections to get us a good deal on gravel, haul it over, and help dump it out, so that was a good option for us.  Then they had to distribute the gravel, rent a machine to help pack it in, and re-install the fence (along with a gate).  Owen and Weston really worked hard on that project with Alex.  There was one trip to Home Depot where the boys fell asleep on the way over (in just 10 minutes).  That's how tired they were. Plus it was really hot, so it wasn't a fun week for them.  The boys also put together two bathroom storage shelves and a standing closet organizer for the 4th bedroom.

Savannah and I worked on the interior of the house, cleaning and organizing.  We shopped for furniture, which Alex and the boys then had to go collect with the trailer.  We also patched up the chipped fireplace and painted it, along with re-touching any other spots in the house. The other project that we started was the front porch.  There was ivy growing up underneath the old carpet on the front porch.  We thought it would be nice to rip that carpet off and paint the porch.  Well... the carpet didn't come up easily.  The edges came up, but then we were stuck with most of it that wouldn't come off.  I spent at least 3-4 hours one morning trying to get that carpet off.  Eventually the carpet was off, but the glue underneath was still there.  It turned out to be the project that we couldn't get done in that week we were there, so that one we left for Nathan to finish.  By the way, Nathan was already working his campus job that week, so he missed out on most of the manual labor.  He did install new window blinds, do some small maintenance, and help haul a little bit of the furniture.  The hardest thing to move was a 2nd refrigerator, which we put downstairs in the laundry room area.  I had planned on a freezer going down there but didn't realize that Alex would come back with another refrigerator.  They had to take off a hand rail to maneuver it downstairs.  A couple of the dressers and the sofa sectional were pretty tough to get downstairs as well.

I can't believe we actually got everything done in a week.  We found our last furniture item the night before we left.  We were able to complete the parking area, fence, and furnish the entire house for about $4500. We spent about $3000 for all the house stuff and about $1500 for the parking, fence, and porch items.  For my own documentation, here is my list of things purchased / collected (some free):  

Kitchen - fruit basket, oven mitts, can opener, plates, bowls, pots, cooking utensils, toaster, trash can, silverware tray, muffin pan, pans / cookie sheets, paper towel holder, mixing bowls, large tupperware bowl, sugar and flour containers, strainer, ice cream scoop, salt shakers, casserole dishes, measuring cups, silverware, cutting board, utensils container, cups, knives and kitchen scissors, pasta containers, kitchen washcloths and towels, microwave cover, apron, egg pan, hot pads, crock pot, bread box, skillet, rice cooker, blender, and microwave

Cleaning / Laundry - supplies bucket, broom, mop, cleaning supplies, vacuum, laundry basket

Preparedness - fire blanket, first aid kit, flashlight, smoke / carbon monoxide detectors, car kit

Bathroom - bath mats, shower caddy, shower curtains, 2 over-the-toilet storage, toilet brush, toilet plunger, trash cans

Yard / Tools - rake, shovel, lawn mower, gas can, tool kit

Furniture / Appliances - kitchen table and chairs, refrigerator, standing closet, 2 desks, coffee table, living room rug, 2 desk chairs, 6 dressers, 6 mattresses and bed frames, 1 sofa, 1 sectional couch, TV stand, 3 nightstands

Misc - lamp, step stool, TV, printer, clocks, wall art, wall hooks, mattress covers, iron, ironing board, router, door mat

By the end of the week, we had the parking finished and the house furnished.  We even had 5 renters lined up.  It seemed that everything had fallen into place. We had the contracts sent out a couple days later.  As they were getting ready to sign the lease, one of the renters asked if we were okay with having more than 3 renters.  These 5 friends had just gotten kicked out of a house that had 11 guys living there and wondered if we also had restrictions.  We weren't aware of any, but as we looked into it, it turns out we were required to have a rental license.  We thought it wouldn't be hard to get the license, so we started the application process (and held off on signing the leases).  We found out it would take up to 2 weeks to get the license.  We also discovered a city code for our area that restricted our occupancy for unrelated people to THREE.  And as part of the rental license, they would come inspect the house to see if it was up to health and safety codes.  We have to put a larger window and well in the bedroom in the basement.  We can't ever use the 4th room that doesn't have a window for a bedroom (and we can't put one in), and we have to re-do the front porch steps where one of them isn't the correct height.  We're looking at a minimum of $9,000 in getting the house up to code.  We also lost those 5 renters pretty quickly because of the occupancy restrictions.  We're down to signing on 2 paid renters, which will never approach our mortgage payment.  Basically everything fell apart when we attempted to rent through the correct process.  It's been 3 weeks and they still haven't completed the license or even inspected the house.  We'll see if they find anything besides the steps and the basement windows.  We just can't believe the situation we're in now.  This was one of those situations where we were "almost good at that."  

We do have a couple of renters lined up for the year, as of a couple days ago.  We don't know what to do or how we'll make it financially yet.  We've got ourselves in a tight spot and don't know how to resolve it.  But we now own a nice little house in Provo for Nathan to live in.  It may be pretty quiet living down in the basement by himself...     

We did manage to go to the Provo City Center Temple early one morning when we were there.  That was a nice break from our work.  We also got to spend Sunday evening with Alison and Micah (I didn't take any pictures with them).  We had dessert with Carrie at the BYU Creamery on Monday.  She happened to be there for the week doing an organ camp.  We had dessert with Jaden on Friday evening.  We planned on dinner with him but then had to go pick up furniture.  Nathan had dinner with him and we met them later for dessert.  Kai went with us on this trip and got to hang out in the house and yard.  

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.

November Misc

Most of the pictures I get from Nathan are game photos.  He went to his first BYU basketball game and all the students got a jersey for that game.  He went to some more cold football games as well.  

Some social happenings:  We said "good-bye" to friends who moved to Indiana (pic with Emilee and Alanna).  We had a lunch visit with friends who moved back from Washington (about an hour away now).  We welcomed Devan back from his mission.  Savannah had a couple of friend days.

Savannah participated in her last jog-a-thon.  She did great, running nearly the whole 30 minutes.  I jogged the last 10 minutes with her to give her the extra motivation to keep running. 

Savannah and I went out for lunch for one of the days that was early out for parent-teacher conferences.  

Pretty rainbow and sunset.

The youth did some fun activities - a fall bake off competition, which involved making cupcakes to be judged.  Savannah made the sign for the activity.  

Devan did a missionary night to report and share pictures from his mission.  Savannah got to hold a kitten that night since the host of the activity had a few kittens there.  

The youth went on an early morning temple trip.  

 

October Misc

Nathan participated in some Halloween festivities at BYU too.  They had a church party where most of the guys dressed as minions.  One of the activities was bobbing for apples... good thing we don't have Covid restrictions anymore.  I'm pretty sure there's quite a bit of germs being exchanged for that activity!  

Nathan got to meet Kirby Heyborne, an actor and musician who has been in some of the LDS church movies such as the RM, Singles Ward, and Best Two Years (among others).  He's been loving going to the football games, especially since BYU is undefeated.  There have been some really miraculous wins, where they came from behind in the last couple of minutes to win the game.  

Savannah went on a camp-out with the young women.  She had a great time - hanging out, painting rocks, dipping in the ocean, and all the fun campfire things.  

We helped a family from church do an in-town move.  We're glad they didn't move out of our ward at church.  

Owen and Weston went to a church dance and apparently collected most of the glow sticks by the end.

I took the boys out for lunch on one of their days off.  I was hoping McDonald's would be a cheap lunch outing, but we spent over $42 for the four of us (and I just got a Happy Meal).  The prices have really gone up! We hadn't been to McDonald's for quite a while.

Savannah did a couple months of hip-hop dance this fall, but then she just wasn't into it that much anymore.  We had hoped for her to do one last performance, but with some problems having a regular teacher for the class, they never learned a dance for the performance.  I think part of why she loved dance in previous years was her teacher, and she wasn't teaching there anymore.  

Savannah is definitely into that pre-teen phase.  I can tell by the amount of selfies she wants to take on my phone!  

We dropped by our friend Grace's house on her birthday to drop off a treat and ended up staying for cake!  We had to snap a picture to send Jared to make him jealous.  Ha-ha. 

We enjoyed watching General Conference at home the beginning of October.  We had our traditional crumb cake.  Alex particularly enjoys conference weekend because he doesn't have all his normal Bishop responsibilities at church.  He's been really busy right now doing tithing declarations with all the members.  One Sunday this month, he was gone from about 7:45am-5:30pm - we don't see him much on Sundays.

And they're off...

...to school, and mission, and college!

Everything happened in matter of a couple of weeks.  Owen and Weston started school on Monday August 19th.  Owen is in 10th grade at the High School.  He is still able to walk to school, but he goes to seminary scripture study class from 7:00-7:50am at the church before school each day (although he has also had some morning basketball practices that have conflicted with seminary).  Weston is in 8th grade at the Junior High.  He rides the bus home in the afternoons and on Wednesday morning.  We take him the other mornings for 0-period advanced band.  Savannah started 6th grade on Wednesday the 21st at the Elementary School.  Alex or I usually walk the few blocks to school with her.  Her first day of school was also the day Jared headed off for his mission.  

Jared started home MTC on Monday August 12th, which was a little tough since we still had family in town for a couple more days.  He was definitely on a different schedule than everyone else.  He was operating on Peru time, so he had to wake up at 4:30am to be able to exercise and get ready for his online training to start at 6:30am.  He had lunch around 10:30am and dinner at 3:00-4:00, so I had to prepare dinner around 2:45pm.  

I got up with him and ran 2 of the mornings at 4:30am since he had to have someone with him to leave the house.  It wasn't very fun running in the dark, but I appreciated the last couple of times to spend a little bit of time with Jared.  On the first run, we headed for the bike path, which usually has lights, but they weren't on.  We decided to head back to the school, where I thought we could run on the track.  Well, the gate wasn't open for the track (nor were there lights on), but we were able to squeeze through the side of the gate.  At least the surface was predictable as we ran with a flashlight on the track.  And Jared didn't have to run my pace.  Jared ended up running full on into a spiderweb on the way back home.  The 2nd morning we ran, the moon was bright, so we did a few miles on the bike path.  After our run, we had a nice chat about Captain Moroni and his preparations for war and how Alma and the sons of Mosiah were still out preaching.  They couldn't rest.  I taught the youth Sunday School lesson on Sunday on that topic.  Jared came into my class and was a good contributor to the lesson, particularly how he's prepared for his mission.  We've had to do a lot to prepare physically, but the main part was his spiritual preparation.  He's put in the extra work to strengthen his testimony and work on weaknesses.  One of the things he did was bear his testimony every month in fast and testimony meeting for the last year.  That helped with his confidence in public speaking and sharing as the spirit directed.  It was also a great blessing for me and our ward to hear from him.  He inspired some of the other youth to share their testimonies often too.  

Speaking of preparation, it's amazing the number of things required to do to prepare for a mission, with so many things to gather and paperwork and medical stuff.  One of his pieces of luggage arrived just a couple days before he left.  We still had to get Jared set up with a credit / debit card that would work in Paraguay, and we had to get $160 in crisp bills for the Visa as he entered Paraguay.  The bills were supposed to be free of any marks or folds - basically uncirculated pristine bills.  We waited until the day before to try to find those, and that proved to be an impossible task.  Alex ended up going to over 15 banks in search of these bills, and they were nowhere to be found.  All of them had a fold down the middle, from being sent through machines at the bank.  We eventually gave up and hoped that somehow they would be good enough and not rejected.  Jared took the carefully placed bills in a protective plastic sleeve.  That was one of my biggest worries sending him off - would the money be rejected?  I just hoped and prayed that they would be good enough, that maybe the Lord could somehow remove the folds in the bills.  What's interesting is that a bit of a miracle did occur with the process, but not what I expected.  It turns out the church has been working with Paraguay to get that fee removed for the missionaries (or maybe handled in some other way), and they didn't even need the money to enter.  Instead Jared had a representative from the church there with him as he entered, basically an advocate for him that he was who he said he was and serving for the church.  So he ended up taking the cash with him and didn't even need it for entry into the country.  That was a tender mercy!

Anyway, we had our pancake breakfast the morning that Jared headed off.  It wasn't any easier to say "bye" to Jared than it was for Nathan - still just as hard and ripped out a piece of my heart to watch him walk away for the next 2 years.  I was in tears off and on most of the morning after he left.  I had to come home and finish cleaning out his room so that Owen could move his stuff in there.  Owen was excited to have his own room finally.  Weston would have been fine either way, but he now has his own room too.  My friend Carrie dropped off a "missionary mom" necklace for me, which I love.  I'm sharing the letter I wrote to Jared.  

Jared flew to Atlanta first and then on to Lima, Peru where he spent 5 weeks at the Missionary Training Center.  Another tender mercy was a photo we received from a random church member at the airport in Atlanta.  He snapped a photo of Jared and 4 other missionaries who were flying together to Peru.  Jared didn't have a phone for travel, so it was nice to get an update.  We did send Jared with Air Tags, so we were able to track him based on where his luggage was during his traveling.   

Jared's MTC companion was Elder Bourgeous - they got along well and both are runners too.  He's quite a bit taller than Jared though (as seen in the photo below where you'll see Elder Bourgeous in the light blue pullover).  

After we sent Jared off, we had one more week with Nathan, which was spent going to the temple and gathering the last bit of things he needed for college (mostly clothes).  It worked out well to pile up Jaden's car when he was here and have him take most of Nathan's stuff with him.  That allowed us to put Nathan on a flight to Utah, with a couple suitcases full of clothes and shoes.  I initially wanted to be there to help him move in, but then it didn't seem necessary after the option to send stuff with Jaden.  Jaden was a huge help, as he also picked up Nathan from the airport in Salt Lake City and dropped him and his stuff off in Provo. I didn't cry when sending Nathan off to college, because I know I'll see and chat with him quite often. It was a little odd sending a kid off to college though - am I really old enough to have a college kid?  Welcome to a new season of life! 

BYU Bound

 

In February, Nathan got his acceptance letter to BYU.  He had applied to BYU, Kansas State, and Oklahoma State and got accepted to all of them.  He decided on BYU, after comparing costs and ease of deferring for a mission.  I would have been happy with any of them, but I'm glad he'll be one day's drive away instead of two - just a little closer to home.  I'm also glad he went ahead with the applications for college and going the deferment route for mission, since it was easier for him to do that process while he could still easily get letters of reference from teachers.