Bad Call

Jorja's friend Brenton is on a mission right now, doing home MTC. He is in our ward and was a student body officer with her. His mom posted a video of Brenton goofing around during his break. I thought it was so funny.

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Dang it! These are sold out!

Back to Church

We were able to go to church today for the first time since March. It was weird with social distancing and masks. Sacrament bread in little cups with the boys holding two trays so we could throw away the cups in a completely different tray. It was so nice to be back though. Church was only sacrament meeting and it was only 45 minutes, still it was wonderful. Mike, Preston and I went early so we could help sanitize the building. We also helped sanitize it after. There were two different meetings with our ward. We went to the first one. Mike and I were planning on coming back to sanitize the building after the last one as well, but were told we didn't need to come. We get to go to church once in the month of September and October as well. At least it is something!

Bishop Waddoups asked how Stockton was doing. Mike told him about the plates of Elder Smith. He sent him two screen shots as an example. Bishop Waddoups loved it. He says he can tell Stockton has immersed himself in the scriptures, he has the cadence down perfectly. Haha

Jorja is planning on doing a collage for every week of her senior year. Her friend, Seurette did this last year and Jorja loved the idea. Here is her first collage of her senior year.

Giselle painted this on Jorja's car

Brenton and Jake are in our ward and they are both in student government with Jorja. In the student government group chat Jake asked Jorja to come to the church. Brenton was there too. She brought Bear and they hung out for a long time. Too long for my liking. We don't get to see Jorja much, so I was a bit annoyed she left for so long on our family day. I didn't mind for a bit, but look how bright the sky is in the first pictures and how dark it is on the last. I am glad she has such good friends in our ward. Jorja has been the only girl her grade that comes to church for the last few years. I'm glad she is such good friends with the boys.

Jake & Jorja

Bear & Brenton

Brenton & Bear

Jake & Jorja

Date with Brenton

Jorja's art project for step to the u

Final version

Jorja and I spent the morning working on masks ~ John & Cassie

Marie & Mina

Bubs was texting me today asking if we would like a snowsuit we let them use years ago. It was Maysen's purple one. He had the jacket and he is looking for the pants. It was my favorite. I love this picture of Mike and Maysen. They had just gone down the sled hill and Maysen was dazed.

Mike and Maysen

Jorja and I went shopping today. We finally got her snow tires off! Yay! We had fun at the book store. Jorja hates to read, but she loves self help books. We found a couple for her. She wants to start a girls student government book club. Probably a leadership book for that. She is amazing.

Stephanie and Jorja

Jorja had a triple date tonight. She took Brenton, Ella took Aiden and Grace took Lucas. They went to Pizza Limone and went and saw a drive in movie. Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Jorja and Brenton have been friends for years. They have been pretty close recently. She is thrilled to be a student body officer with him.

Jorja & Brenton

Jorja

Jorja & Brenton

Ella, Aiden, Jorja, Grace

Ella and Aiden

Brenton, Ella, Aiden, Jorja, Grace, Lucas

Jorja & Brenton

Kaylee's Stocking

Jorja went out this morning with her friend Kiana. The plan was to go painting in the park. She brought the picnic blanket my grandma gave me and a lot of paints. Too bad it ended up being cold and rainy. Instead they just talked.

Kiana and Jorja

Jorja left her wallet in Brenton's car on Thursday. She picked him up today and he gave it back to her. I think they ended up going to Walmart and maybe somewhere to eat. It's funny because Brenton usually would sit in front of us at church. There was a good long stretch that when Jorja and Brenton sat next to each other, from behind they looked exactly the same. Then Jorja cut her hair a bit. I wonder if it looks like that again. Brenton's cutting his hair soon, maybe they should try and get a picture from behind before he does that.

Jorja and Brenton

For Jorja's last adventure today, she went with her friend Jake to Dessa's birthday party. She sure had a great day today and was so happy. It was awesome.

Jorja and Jake

Mike, Maysen and Preston worked in the duck pond today. It is looking really good. Matt and Sam bought a house and are moving to Rigby, Idaho. Sure going to miss them living close by. They have five kids now and have outgrown my dad's basement. Five kids in one bedroom. Wow. Sam is working her dream job as the head editor at Covenant Communications. With all the problems with Kaylee and then corona, she has been working at home for the last eight months. Well, this week Sam got permission to permanently work from home. So, they are going to move to Idaho. They will be close to Sam's sister and Sam's mom is also moving there. The housing prices are cheaper and they think the air will be better for Anne. It makes sense, just going to miss them. Luckily they will still be relatively close by. It's not like they moved to Virginia or Ohio or New Mexico. Anyway, I got obsessed with finishing Kaylee's Christmas stocking. I wanted Matt and Sam to be able to pack it away with the rest of their stockings before things got chaotic. I had been splitting my time between Kaylee's and Rachel's stocking. I was so close to finishing Kaylee's though. I spent a few hours and finished it today. I am happy with it. Hope Kaylee will like it too!

Kaylee

Merge

Of course the best part of the day was when I got to talk to Stockton. Maysen called while we were talking and Stockton taught me how to merge the calls. I loved having both Maysen and Stockton on the phone for a bit. Love modern technology.

Maysen, Jorja and Preston all started school today. Maysen has a long Monday. She has two two hour classes with a fifteen minute break in between. She has more classes than that, but it is long. Luckily she seemed to like her classes. She really has liked marketing. Super cool. Jorja and Preston had a regular day. Jorja stayed after school to talk to a few teachers. The end of the quarter is next week, so yikes!

Jorja and a few friends had planned to meet up today. They were friends in 8th grade and always joked about Ninjago, for some reason. Anyway, they randomly decided to have a Ninjago reunion. A bit before this was supposed to happen, one of the boys texted Jorja that her old friend was at his house. This friend has now blocked Jorja on all social media. We think it is because of a boy. The boy whose house she was at. So... Ninjago plans were cancelled. Jorja was sad. She hates it when plans are cancelled, and she is sad that she can't even see her friend anymore. The ridiculous thing is Jorja can be super flirty, but she isn't with this boy. She has done nothing that this girl should be upset over.   Jorja is hurt that they aren't friends anymore, because of a boy. Anyway, Brenton was part of the Ninjago group. He was disappointed that plans fell through. So, Brenton and Jorja decided to go out and get yogurt. That picked up Jorja's spirits. One funny story.... I am super late on the blog again..... ugh... but at church we sit behind Brenton and his family. When we were leaving, Jorja pointed out that she and Brenton have the same hair. I kept looking at it and looking at it, and she was right. It looked exactly the same. I'm sad I didn't have them sit down and take a picture from behind. When you couldn't see what they were wearing or height. That would have been funny. Jorja got her hair lightened a few days later, so I missed my chance.

Brenton & Jorja

Awkwardtunity

Mike and Jorja crack me up. Although I would actually prefer them to be listening during sacrament meeting than making up random works. But, it is what it is.

Making up random words is more reverent than making paper hats to stick on the boy sitting in front of us. Somehow both of those things happened during sacrament meeting today.

Brenton

 At least Jorja made it to church. It was iffy there for a bit.

We played The Duck puzzle from Jordyn's puzzle book. That one was so weird! And confusing. But still fun. At one point we had to pass our shoes to different players. Preston ended up with three shoes. Anyway, we had to start over and tape some things back together, but we figured out the key word. We now have two key words. I think we have six more to find. Mike and the kids decided they needed to have a duck inside while playing the Duck puzzle, even though it clearly states that you do not need a duck. Quackletta sat on Mike's lap. Jorja took this picture and I laughed so hard at her caption. My family cracks me up.

Mike & Quackletta

 Jorja put wavy lines on her picture from yesterday.

Jorja, Emily, Hailey

Ducks

Mike sent Jorja and I pictures of the ducks together. Jorja asked if they were friends now. Mike said, "Not for long!" Waddluigi looks like he is up to mischief.

Mike opened his early Christmas present today. He got a duck cam. He is thrilled. Now he can watch the ducks while he is as work. I think he can even control the direction the camera is facing with his phone.

Preston was supposed to go to a First Aid merit badge class tonight. A few hours before he needed to leave there was a text on the group chat letting the scout advisors know that two boys earned that merit badge as 11 year old scouts. Preston was one of them. He was off the hook for tonight.

Jorja had a LONG day today. Bode invited her to go to the temple after school. She was pretty excited about that. She brought a dress and changed after school. There were three boys and three girls. Bode, Brenton and Riley. I don't remember the names of the two other girls that went with them. Each of the boys was able to baptize one of the girls. Brenton baptized Jorja. That was pretty cool. After the temple they went to Chick-Fil-A to eat. Probably because they also needed to drop Jorja off there for work. Jorja forgot her wallet, but she was able to get her break food early. She gets ten dollars worth of food every time she works. Jorja worked the rest of the night until closing. She got home just after 10:30. Mike had the ducks in the house when she came home and she could not get enough of them. Finally we had to put them outside so she could do her math. She is struggling with math right now. It makes her cry. It's hard for Mike and I to help her because they don't have any math books, so there is nothing we can do to get the math back into our brains. We did the best we could with these weird roller coaster/parabola story problems, but she didn't finish. This is what I was worried about with her having a job. She worked super late last night and then again tonight. She went early to school to try and get help, but the math teacher didn't come in for quite awhile. When he did he noticed a boy that had come in after Jorja, he helped that boy first and ended up helping him the entire time. So, Jorja was left with a lot left to do and struggling with how to do it. She is going to try and go early tomorrow, but she didn't get to bed until 12:30.

Jorja

 Kiki & Jorja

 Kiki looks like she is wearing a tie, but that is her duck diaper

ONE Credit

Brett and his girls left this morning. They are hoping to make it to Mike's house in New Mexico before Mike's kids have to go to bed. Hopefully that works out for them. Stockton and I are going to Florida at the end of May. We are crossing our fingers that we will get to see Brett and his family then. We will be near Fort Lauderdale, not Orlando . . . still.

Stephanie and Brett

Jorja had her last day of campaigning today. Ahhh! What a scary thing she is doing. She said it was funny because she would walk with Brenton a lot. They each had their signs running for President. Everyone can tell they are good friends. I'm glad things haven't been awkward between them. Jorja said they have actually gotten closer running against each other. Someone came up to Jorja and asked why she would be a better president than Brenton. She didn't know how to answer that. They asked her to tell them something bad about Brenton. She wouldn't do it. She said she liked Brenton. They said they wouldn't vote for her if she wouldn't say anything bad about Brenton. That was weird. Anyway, Jorja is really nervous today. I took her to Hobby Lobby and the mall to make the day go by faster for her. Mike helped her do a cute video for Instagram. I'm not sure how to put that on here. Jorja has a good shot at winning this election. I think she is matched pretty evenly with Brenton. I have talked to her about not having her confidence take a hit if she loses. She knows there is no one thinking, "Why is that girl running?" Brenton will be hard to beat. He is super popular and really nice. I know Jorja will have no regrets looking back on her campaign. She did a great job. Now we wait.

I had a Chinese meeting and then a missionary meeting tonight. Jorja also had to practice for a stake fireside coming up. I brought her home when she was finished, even though I had to skip out on a little of my missionary meeting. There was a car we didn't recognize in the driveway. It was Papa's! That was a surprise. He waited until Mike got home from the missionary meeting and stayed and chatted for awhile. That was nice.

I have been nervous that we haven't gotten any information about SLCC's graduation. Stockton called on Tuesday and they said everything was all set. I finally texted Josh's mom and asked her what information she received. Stockton checked his bruin email and saw a message that was delivered yesterday, after he called and was told everything was good. The message said he was ONE credit short. WHAT!!! We are sick to our stomachs. There is nothing we can do until morning. I have been paranoid that some little thing will ruin this for Stockton. We sat with an advisor a couple of times to make Stockton's plan. He did everything he was asked. I'm just sick with worry right now.