Youth Activities

I served as Young Women's 2nd counselor for over a year and then more recently as Secretary for a few months.  I recently got released from Young Women's and called as a Youth Sunday School teacher (currently over the 11-13 year old youth class, combined with boys and girls).  I had fun serving with the Young Women, but I look forward to teaching the youth. I got to teach some of the younger YW lessons this year, and I really enjoyed that.  So I'm happy to still be teaching, but I won't be involved with the activities and Sunday young women lessons anymore. Here are some of our fun activities from the past few months that I have photos for:  Races and games, painting and carving pumpkins, and pizza making.  I wasn't overseeing these activities for the past few months, but I got to attend all the youth activities.  The last collage is a couple of pictures of the YW - not all pictured, but we lost 4 YW with the boundary changes and gained 2 new from the other ward.  

 

Old friends and new callings

We had a couple of Alex's high school friends come stay with us for a couple of days.  It had been a long time since he had seen them, and it was fun to chat and hang out with them.  Alex showed them around and we took them to a couple of the local restaurants.  They came to church with us and played games with the kids on Sunday afternoon.  Alex and I actually had to stay after church that day because the Stake President extended a calling to Alex to serve as the new Bishop of our ward.  That's a big deal because he oversees and leads our whole church congregation.  He provides counsel, extends callings to ward members, oversees welfare and financial needs, leads the youth, and many other things.  Everyone knew that our previous Bishop was due for a release and speculating who would be called next.  Some of our friends thought it would be Alex, but he didn't think it would be him.  It was a pretty daunting and overwhelming responsibility for him to accept, but I know he'll do well.  He is great at talking with people and has leadership skills and experience with public speaking from his job.  Now the decision making... well, he'll have to get better at that!  I really felt the Spirit as the Stake President was extending the call, and I know the Lord will help us serve.  People have asked how I'm feeling, and honestly I think the weight is on Alex's shoulders.  I feel like he has to support the whole congregation, and I just have to support Alex.  

The Stake President also came and spoke with our kids before they announced it at church.  They didn't seem surprised - more just like "okay, cool".  They're great kids already, so they don't have to worry about living up to higher standards or something with people watching them as "Bishop's kids," if that's a thing.  

Not only did Alex get sustained as Bishop, but they also re-organized 3 wards in our area with boundary changes.  The wards are organized by geographical boundaries, so members are assigned to wards based on where they live.  Sometimes they re-organize the boundaries to balance out the number of ward members or help boost ward membership numbers for wards whose numbers are low.  So Alex basically also has to welcome some new ward members and call them to positions in the ward, and we lost several members to another ward.  So many positions need to be filled or presidencies re-organized.  

It's a good thing we still go to the temple once a month, because we need the extra peace and blessings the temple brings!

Alex's high school friends (left) and the new Bishopric (right)

Halloween

Our pumpkin patch group is getting smaller each year - just Savannah went this time.  The boys went separately for a youth activity.  

The boys made their own knight costumes this year, since I didn't have the time or energy to put costumes together.  I did Savannah's hair 3 different times for her costume (activity days, trunk-or-treat, school costume parade, and trick-or-treating).  She dressed as one of the girls from Little Women.  I did buy the hoop skirt online and found a skirt at the thrift store.  I made her shawl from a table runner at the thrift store.  That was the extent of my participation in the costumes this year.  

The boys did get Alex and I to throw together a last minute king and queen costume for the ward trunk-or-treatment party, but I didn't get any pictures of us.  I made a simple castle from a presentation board for our trunk.  

We tried out moambe chicken for our Halloween dinner.  I figured it sounded scary... it was pretty disgusting. It was smelling good until I added the tomato paste and peanut butter.  Blah!  Ever since Weston did a school presentation last year on the Democratic Republic of Congo, he's had this fascination with trying their national dish. He even had a moambe chicken dance.  I finally got the ingredients and tried it out.  We won't be making it again, but we tried it.  At least we had cupcakes, sherbet and 7-up drinks, and lots of sweets to get the taste out of our mouths.  Weston didn't think it tasted too bad, but he did end up puking it up a few hours later, so it didn't agree with his stomach.  It has an interesting combination of ingredients.  It also included ginger root and peanut oil.  I never use peanut oil, so I'm wondering if that added to Weston's upset stomach.    

Savannah and I went trick-or-treating with some of her friends.  A nearby neighborhood does a pretty good job of making it fun.  The decorations are pretty impressive, some of them hand out full-size candy bars, and one house hands out popcorn and cotton candy.  Our next door neighbor always does a great job on decorations too.  They decorated their boat like a pirate ship.  

Alex and the boys went to a friend's house and watched The Sixth Sense.     

October Misc

We enjoyed General Conference the first weekend in October.  We watched the Sunday afternoon session with friends.  

I've been taking the kids out to eat when they have a minimum day, which works out well because we don't often go out to eat (too expensive).  They look forward to their special lunches out.  Savannah got to go out for lunch at Chili's.  The cheesecake was yummy!  

Savannah's last Primary Program at church was in October.  She did a great job on her speaking part and on the singing.  She will move up to the Young Women's program in January.  

Savannah has been into arts and crafts lately.  She does some pretty amazing paintings.  

I missed her jogathon at school, but I got a few pictures from the teacher.  Her teacher posts photos quite often, so I have some photos of Savannah during the school day too. 

Sailing

Alex, Jared, Owen, and I got to spend a day sailing with one of Alex's colleagues.  We sailed until the beautiful sunset and got to see a whole pod of dolphins.  Jared and Owen steered the boat for a good portion of our trip.  The only downside was Weston and Savannah didn't get to be there with us.  Maybe next time!  We ended off the day with fish and chips.   

 

First Band Concert

Weston tried something new this year too.  He really enjoys playing the trombone in his beginning band class.  He had his first concert in October, in which they played 2 songs - Ode to Joy and Wack-a-mole.  You can't see him very well because he's in the back, but they got to stand up randomly during the wack-a-mole song.  Weston has made some friends in band too.  Band seems to be Weston's thing and where his people are found.  

 

Fall Sports

 Owen played freshman football, which started in June... and finished up the last week of October.  They won 3 and lost 3 games.  A couple of the games got cancelled and one was changed to a JV game so it conflicted with his choir concert.  Owen trained during practices to play quarterback but never got a chance to try it in a game.  He played linebacker and various other spots, including punter.  He got to be #10, which is what number Papa was when he played (at least one of Papa's seasons - not sure if he wore other numbers).  Owen enjoyed playing with his friend Ollie, who he has been friends with since elementary school.  He really liked his coach too.  Owen worked hard.  Practices were long and tough, but he enjoyed playing.  It was good for Owen to try out something new this year.  

 Papa

Savannah is still enjoying hip hop.  She did a Beetlejuice dance for the fall performance.  She got to do a "trust fall" for part of the dance.  It was interesting doing her make-up for this one!  

Jared finished his senior year season of cross country.  He made a lot of progress since last year when his goal was to break 18 minutes for 3 miles.  He beat that goal during his time trial at the start of the season, with a 17:27.  So then his new goal for the season was to break 17 minutes.  He did that during his 3rd race, with a personal record of 16:38.  Following that, he hoped to break 16:30, but didn't quite get there.  All of his times were less than 17:37, which was the hilly race.  He had hoped to get a new PR on the flat course for the last race but didn't quite get there (17:05).  The team also didn't qualify for CIF, not being able to beat the one team standing in their way.  They had beat that team by 1 point in a previous meet, which was really exciting, but then that team did really well on the flat race course during the last qualifying meet.  The ending was a little disappointing, but Jared had a great season and worked hard.  Just for perspective, his PR's for sophomore and junior years were 18:48 and 18:13.  Freshman year was a Covid year, so they didn't race.  He dropped over 2 minutes from his PR from 10th grade to senior year. Jared got invited to an award's luncheon one day, although he wasn't chosen for athlete of the week. It was an honor to be selected to go though.  

He got a Captain Award and also received the one unique award for sportsmanship and character.  His name was put on a plaque to be displayed at school for that special award.  Jared made awards for the coaches, by spray painting his own racing shoes gold and mounting them on a plaque with their names.  The funny thing about that is Jared got the assistant coach's first name wrong.  They call the coach by his last name, and Jared thought he knew the first name, but it turns out it wasn't quite right!  He did later fix the name plate, but he was pretty embarrassed about it.  Jared also gave a speech at the awards banquet and also at an earlier team banquet, which was very touching.  He is a great leader and inspiration for his teammates. He really liked his 2 coaches as well, and they thought very highly of him.    

One thing that I did was run in a meet this season!  At one of the local meets, they offered a coaches and community race.  I decided the morning of that I would try to run it.  Owen ran with me at the last minute as well, to support me and cheer me on.  I needed it, because it was SO hard to run in the heat of the day and a hilly course.  I had no idea how hard it would be.  I've been running 5.5 miles one morning a week (along with other 1-3.5 mile days), and I can run 5.5 in about 48-49 minutes, so I was expecting to run an 8:30 pace for the 3 miles.  However, by noon that day, it was pretty hot and I wasn't prepared for hills.  I ran it in 29:19, which was pathetic.  I guess it's been 28 years since my last cross country race in high school (which was 2 miles)...but I should have done better.  I was the slow mom out there, struggling to finish.  I'm a better fan these days than participant.  I did make it to all 7 of his races, so it was fun to cheer him on.