Last Day of Sledding

So.... I took a lot of pictures today. Over 100. Well, I took over 300 but I only posted over 100. Needless to say, today was a great day. We woke up and went to 9:00 church in Wyoming. Once we were back the kids were anxious to get back on the hill. Sophie told me she had never been real sledding before. I'm glad everyone had a great time. Jorja has been so happy. Preston and Sophie sure hit it off. They played together a lot this weekend. I put this picture of Jorja up first because I love it and I didn't want it to get lost in the picture dump below.

Jorja

 Hailey, Jorja, Katlyn

 Mary, Katlyn, Jorja, Hailey

 Love this place

 Sophie

 Dave & Jennifer

 Mary

 Mary's head ~ haha!

 Sadie & Hailey

 Sadie

 Hailey & Katlyn

 Flying Katlyn, Tiny Jorja, Walking Hailey

 Jorja

 Katlyn & Hailey with Dave & Jennifer behind ~ I think Dave is trying to hide

 Jorja's hair, Jennifer & Dave

 Preston, Sadie & Mary ~ Mary's face! I love it!

 Jorja relaxing

 Sophie

 Preston

 Sadie

 Jorja, Katlyn, Hailey

 Katlyn, Jorja, Hailey

 Jorja & Katlyn ~ Dave and Jennifer

 Jorja

 Katlyn

 Hailey

 Dave & Jennifer

 Mary

 Preston & Sophie wanted to go up on the same sled ~ I doubted them, but they made it.

 Preston & Sophie, Sadie & Mary, Hailey

 Jorja & Katlyn, Davie & Jennifer on the 4 wheeler

Hailey, (Mary) Sadie, Sophie & Preston dragging behind

 I love this view

 Preston & Sophie

 Jorja & Katlyn

 Jorja

 Mary

 Katlyn

 Sadie

 Hailey

 Jorja, Hailey, Katlyn

 Jennifer & Dave

 Sadie, Jennifer, Dave

 Preston & Sophie ~ I have a lot of pictures like this, but I like them all....

 Sophie

 Mary

 Jorja, Katlyn, Hailey

 And Mary

 These three don't have any fun at all.

 Hailey, Katlyn, Jorja

 Preston, Sophie, Mary ~ mischievious little guys

 Jorja

 Mary, Jennifer, Dave & Sophie, Katlyn, Sadie

 Katlyn, Dave & Sophie, Mary, Jennifer, Sadie

 Katlyn, Jorja, Hailey

 Sadie

 Sophie, Jennifer, Preston

 Mary

 Sadie

 Hailey & Jorja, Jennifer standing behind them

 Jorja & Hailey look a little nervous

 I guess this is why.

 Katlyn

 Sophie

 I wish I got a better shot at Sadie, because it looks like she's flying!

 Dave

 Katlyn

 Sadie

 Sadie's head

The 4 wheeler was close to running out of gas. I thought this would end the day for everyone. Not so. They climbed the hill for about thirty minutes until the 4 wheeler was good to go again. Now that's dedication!

Jorja & Hailey, Sophie & Preston

 Sadie

 Hailey & Jorja

 Mary

 Preston & Sophie

 Dave

 Jorja & Sadie, Mike, Katlyn, Hailey, Mary ~ Can you tell it was a warm day?

 Katlyn

 Katlyn & Jorja

After sledding we cleaned up and headed home. Katlyn convinced her parents to let us take her home. Look at that exhaustion in the back seat. Those girls sure played hard!

Katlyn, Jorja, Hailey

We arrived home a little before 10:00. Stockton wasn't home yet, but he came home soon after. I stayed up talking with him hearing about his weekend. He went to church with Gavin today. He knew a lot of people in the ward, so that made going to Sunday School and Priesthood fun. He even drove Gavin and his dad home in the jeep. They had a birthday dinner for Gavin's little sister Samantha. It sounded like he enjoyed his weekend. Yay! What a great life we have!

Sophie's Birthday

Jennifer did all the food today. She had a brilliant idea for breakfast. Before she went to bed she left out donuts and oranges. Ha! I love that! We played games and relaxed while we waited for it to warm up. It isn't raining anymore, but the snow is still very wet. Didn't stop everyone from having a great time though!

Katlyn, Hailey, Jorja

 Favorite way to sled

 Mike's driving, Jorja and Sophie are in the front and I see Hailey hanging on the back

 Katlyn and Sadie crack me up. They are practically on top of each other. Mary is watching them.

 Mary, Dave and Jennifer (a.k.a. Katlyn's dad and mom)

 Mary & Sophie up front, Katlyn, Hailey and Jorja hanging behind. This is on the way to the Springs.

 Jennifer and Dave ~ at the Springs!

We had a couple of Spring runs today. So beautiful! On the last run we convinced Dave and Jennifer to go down. Jennifer has had several hip surgeries this year. All because a car hit her on the last day of school. Anyway, we assured her she wouldn't get hurt if she stopped at the gate. Basically, don't go on the ice by the houses. That might not end well. 

Jennifer and Hailey

 Dave

 Stephanie

I am so glad my brothers decided to go with tracks for one of the 4-wheelers. It makes the biggest difference! The regular 4 wheeler has had trouble gripping this trip, the snowmobile is easy to get stuck. This thing is amazing! I'm also glad Mike switched the tracks to the one with power steering. Another huge difference!

 Jennifer and Mary

 Jorja, Hailey, Mary, Katlyn

 Stephanie & Dave

Sophie was so excited to finally celebrate her birthday. We did cake and presents towards the end of the day. Sophie had a birthday party last weekend, so most of the festivities were held then. Today she got a lemon cake and walkie talkies. This is the cake Sophie requested. I think Maysen would approve.

 Sophie ~ 9 years old

 Sadie, Jorja, Katlyn, Hailey

Preston, Mary, Sophie

We went night sledding today. It was so dark, but pretty fun. Mike took Preston and Sophie penguin racing. Sophie was a bit nervous, but she loved it. I'm surprised these girls were brave enough to go night sledding on their first day with icy snow. Lots and lots of fun.

Stockton did better at his diving competition today. He competed on three meter and took third. I'm assuming Chris and Mickey were the ones ahead of him. They are so good! Stockton was pleased with his results. Gavin and his family went back to Aerobatics, but Stockton opted to stay at their house and work on homework. Proud of my boy. Later, Stockton took Gavin bowling. He said, "At least there is one thing I'm better than Gavin at!" Ha!

Katlyn's Here!

It was kind of rainy today. Not fun sledding weather. I hope it clears up. We had a lazy day playing games, reading and relaxing. I spent a lot of time online trying to get Jorja signed up for efy. I didn't do early registration, today was the first day non-early registration people could sign up. Ebony signed up for session 5B. I was refreshing the page for hours trying to find an opening. I could get Jorja into 5A and 5C, but not 5B. There is nothing different about those sessions, it is just the one Ebony happened to sign up for. I called Stella to see if she could switch, but by the time she was able to get ahold of the people the extra spot was gone. I'll keep looking, but right now it is not looking hopeful.

Katlyn and her family arrived this afternoon. Jorja and Hailey were thrilled! I'm not sure what they did with their day, but they were together non-stop. Jorja was in heaven.

Hailey, Katlyn, Jorja

The girls got the basement to themselves. I think they liked that setup. Well, it was only to sleep in, they shared it with others during the day. Still, they giggled ALL NIGHT LONG! Okay, that's an exaggeration. I think they were giggling until two in the morning. That is not an exaggeration.

 Hailey, Jorja, Katlyn

Stockton had his first diving competition today. It was on one meter. He was not happy with his performance. Dang it! He was there for most of the day. Gavin and his dad were competing on platform, so he waited for them. Stockton said Gavin did great. Once they got back, Stockton went to Gavin's trapeze class. Those Wixom's are crazy!

Hailey in Idaho

I took Mike to work today. We are planning on picking him up on our way to Idaho. I wanted the jeep for Stockton, who is not coming with us. I had my visiting teaching interview today. I was wandering around the outside of the church wondering if I had the wrong day when I got a text reminding me about my interview. I wrote back and asked where it was. It was at the Relief Society presidents house. They said it was announced in Relief Society and at the top of the sign in sheet. I am in primary and someone just came into my class while I was teaching and asked if I could sign up for a time. I had no idea. No harm done though. I got to talk to Suzanne Heaton and that was fun. She is the new Relief Society president and super nice. She is going to do a great job.

I spent the rest of the day getting ready for Idaho and getting Stockton ready for his diving competition. I picked him up at school so he could have a few minutes to breathe before he had to leave again. He drove the jeep down to Gavin's house. That is where he is going to stay while we are gone. I followed in the van so I could talk to Gavin's mom for a bit. She took Stockton and Gavin to traxs. They had diving practice down at the U. I asked Stockton how it went. He said it was crowded. There was a team from Seattle there. Stockton hates crowds, so I hope he managed okay.

Once Preston was home we hurried and loaded up a few last minute things then went to pick up the Porge. I stopped at Gavin's house on the way and put Stockton's church shoes in the jeep. We then went to Hailey's house and picked up Jorja and Hailey there. Then to Mike's work and finally we were off! It was pretty rainy and dark. We realized after dark that one of our headlights must be out. That made a huge difference. We loved it when we were able to have the brights on.

Picture of the cabin this morning

 Preston entertained himself on my phone

Mike and I decided to stop at a Japanese restaurant called Fuji. It was quite delicious and we were able to take home leftovers.

Stephanie, Preston, Jorja, Hailey

We got to the cabin around 10:30. It was wet and rainy. I hate rain at the cabin. It ruins the snow for sledding. There was a lot of slushy snow. I have never seen the front completely covered in snow before.

I was sopping wet by the time we were done unloading. It was pretty cold, as the first days usually are. Not as cold as some first days though. We got to sleep just after midnight. We put an electric blanket on the bed, but there is no way that thing was working!

Abide With Me

My friend McKenzie has been dealing with breast cancer. While she was in the midst of her chemo treatments, she was asked to be a model for this statue. I love it. This statue was done by Angela Johnson. She is also the artist who did the Light of the World statues at Thanksgiving Point. This statue is named 'Abide with Me'.

I hope they are able to make smaller versions of this. I would love to have one. McKenzie is moving to Georgia in a few weeks. I'm sure going to miss her. I was talking to her today. She was so tired. She is going through radiation now. She has four more days. I hope she will be able to be healthy enough to move. She is excited to get back together with her husband. He is in medical school in Georgia. I met McKenzie after she lost all of her hair. When I saw a picture of her with hair I couldn't even recognize her. We laughed and laughed about that.

I was at diving for a long time today. I took Stockton and then waited for Preston. Stockton did an awesome 21/2 when I got there. He was so high. He knew he nailed it too. That is fun. Preston did great today. Tyce coached him. Tyce was there with the lesson kids because his little girls were there. There were a lot of lesson people today, so Tyce coached Preston along with his girls. Preston liked that.

Ice Skating

Stockton had the state math test after school. The top four of each grade get to compete at BYU. Stockton has gone every year so far. This time there were a lot of sophomores and juniors taking the test. We'll see if he ends up being able to go. He was surprised that Josh wasn't there. He has gone every year with Josh and thought Josh was taking the test again. I wonder if Josh forgot or just decided he didn't want to go.

The youth activity was iceskating. Stockton asked me if he could stay home. He said that every time he goes iceskating he comes home with huge blisters on his feet that last for months. I told him he could stay home if he promised to always remain active in the church and keep a strong testimony. He laughed and agreed. Sweet! Jorja went to the activity with Audrey. She seemed to have a good time.

Audrey came to church with us on Sunday. It is the first time she has come since she turned twelve a few weeks ago. I talked to the Young Womens and told them to get Audrey out of primary because she would be given the boot. Then I talked to her primary teacher and let her know. I talked to the music teacher and said that Audrey would come in so she could get the boot. The music teacher asked me to talk to the primary president about that. I talked to the primary president and she wouldn't do it. She didn't have the boot here and she said that she didn't think they were going to do it because Audrey hadn't been coming to primary. Who cares if you have the boot? What does it hurt to sing to her and make her feel special? I was spitting mad. I then had to find Jorja and ask her if she would get Audrey from class because she wouldn't know where to go. I had to go talk to the primary teacher and Audrey and let them know the new plan. I had to find the YW leader and tell her not to come and get her. I asked her if they would introduce Audrey to the YW and make her feel special. I forgot to ask Jorja, so I'm not sure if this ever happened. Doing all that made me late for my primary inservice meeting. The primary president was talking to us. One of the things she mentioned was teaching the children as individuals instead of just going through a checklist of what to do, or something like that. I was still so mad and I couldn't believe that she couldn't see that not singing to Audrey was doing exactly what she told us we shouldn't do. I understand that she wasn't prepared, but who cares if you have the little boot as a prop? Audrey sure wouldn't. Let me explain what the boot is. When a child turns 12 they get to leave primary and go to young men or young womens. The 12-13 year olds come into primary sharing time and we sing a song. It is the hello song. YW sings 'Hello', Primary sings 'good-bye'. It is cute and sweet. You don't need anything fancy for this. I know Audrey hasn't come for a few years, but that does not mean she has never come and it does not mean she wouldn't have loved it. Okay. Rant over.

I really wanted to stay up and watch Studio C on Conan tonight, but I was so tired and I have to get up for exercise early tomorrow. I went to bed ten minutes before it came on. Hopefully I can find it on the internet.

No Art

I called Stockton's high school today to ask about how to register for some of the classes he wanted. We couldn't get him signed up for Gaming Development Fundamentals, yet it was in the catalogue. We thought it was because he hadn't had Computer programing. The registrar said they dropped that class. Boo! Stockton would have loved it! I then asked how to sign him up for ART 1010. It is an online class, but would give him an art credit towards graduating with his associates. The registrar was confused and asked for the class number. I told her there wasn't one in the book. She said, "It's in the book? What page?" Page 10. She was surprised it was there. She told me she would check on it and call me back. She called later and said they are not having that class either. Boo again! We ended up changing Stockton's three credit trigonometry class for a four credit integrated algebra class. Weird, but should be an easy math year for him. Much better than taking Calculus three. It will be nice when we can talk to the SLCC person to make sure we have done everything correctly. Senior year should be much easier than his junior year. It still boggles my mind that he will be a senior next year. I'm not sure I'm ready for that.

Coin Toss

Jorja painted my nails today. Look at that crazy unicorn! This picture is actually a few days old. Starting to come off on my thumb, but holding strong everywhere else. We got so wrapped up in this that I missed choir practice. Stockton was so disappointed. My primary girls love to look at my nails, so I'm going to try and have Jorja paint them every few weeks. I know Super Bowl and unicorns don't match, but I thought my girls would love the unicorn and I wanted Super Bowl ones. Wouldn't it be amazing if there was a professional sports team with a unicorn as their mascot?

My family came over for the Super Bowl. We had it on downstairs and in the piano room. Matt and Sam worked on a quilt for Gregory during the game.

Matt

I was rooting for the Falcons. I would be okay with the Patriots winning if Kyle Van Noy made the difference. I thought that would be amazing. The first three quarters were great. Then the Patriots came storming back and took the game into overtime. There is way too much importance on a coin toss. The Patriots won the toss (they also got to call it) and scored a touchdown. That ended the game without even giving the Falcons a chance. The Falcons quarterback is this years NFL MVP, yet he didn't even get a chance to match it. The Falcons could have had the same outcome if they won the coin toss. Way too much importance on that thing. I also didn't understand how come the Patriots got to call the coin toss at the beginning of the game and in overtime. Sad for my Georgia friends.

Gayle's House

My dad asked if we could help get everything out of Gayle's old house. They ordered a dumpster and just wanted to throw everything away. Gayle has been living at my grandma's condo. That is not the house that needed to be emptied. It is the house where she raised her family. Anyway, I went there straight after my exercise class. Mike and Stockton were already there. We worked there for about three hours. A lot got done. We had to stop because the dumpster was full. I was pretty much drained for the rest of the day.

I convinced Jorja to finish watching an episode of Sherlock with me. We watched an episode of Stranger Things afterwords. I was really cold, so it was nice to be cozy with the electric mattress pad on.

Mike got the projector in the movie room working again. We watched The Middle for awhile last night. I fell asleep, of course. My kids like to make fun of me when I do that. Oh well. I was really tired.

Fuzzy Mud

I get to do book club with Preston again! Today was our first meeting. Preston chose the book Fuzzy Mud. We had a cute little group. Three boys and one girl. We have Preston, Josh and Able. I'm not sure of the girls name. Josh is my brother Mike's old girlfriend's son. So weird! We had a great time talking about the book. After we finished Able said to me, "You are really good at this." Ahhh. That made my day.

I called the seminary to find out what I need to do to get Jorja in early morning seminary. She said that they let almost no freshman in. Maybe only three get in. That's too bad. Jorja wants me to leave her course requests like we have them and hope she gets one of the spots. She figures it will be easier to get in seminary then one of the courses she might have to drop.

Jorja spent a lot of time at Katlyn's house after school. I know Hailey was there, and I think Allison. Katlyn's parents took them out for frozen yogurt. Jorja was thrilled.

Mike, Stockton and I played Codenames. It's kind of hard with four people, but still fun.

Course Requests

The Draper temple is closed and Mike enjoyed getting a few extra hours of sleep today. I took Mike to work so that Stockton would be able to drive the jeep tonight. Matt was at my house with Jeff when I got home. I fed Jeff breakfast, changed his diaper and put him down for a nap. Matt was meeting with his department chair. Jeff was still asleep when Matt came back a few hours later. Actually he was sitting in the crib. I don't know if he heard Matt or was just patiently waiting for me to check on him. It was the easiest babysitting ever.

Stockton had a bowling activity. He drove Mike's jeep down to it. I'm glad he feels comfortable driving a stick shift. I think he had fun at the activity. He sent me this picture.

I took Preston to diving today. Jorja wants to take this month off. She had a hard day and didn't feel like diving. She was supposed to give tours to the visiting 5th graders today at school as part of the WEB program. Too bad no one told her. I don't know how they missed her, but she had no idea. She figured out what was going on in the middle of orchestra, but the substitute wouldn't let her leave. She was really disappointed about it.

Preston had fun diving. After a quick stop at Jamba Juice we went straight to Alta. Bubs was reffing a game there. We caught the last five minutes. Preston was really tired by the time we left. He was also shivering. I decided to run him home before I went to pick up Mike from work. I told Preston I would probably be back in 40 minutes. He told me he would probably be asleep. Wow. That's a tired boy. I hurried and picked up Mike. He was at work for a long time! It was after 8:00 by the time I got him.

Stockton and Jorja had to do their course requests tonight. Jorja wanted to do them by herself. She wants to take early morning seminary so she can have more electives. That surprised me. She does not like waking up. She also signed up for woodshop. I was surprised by that also. She signed up for theater and social dance. She decided to take AP Geography, honors math and honors English. Chinese is officially DLI 5H Chinese. She will have an AP Chinese test at the end of this one I think. Should be a busy year for her.

Stockton on the other hand will have an easier year than last year. He is going to try and get his associates before he graduates. He will need to take biology, a diversity class and a fitness class this summer. He signed up for two concurrent math classes, concurrent humanities, government, theater 2, team sports, CAD Mechanic with an engineering capstone class. Hopefully we can figure out how to get him art 1010 and English 2010 online. Sounds crazy, but I think it will be easier than this year. We are meeting with SLCC in a few weeks. Hopefully this will work.

While I was helping Stockton sign up for his classes I kept running back to watch the BYU/Gonzaga basketball game. Gonzaga is ranked 1st in the country right now. BYU ended up losing by 10. They cut Gonzaga's lead to 6 at one point, but choked. It was a fun game though.

Natural History Museum

I got to ride the bus with Preston on his field trip today. Preston loved that. I love that he loves to have me with him. I remember going on this field trip with Jorja years ago. I was put in a group with Preston, Paxton, Brian and Walter. They were great. Too bad I didn't get a picture of them. I think their favorite thing was playing this weird city planning game. They played it twice. They were successful both times. The first time they were 41% successful, the second 74%. They were quite happy with that. One thing that was kind of annoying was Walter brought money to buy a souvenir. I told him we would go to the shop ten minutes before we needed to be at the bus. The shop is basically in the hallway. We hurried towards the shop at the end of the trip. A teacher was sitting at the tables by the shop and said, "No kids in the shop." I told her that Walter had brought money for a souvenir and I would stay with him. She said he would have to come back another day with his parents. I looked at the boys and said, "Well, what do you want to do for the next ten minutes?" This teacher said, "If you are really quiet, you can go in the kid area and see a snake and other things." I asked, "Doesn't that have a sign that says 'no school groups'?" She said yes, but just be quiet and do it anyway. Meanwhile, she won't let us go into the souvenir shop that doesn't have a sign. The frustrating thing was there were a lot of kids and other adults in the shop, but this teacher kept singling out Walter and not letting him in the shop. She is not Walter's teacher. We started to walk away and Walter looked really sad. I asked him what he wanted to buy. He said he really wanted a geode. I went back to the teacher and said, "Could you watch these boys and I will go in the shop and show Walter the different geodes so he can get his souvenir?" She was okay with that. I walked all four big geodes to the edge of the shop until he decided on his favorite. He asked me if I could get him a small amethyst. I brought him a handful and he picked one out. He wanted a small geode also. I held my finger over the display until he told me to stop. I picked out that one for him. He gave me the cash and I bought it. The souvenir shop was packed full with kids from our school. I have no idea why Walter of all people wasn't allowed in there. Walter is such a good kid! He is the one who helped Preston years ago when Preston got on the wrong bus. He told Preston he was on the wrong bus, had Preston go to his house with him, helped Preston call me and waited outside with Preston until I could get there. Walter probably lives twenty minutes away from us. Such a good kid! This was just so weird and random.

The bus got back to the school just after 1:30. That was lucky because I was able to get Stockton and take him to diving. We weren't sure if Mike was going to have to leave work super early or not. I took Stockton to diving and Mike brought Jorja and Preston. It took us forever to get home because of an accident on the freeway. We went the round about way so I stopped at Kneaders for the kids. That took forever. We were waiting for our food by the window for at least ten minutes. The line kept getting longer and longer behind us. I'm guessing the frozen hot chocolate took the longest, the rest should have been super easy. I was so tired by the time we got home. Jorja convinced Mike to put on The Middle. It was a fun and relaxing way to end a really long day. On a side note, it was my mom and dad's anniversary today. They would have been married 48 years.