Funnel Cake World

Today was our last full day with Jorja and we enjoyed every second of it. Jorja spent time doing her home mtc, then she was able to say good-bye to her friend Eliza.

Jorja

Eliza & Jorja

Jorja & Eliza

Once Jorja's classes were over for the day, we went down to Provo to try an escape room. We really needed Stockton for this one. This room had only a 20% success rate. I picked it because it had a slide and I thought that would be so fun! The slide said only 14 years old and under. BOOOOOOO! We almost finished this room, but it really needed more than 5 people. It was still fun though.

Jorja, Mike, Stephanie, Preston, Maysen

We drowned our sorrows at Funnel Cake World. Just kidding, we were having a great time. And how can you not love a place called Funnel Cake World? It was just as delicious as you would imagine.

Maysen, Mike, Jorja, Preston

What a fun last day with our Porge. We are all sure going to miss her!

Oh! One random side note. Maysen gave Stockton and Alyssa her old block meal card she had. They tried it out to see if there were any meals left on it. There were seven left. Score! Glad Maysen kept it all these years.

Memorial Escape

I made waffles for everyone with morning. We had lots of toppings. Rachel was surprised how many toppings her kids put on their waffles. Especially Eve. Glad they liked them! Once breakfast was over Rachel took Brett to the airport. He drove with Rachel out here but flew back today. That was nice of him to spend his three day weekend this way. Brett will be in Alabama for training for awhile. This way Rachel and the kids get to have fun while he is gone. Glad we got to see him, even if it was only for a day.

Mina

Stephanie & Brett

Stockton, Jorja and I went shopping for FSY stuff and saw this game. This has got to be the most boring game ever. At least if it is the way my dad had us play Uno without any rules when we were younger.

Rachel took her girls up to her brother's house to help him pack. He is moving to Idaho next month. I started wondering if this would be the last time all of my kids would be at home together. Before Jorja leaves on her mission and Stockton gets married. I know we will have random quick times this summer, but here we have a full week before Stockton and Jorja start FSY. I wanted to do something fun. We decided on an escape room at Gardner Village. We had never tried this one before. I love doing escape rooms with my family. We got out of this one pretty fast. It was called 'Malcom's Missing Millions.' There was a computer there and Preston started messing with it. Hacker.

Preston, Stephanie, Stockton, Jorja, Maysen, Mike

We tried to find a couple of places to get a treat, but everything was closed - until we found U-Swirl. We also grabbed a few treats at Gourmandise. Once we were home we played Mario Party. I kept looking at everyone playing and tried to memorize the moment. It was so nice to have all of them together. I sure love them more than they will ever know!

Rachel and her girls came back late tonight. They were exhausted! Still got a cute picture of Grace with Bear though!

Grace & Bear

Missed Flight

Mike, Maysen, Preston and I headed to Logan around 3:00. I dropped off Bear at my dad's house right before. So glad he is willing to watch him! We drove to University Inn. It is right smack dab in the middle of campus, right next to the TSC. We had reservations to stay here when Maysen was going to graduate, but covid shut everything down. So, we made it up there today. We even got Aggie Ice-cream with our room. Haha. Jorja came over after we got there. Jorja checked her flight information while she was there. That is when she made a horrible discovery. Jorja is flying to Arizona on Monday, March 7th. She realized today that she booked a flight for Monday, February 7th. Whoops. With that hanging over her head we went to the escape room place. We had an appointment for 6:45. We met Stockton there. He has worked so hard on his million homework projects and was able to find time to come. So happy about that! Sami also met us there. She drove up from Sandy and is going to stay the night with Jorja. We did the 50s diner room and killed it. We did this one in the old building about three and a half years ago. They told us some of the puzzles had changed and it would be new enough for us to do it again. It is true. Many of the puzzles were familiar, but we couldn't remember how to do them. We did great though. We got out in 30 minutes. Last time we didn't make it in the hour time, although some of their things didn't work very well. Preston and I spent forever on this dancing thing, but the sensors wouldn't pick us up. They told us that that was a huge problem in the other building. They had the dancing one this time too. Jorja and Sami did it. It was such a fun night.

Stephanie, Stockton, Preston, Maysen, Mike, Jorja, Sami

We went to a sushi place Jorja likes for dinner. They had a bit of a wait, so Jorja, Sami and I hurried over to Deseret Book and got some temple slippers and a few other things. Mike took the other kids to Walgreens.

Jorja & Sami

Stockton, Jorja and Sami all headed to casino night at Stockton's place. Maysen and I ran to Winco to get some bread she could dip in her soup. We all got sushi, but Maysen had soup. It was soooooo hot that we were finished before she could really even start hers. We brought it to go and thought bread would be tasty to go with it. We headed back to the hotel, watched some cartoons and then fell asleep. We are exciting.

Merry Christmas!

We had our Christmas today. I love early Christmas. This picture is from yesterday though. Hutch went to Chick-Fil-A to see Jorja! I love Hutch! Jorja had no idea she was coming. What a fantastic surprise. She sure knows how to make Jorja feel important.

 Preston's stocking

 Mike, Stephanie and Maysen. I forgot to take pictures of Stockton's and Jorja's.

Stockton has been sleeping until noon every day since he got home from college. Super weird. He used to hate sleep. Today he was the first one up. Yay! I'm glad he is still excited for Christmas! Crazy that this is our last Christmas with him for two years. My heart hurts just thinking about it.

Stockton

We had to wake up the other three kids. Look how adorable Preston is.

Preston opening up a surprise from his stocking.

Preston claiming his block of cheese.

 Mike patiently waiting for the kids to stop goofing around so we could open presents.

 Maysen with her cloak we got her.

 She loves it.

 Mike made me an advent calendar with socks. Haha! He's the BEST!

The kids love drawing names for Christmas. They keep it secret and have to guess who gave them their gift. It's not like they have a lot of choices to figure it out, but they love it.

Preston with an Eevee game from Maysen, Stockton with a 'make your own game' from Preston, Jorja with a dating book from Stockton, Maysen with a new lanyard and necklace clasp from Jorja.

 Stockton & Jorja

My dad came over with gifts. We got the first edition of his blog book. I love that! He also gave us a scripture calendar. He gave me my birthday present, which I am bringing up to the cabin to open there.

Dad

My main Christmas/birthday gift is a trip to Israel with my dad in November. I'm so excited! Jordyn is coming. Hopefully Rachel is coming. Jordyn is recruiting other family members to come. This will be the greatest! We got Mike a Zelda game for the Switch. Maysen got lots of Dungeon & Dragon stuff. Stockton got Mario Party for the Switch a Kermit the Frog book and some games. Jorja got clothes, perfume, a bluetooth radio thing for her car and Wicked Tickets. Preston got a new Switch game and other Switch stuff like cases and controllers. All of the kids got an Escape Room game too.

We went to an Escape Room today. It was by the old bowling alley and kind of sketchy. It was Pirate themed, so we had to do it. We solved the puzzles pretty quickly. The thing that took us the longest is they had a key for morse code painted on the wall. It was huge. We could not figure out what it was for. Turns out they don't use that puzzle anymore because it was too hard. Ummmm.... then why was it still there? Once we opened the safe and found the key we couldn't figure out what the next step was. We thought we still had things to do because we had never used the morse code. Nope, that was the key to get out of the room. Hahahaha! We then left and stuffed ourselves at Red Robin.

Jorja

 Mike

 Stockton & Stephanie, Preston, Maysen & Jorja

Jorja had to work today. Hutch went to Chick-Fil-A to see Jorja! I love Hutch! Jorja had no idea she was coming. What a fantastic surprise. She sure knows how to make Jorja feel important.

Jorja

Today was a fantastic day!

Escape Room Christmas

I made an egg free/dairy free gingerbread house this morning! It turned out better than the dairy free one. I'm so excited! Once I was finished with gingerbread, Jorja drove us to the store. She was looking for a few presents. While we were out Darby texted Jorja. He had asked her a week or so ago if she would dance in front of the whole school in the diversity assembly. She would be assigned a partner from the Latinos in Action club and they would be taught some kind of dance. Jorja was really excited about this. Well, Darby texted her today and told her they didn't need her anymore. That was disappointing. Oh well. Next, we then went and picked up J-A-Z-Z-I-E! Jorja met up with Jazzie and Dallin at Bahama Bucks. These guys were some of her best friends when she was in elementary school. They went to different middle schools and now go to different high schools. I was so happy to see them together!

Jazzie, Jorja, Dallin

 I can't believe Jazzie is taller than Jorja now!

 Still just as goofy!

Jorja, Jazzie, Dallin

Mike and I went to a Japanese hibachi restaurant while we waited to pick up Jorja. She was pretty jealous. She has wanted me to take her to one of those again for quite awhile. Mike and I decided to take the kids to an escape room tonight. Mike bought tickets and we texted the kids to be ready to go at 8:30. They thought we were taking them to see Star Wars and were pleasantly surprised when we ended up here. On the way down we stopped at Hallie and Gavin's house for Jorja and Stockton to drop off gifts. Mike picked a Harry Potter themed escape room. Before we went in they showed us how the locks worked. They told us not to pick up anything that was glued down. We were instructed to find six horcruxes and place them on their labeled spot. That was it. They left and locked us in. We had an hour to escape the room. This room had a 44% escape rate. We were able to do it with then minutes to spare. Most of the room is filled with logic puzzles. We were all working on different things at the same time. Everyone found something to help. It was pretty cool. It was also awesome because ten people can be in the room at one time. No one signed up with us so we were able to go by ourselves. Jorja loved it. She said it made her feel so smart. She wants to work there now. I want to write about it in detail, but I don't want to give away any spoilers . . . just in case.

Maysen, Stephanie, Jorja, Preston, Mike, Stockton

 Maysen and Jorja ~ she is blowing out her wand

 Maysen, Jorja, Stockton, Preston

 Jorja

 Maysen

 Stockton

 Preston

The kids were saying we should do this every Christmas Eve. I wonder if they would have liked it as much if we weren't able to escape. Everyone was so happy on the way home. When Jorja walked into the house she yelled, "Guess who is no longer suffering from crippling depression!" Haha! Welcome back Porge! We have missed you!

The kids all slept in the boys room and listened to Shrek sing the 12 Days of Christmas all night long. They said it was tradition. Mike and I were up until 1:30 in the morning putting together gingerbread houses. I was able to figure out egg free icing - and it worked!!! I'm so happy! I did a bag of powdered sugar, half a cup of water and 2 Tablespoons of Karo syrup. Who knew? Mike and I were completely exhausted when we were finally able to go to bed. Today was a very good day.