Goodbye High Priests

General Conference weekends are my favorite weekends of the year. I love sitting and listening to the leadership of the church giving us guidance while I sew in my pajamas. The first session was the Solemn Assembly. It was really cool to sustain President Russell M. Nelson as our new prophet. Rachel and her girls were here for the first session. We had a lot of candy for them to enjoy. I think Grace loved the candy the most. Rachel left after the first session. They were spending the day with her brother and celebrating her niece's birthday. The next time we see Rachel she will have Brett with her! Yay!

Jorja and I made a quick shopping trip after the second session. I got her a shirt and then we went to Michael's to pick up a few things for her campaign. I dropped her off at Madison's house after. When I walked in the door Mike and Stockton were laughing and saying how President Nelson got up to say a few remarks. He then merged the High Priests with the Elders Quorum. Boom! Right off the bat. It was pretty awesome. I think we are going to enjoy the ride of President Nelson as our prophet!

Jaren

Mike got a crown fixed at the dentist this morning. Now his ear is hurting him again. When I say hurting, I mean stop you in your tracks can't move and have to scream kind of pain. I sure hope it goes away. Not fun for him at all.

Preston and I had book club today. I love Inkheart and I am so glad to be able to read it with Preston. I hurried home from book club to say goodbye to Rachel. She is taking her kids to Bountiful for a family reunion. Meatfest. Sounds delicious.

Jorja stayed after school to retake her English test. Jaren's mom brought her back home. Jaren is her friend that just moved here from California. I got to talk to her mom for awhile. That was nice. I can't remember her name though. I know Jaren's older sister's name is Breezy. We went to school with Jaren's mom's brother. Shandon Cole. He was a student body officer with Mike. Fun family.

Jorja and Jaren

Rachel came back from Meatfest and brought us some meat! Yay! Mike, Preston and I have been playing a lot of Pandemic Legacy Season 2 lately. We have been loving it!

Inauguration

I took Jorja and Madison to the temple this morning. The pictures after aren't very good, but documentation was done.

Jorja and Madison

Jorja also went to the gym with Madison after school. I'm glad she has found a good friend. I took Jorja to Zupas. We just got some food and brought it home. She was in a hurry, but it was fun to go on that quick run with her. Inauguration was tonight for the new student body officers. Jorja had me take her picture before she left. I liked them all, so I put most of them in here. The first one is my favorite. Feel free to scroll quickly through the rest! They are all pretty much the same, but it is my Porge!

Jorja

Rachel is in town! She came over tonight after spending the day letting her kids play with Anne and Ella. I met her at my mom's grave.

Eve, Rachel, Marie, Mina (Grace was sleeping in the car)

 Marie, Stephanie & Eve, Mina

Jorja got home super late from inauguration. Her friend Travin is the new student body president. He has been the junior class public relations officer this year, so that is how Jorja got to meet him. He is super nice and everyone likes him. Jorja's so happy he won.

Travin and Jorja

Jorja was hoping to get a picture with all the freshman class officers, but they all left before that happened. She was able to snag a picture with Marshall. He's the freshman historian.

Marshall and Jorja

Jorja usually hangs out with the junior and sophomore officers. She feels more accepted by them. Because most of the junior officers were running for office, the sophomore officers adopted her today. She stayed after to help clean up then went to In and Out with the sophomore officers. She came home really late for a school night!

Finn, Jorja, Ellie, Sam, Carter

Stockton also had a late night. It was 'bring a friend to diving' day. Stockton drove and brought his friend Jake. Gavin also brought a few people. Preston was just along for the ride. It sounds like everyone had a great time. We found out later that Jake is deathly afraid of large bodies of water. His family stayed at a beach house over the summer and he spent the entire time inside throwing up. Now that is a good friend. He even went off 5 meter first thing. Impressive. Stockton dropped Preston off when diving was over then headed out with everyone else to go bowl. He had a great time and hopefully wasn't too tired the next morning for his early English class!

Gym

Jorja had her first day at the gym today. She walked there with Madison. She LOVED it! Evan was there playing basketball with his dad, so that was cool. Madison's mom brought Jorja home. Yay! I hope this turns into a habit!

Biz Town

I got to help at Biz Town today. It was so much fun. I rode down with Megan Okerlund. It took us awhile to find the place, but we made it in time. We had a meeting explaining the day. I was teamed up with Suzanne Heaton at REAL Salt Lake. The goal was to try and make a profit by the end of the day. We for sure didn't do that! There was one kid that would not stay and help. He just wanted to wander. Once someone came to buy something and I was the only one there. I had to tell them sorry. We were told not to do their jobs for them. They fail or succeed on their own, it is supposed to be a safe place for failure. I guess they usually have REAL beanies to sell. We didn't have that this year. Just fun dip and weird watches. Also, they could buy tickets to watch REAL highlights. Our business was only allowed to accept checks. Lots of kids walked away when they found that out. Still it was a fun day. Jorja worked at Smith's when she was here. She told Preston the best place to work was Maverick. He ended up working at the bank and loved that. It is great because the kids need to cash their checks on their break, so he was always busy. Our kids had to try and convince people to come to our store. This is a pretty awesome field trip.

 This is where I (Stephanie) worked.

 The mini bleachers face a TV where the kids could watch highlights.

 Burke, CEO of Maverick, giving a speech at City Hall

 Preston at his job.

Preston and I got to eat lunch together. We had ordered a Chick-Fil-A meal. I'm so glad he still loves hanging out with me. I was quite tired at the end of the day. It was fun, but exhausting!

Jorja has been asking me if she could get a gym membership at Dimple Dell. Madison has a membership and walks there after school. Jorja thought that sounded fun and she has been wanting to start working out. We got her a year membership today. I hope she uses it! I would love for her to get in the habit of exercising a couple of times a week!

Nothing

Nothing too exciting today. I spent most of the day working on my project. I did get a ride to Preston's field trip tomorrow. I'm excited I don't have to drive downtown, and I'll get to hang out with Megan! I also talked to Kanani for awhile. She let me borrow one of her REAL Salt Lake shirts. That is the business I have been assigned to help with.

Chicago, Illinois

Today was Missionary Sunday! First we had a mission farewell in our ward. Thomas Mogensen is going to the Alpine Mission. I think it covers Germany and Switzerland. It is actually the mission his dad grew up in, so that is awesome. Thomas gave an amazing talk. I loved it. He talked about the saxophone. There are two different bad performance classes at Alta. Wind Ensemble, which is the super hard class to get into and Concert Band, which is not as hard to get into as Wind Ensemble. Thomas was in Concert Band and he wanted to be first saxophone so bad. He practiced and practiced. He asked for advice from everyone he could think of. He prayed and prayed. When the chairs were announced, he was third chair. He was devastated. Then he found out that you could challenge and move up chairs if you work hard. He worked and worked, but he never moved up. Around November his band teacher talked to him. He said he noticed how hard he was working and that a spot just opened up in Wind Ensemble. Until this time Thomas thought there would be no possibility of him being in that class. If he had gotten first chair like he wanted, he wouldn't have put in as much work as he did and wouldn't have been able to have an opportunity that he thought was out of his reach. Anyway, he did great. The bishop remarked afterword about how far Thomas has come. His talk when he moved into the ward was about 45 seconds long and just a disaster. Big difference this time. We went to the Mogensen's afterwords. Mike and Stockton are their home teachers. Thomas and his dad have also been coming to my Gospel Essentials class. 

Speaking of Gospel Essentials, while we were there Stockton was looking at his phone. He was on Instagram and saw a story saying Brandon was opening his mission call. What! We didn't even know he had his papers in! Well, we knew he was working on them, so it wasn't a huge surprise. Brandon is two months older than Stockton, which makes it just a little bit crazy/scary. We went down to watch Brandon and make our guesses. Maysen even texted in her guess....and she won. She won when Taylor was leaving too. We brought home a giant bag of gummy bears as her prize.

Preston

 Preston, Stockton, Mike, Jorja

Brandon has been called to Chicago, Illinois and will be on a Spanish speaking mission. He goes into the Mexico MTC on July 24th. How exciting for him! I think he was happy with his call.

Stockton and Brandon

Stockton and Jorja also had another friend opening his call today. They toyed with the idea of going over to watch it, but there was snow and we got home late. They watched him open his call live on Instagram stories. Technology is awesome!

Region

Jorja had her Region theater competition. She hasn't been able to practice with her partner much because her partner is directing the 'One Act' play. Jorja left pretty worried and just hoping not to embarrass herself. Jorja had to dress like a boy for this scene. This is what she came up with.

Boy Jorja

Jorja was there all day! She definitely didn't embarrass herself. She and Lindsey are now headed to the state theater competition! Yay Porge!

Jorja and Lindsey (Sophie and Zoe in the back)

The Jazz have been so much fun to watch lately. One thing that makes them fun to watch is it is obvious they love playing together. I follow a few players on Instagram. I love this post by Rubio. How awesome.

Mike and I had a dinner group tonight at the Phillips' house. Our ward is starting dinner groups and we are so happy. We had something like this in Washington and just loved it. Mike has suggested it in every other ward we have lived in, but no takers. Until now. It was cool how it was run. There was a signup sheet that went around for several weeks. The date was already picked. Becky was in charge. She had a host family and then put random people at each house. We ate at Dave and Dianna Phillips and had dinner with the Doug and Stephanie Waddoups, Mike and Susan Teuscher, and Greg and Sam Warby. It was fun and we got to know the other couples better. I hope they keep doing this.

End of the Quarter

The 3rd quarter ended today and Jorja pulled another 4.0!!! Stockton did too, but we expected him to. Jorja had to get her grades up in three different classes. We didn't think she would pull it off in Chinese. The thing that was frustrating with Chinese was that Jorja had SIX missing assignments. Except that she had turned them in. She had turned in each assignment four times. Twice online and twice she turned in hard copies in case her online assignments weren't getting in. We had no idea if her teacher would put those assignments in, or what grade Jorja would get on them. Luckily when her teacher added them her grade went up to an A! Yay!

Jorja spent the evening with Madison. It is her 16th birthday tomorrow. She had Jorja and a few other friends over tonight. Jorja was there for a long time. She came back really happy.

Jorja and Madison

War Chapters

I spent most of the day today working on a project for Maysen. I hope she likes it. While I have been working on it, I have been listening to Podcasts. I listened to some talks from John Bytheway from education week. He did a talk on the war chapters in the Book of Mormon. I LOVED it. I'm going to have the kids listen to it for Family Home Evening. One of my favorite parts was when he was telling the story of Lehonti. Amalickiah has control of the lesser half of the Lamanite army. He wants to talk to Lehonti. Lehonti has run away with the larger part of the army, those that do not want to go to battle against the Nephites. Amalickiah sends messages to Lehonti to come down from Mount Antipas and talk to him. Lehonti was 'fixed and determined' not to come down. They send another message. Nope, he's not coming. Three times Amalickiah tried to get Lehonti to come down, but he was 'fixed and determined' not to come. Finally Amalickiah comes up Mount Antipas and sends another message. Come down 'just a little bit'. Lehonti does and is eventually killed by Amalickiah's deceit. John Bytheway compared this to Satan. There are so many things that we are 'fixed and determined' not to do. Satan then gets us to 'come down just a little bit' and is able to gain control over us. Bytheway also likened Amalickiah to Satan. Both were cast out. Both wanted to be king. Both only cared about themselves. Both used deceit to get what they wanted. I can't remember the others. The entire talk was filled with so many great analogies. When Helaman leads his small army past Antiparah. The Lamanites didn't want to come out of their stronghold, but when they saw this small army they thought they could come out for just a little while and then go right back. Helaman's army led them farther and farther away until they were surrounded. If we choose to come out of our strongholds it is easy for us to be lead farther and farther away from our principles. Anyway, if you have a chance to listen to this talk you won't regret it. Search John Bytheway on the podcast app on your phone. Listen to the War Chapters. The Three Best Hours of the Week talk is also really good. I'm saving that for another family home evening.

PE Done

Jorja stayed after school to take her fitness test for her PE class she is trying to test out of. She passed! Yay! That is nice to get over with. There are a lot of seniors in her class. I think that would be  a lot of pressure. You have to do these fitness tests and pass them or you won't graduate. Glad Jorja got this over with.

We had a Relief Society birthday dinner today. There were tables set up in the primary room. When I got there I saw two people sitting at a table that I didn't recognize. I went up to them and asked if I could sit by them. They looked at me and said that I should pick another table. They were the performers and wanted this table to fill up last, or something like that. I was so embarrassed. I was just trying to be nice. I kind of walked in a daze to another table and asked Carlee if I could sit by her. Luckily she said yes. I looked around while dinner was being served. There was two free tables, but the one with the performers was completely filled. I guess I wasn't cool enough to sit there. During the performance, the lady that told me I couldn't sit there told a story of her Relief Society birthday dinner the week before. She had walked by a table of people she knew very well, then walked by another table, then decided to sit by someone she didn't know and it was such a great experience. She then challenged us to put ourselves out of our comfort zone like she did. THAT IS LITERALLY WHAT I DID AND SHE TOLD ME TO GO AWAY! Whatever.

Jorja was a server at the dinner with Olivia and Ebony. She looked super cute. It was fun to have her there.

HERBI3

Jorja spent the day with Madison. It was the theater club's spirit night at Zupa's, so I took the kids plus Madison to dinner there. As we were coming home I saw Herbie! I was excited. The kids had no idea why. We'll have to watch some Herbie Goes Bananas sometime.

Jorja had a combined activity at the Johnson house. Karaoke night. Madison went with her. She LOVED it! I wish I could have witnessed Jorja in all her glory!

Neurologist

Stockton has spring break at SLCC. Yay! No early English class for him! Jorja had her neurology appointment today. I checked her out of biology and we drove about a half hour away. We waited there for a long time! When we were meeting with the doctor she was looking at Jorja's file and said, "It looks like you were concerned with the possibility of MS?" WHAT? NO! I just want a doctor to tell me that nothing is wrong with Jorja's brain! I guess the pediatrician was concerned Jorja might have MS. We talked to the doctor for awhile, I showed her the video of Jorja's seizure, and the picture of her face slightly drooping below right after the seizure. (The video was on our slack chat and I have no idea how to get it off.)

Anyway, the doctor said that the video was extremely helpful and there is no question that Jorja had a non-epileptic seizure that was caused by severe emotional trama. Wow. This makes sense. The seizure happened when we were in Australia. It was four days after Isaac broke up with her and the day after Grace told her that she was together with Isaac. To say Jorja was devastated is an extreme understatement. I have talked to Jorja a lot since October. We have talked about how there are other reasons we are counseled not to date until you are 16. It isn't just the physical temptations, but emotionally you are not capable of handling certain things. That was the case with Jorja. Her heart shattered. She actually felt more betrayed by Grace than she did Isaac. She has worked hard to put herself back together. She has become friends with Isaac again, but I don't think her friendship with Grace will ever be repaired. It's so dumb. I wonder if Grace thinks the two months she had with Isaac was worth losing Jorja's friendship. (Jorja wouldn't have had a claim on Isaac forever, I think Jorja wouldn't have been so hurt if Grace would have waited a couple of weeks before she decided to become a thing with Isaac. Jorja had spent hours talking to Grace about everything. Grace knew how much she liked Isaac and how hurt Jorja would be. Grace chose to hurt Jorja, and Jorja knew it.) The other dumb thing is after Grace and Isaac got together, most of Jorja's friends that were in that group stopped talking to Jorja. That made it so much harder to deal with the loss of Isaac. This is why Evan is my favorite. Evan and Hailey. They made sure Jorja knew she was important. They scooped up her broken pieces and helped her put herself back together. They didn't expect anything from her either. They were just there. Thank heavens for them!

Enough of the sad talk. Jorja and I had fun for the rest of the day. We went out to lunch and went swimsuit shopping. We didn't get back to school until five minutes before it ended. Jorja ran in to talk to her math teacher and figure out when she can retake the math test. Even if we had skipped lunch and shopping she would have missed that test. It was a fun day today and I'm glad that Jorja doesn't have a bigger problem. Like brain cancer. I feel relieved.

Madison

I have no idea when this picture was taken, but I liked it. Hopefully I haven't already put it on the blog. This is Madison and she is really nice to Jorja. She is a sophomore, but they are only about seven months apart. I think her birthday is the end of March. Plus, she lives in our neighborhood, so hopefully it will be easy for Jorja to hang out with her.

Madison and Jorja

Today was stake conference. We were wondering if Mike would be released from his stake calling. They were supposed to release him from that months and months ago. Nope. He didn't get released, but he also didn't get sustained. It's like he is in this nowhere land right now. I'm sure it will work out eventually.

Fishes, Diving, and EFY

Today was a crazy busy day. Lots of things happening at the same time. I will break things up into three different sections. First, Maysen and Preston. Maysen is taking an Oceanography class at Utah State. They had a field trip at the aquarium by our house. Maysen asked if Preston would want to meet her here and go with her. He was SO EXCITED! Preston is the most vocal about missing Maysen and jumps at every chance to see her. Maysen told them they would have to be at the aquarium at 9:45 at the latest or Preston might not be able to in with her. Mike was there right on time. Maysen was driving through Bountiful. Oh boy. Once the bus arrived they wouldn't let anyone off of it because one more bus was still coming. Preston could see Maysen, but couldn't get to her.

Preston waiting for Maysen

 Maysen and Preston! Preston's much happier now!

 Preston eating lunch.

Mike picked up Preston around 2:00. He said Preston loved the field trip. Maysen headed back on the bus to Logan. How fun that he got to see her for a few hours. I wish I did! I couldn't see Maysen because Stockton had his regional diving competition. It was held at the U, so I needed to volunteer. Gavin's dad picked up Stockton at 6:30 this morning. Warm ups started at 7:00. Stockton and Gavin weren't scheduled to dive for a few hours, so Gavin's dad took them to breakfast. I was assigned to put the scores in the computer. It is an easy job, but I got soaked. The computer got soaked. Too bad for me, my cross stitch bag got soaked. I forgot it was under my chair. Once I realized I hurried and pulled everything out. I had all the papers and the fabric drying on the giant foam square thing behind me. So glad the red didn't bleed! Stockton did great on one meter. He placed high enough to go to Nationals in Florida. Yay! He actually wanted to go this year. Stockton has earned a spot to go to Nationals on other years, it just never worked out. Regionals are usually on Saturday and Sunday. They will have 3 meter on Saturday and 1 meter on Sunday. Then Nationals will have 1 meter on Saturday and 3 meter on Sunday. It is quite annoying. Anyway, this time they had one and three meter both on Saturday. It made for a really long day, but yay! 1 meter will be on Saturday at Nationals. 3 meter will be on Sunday, so Stockton will only compete in 1 meter. Here are a few of his dives.

Front 1 1/2

Front 2 1/2

Back 1 1/2

Inward 1 1/2

Mike dropped off Preston at the aquarium and then hurried up to the U to watch Stockton. He was able to watch him dive most of 1 meter. He had to leave to go back and pick up Preston and take Jorja up to Orem. He dropped Jorja off in Orem and raced back to Salt Lake to watch Stockton. He got to see the end of his 3 meter competition. Yikes! That's a lot of driving! Stockton also earned a spot to go to Nationals in 3 meter, but he is going to decline it because of the Sunday thing. I also worked the computer during this event. Stockton texted me after one of his dives and said that Gavin wasn't going to do his 205 (back 2 1/2). I showed the text to Gavin's dad who was announcing next to me.  Then Gavin failed his 107 (front 3 1/2). You can't fail two dives and make it to Nationals. He had to do it and land it, but he did not want to. His mom wasn't very happy with him. They had already bought tickets and everything. Stockton got Mickey to talk to him. I watched Mickey try to calm Gavin down, which raised my opinion of Mickey. Gavin went up on the board. He turned around like he was going to go for it, then he turned back around like he was just going to jump off, then he turned around again. He threw it and landed it. That was a lot of pressure. He was so scared. I don't know why he signed up for that dive. He hadn't even tried it for six months I guess. He was always too scared to do it in practice. Anyway, he made it to Nationals too, so that is great. Now we just have to find some cheap plane tickets!

Stockton ~ reverse tuck ~ there is a maximum degree of difficulty,

so Stockton had to lower some of his dives to meet that qualification.

Inward 1 1/2

Front 2 1/2

The dreaded back 2 1/2 ~ Stockton landed it!

Inward 2 1/2

Jorja got to go to a mini EFY today. It was held in Orem. Mike dropped her off, but she ended up hanging out with several boys. She loved that!

Evan, my favorite, and Jorja

 Isaac and Jorja

 Evan, Shafer, Jaren, Jorja, Dallin, Isaac

Jaren moved here from California at the start of the year. Jorja was so excited he was able to come. His family just bought a house in our neighborhood, although they won't be in our ward. They are staying in a rental house at the moment. I drove up to Orem to pick up Jorja. She tried to get some of the boys to ride home with us. They weren't allowed to. She found out later they went to In and Out. She was a bit sad. She says that sometimes she wishes she was a boy so she could hang out with them. She has more close friends that are boys than girls. Jorja would not enjoy being a boy. She is way too girly for that!

Dance

Jorja likes her hair a lot more now that she curled it. She is still getting used to the blonde parts though.

Jorja

Preston and I had the first book club with the new book. He chose Inkheart. I love that book, so this is going to be fun! Only two other kids signed up for this book. The thickness of it probably scared some away. Jack who is one of Preston's great friends and a girl named Camden.

I took Stockton and Gavin to diving today. They have a regional meet tomorrow, so their coach insisted everyone come today. It was super crowded with divers from California and Colorado. I think other places as well. As I was walking down the steps leading to the doors of the pool I said hi to a random lady. We ended up talking through the entire warmup, which was several hours long. She is from Colorado, but now I can't remember her name.

Stockton and Gavin had to leave a bit early so we could get Gavin to his ballroom performance. We were about thirty minutes late. Traffic was horrible. Hopefully he didn't get in too much trouble. He was still there about thirty minutes before the show started. It was a dance company/ballroom performance, I think. Stockton took Jorja and Madison. Madison is Gavin's ex-girlfriend. Gavin isn't too friendly with her, but because of him Jorja and Madison have become good friends. She lives in Pepperwood too, but a different ward. Jorja needs more 'girl' friends, and I really like Madison, so this is great. They seemed to have a fun time and even went out to Freddy's with Gavin afterwords.

Stockton, Madison, Jorja

 Madison and Jorja

 Jorja and Gavin

 Hello! From Gavin's sister, Zoe

 Gavin, a ballroom friend, Stockton, Madison, Jorja

 Madison, Gavin, Stockton