Teaching Jorja to Swerve

It was nice having Stockton at church today. Too bad Jorja and Preston weren't feeling well. Mike ended up taking both of them home after sacrament meeting. Stockton went home with them to work on Family Home Evening. His lesson was so funny! I told him I wanted to have a lesson called, "Teaching Jorja to Swerve". She really needs it. Some of her friends have told her that it is impolite to swerve. I don't know if they were just talking about Homecoming/fancy dates or anytime in general. I wanted to teach Jorja that she doesn't need to feel bad about not kissing everyone that wants to kiss her. Anyway, Stockton made the funniest lesson. He made a wheel with different boys on it. We made cutout faces of the different boys and put them on sticks. Stockton also made miis to match the stick faces. Stockton had Jorja spin the 'Boys of Seduction' wheel, then she spun another wheel that had a date on it. The dates were different games on Wii Sports. We each took turns playing her and then acted out trying to kiss her. It looks like Jorja's only move is to hit the face. Not quite what we were going for. Preston was the funniest. Jorja had a small crush on this kid last year. She called him, "Good Hair Guy." We had him on a stick. After their date, Preston (who happened to be feeling awful) came out of the back room with Good Hair Guy's face in front of his face. Preston walked up to Jorja and said, "Hey Jorja . . . do you like my hair?" Then he moved the cut out away from his own face, swished his own hair and put the cut out back really fast. It was so dang funny! Then he said, "Does it" hair swish again "make you want to kiss me?" Three of us were laughing hysterically. Jorja just punched the poor guy in the face. I can't stop laughing now thinking of Preston. Also, Stockton's narration through the entire thing was so dang funny. We caught Jorja laughing several times, even though she likes to pretend she was humiliated. Still, hopefully she knows that she does not need to feel bad if she doesn't want to kiss someone. We did talk to her about how kissing is not against the commandments, but she needs to be smart about it. Jorja is such a big flirt that sometimes her friendliness gets interpreted as other things. She has been getting a few inappropriate messages again this past week. I don't know what possesses boys to say things like they do to her. We tried to teach her that they are testing her, seeing what she will let them get away with. She needs to call them out and ask them not to talk like that to her. Maybe we need a "Teaching Jorja to text" Family Home Evening.

Jorja

 Kiki

Stockton got a packet from his new mission presidents. That's exciting. He also got a text from his bishop asking him to speak in church on Sunday. Man, I wish I could be there. Too bad the primary program is that week. No way am I missing my last child participating in that! Plus, Preston will be getting the priesthood. Now that is really weird!

Stockton & Mike

 Stockton

Quackletta and Waddluigi came in for a snack

 Poor sick Preston

Stockton left late tonight to head back to Logan. He got there around midnight. Maysen was waiting for him. She drove him back to his apartment, the parking pass is in front of Maysen's place. I'm glad she was willing to make sure he was safe, even though it was quite late. I love them. I'm glad they have each other.

Grandpas

Maysen and I had a busy day today. We started out at the dentist. I still have her going to Eric, because I love Eric. Plus, it is fun to see him once in awhile. He moved his dental practice to a new building. He has this cool train that goes throughout the place. I knew Mike would love it.

Stockton texted me this picture while we were at the dentist. Yay! They finally have their names and categories by their pictures for the Sterling Scholars. So far it has just been 8X10s side by side. This is much cooler.

Maysen and I went out to lunch, to her laser appointment, to Alta to register Jorja for a test out of PE class, to the library and to the dry cleaners. Busy, but fun. Stockton took Preston to diving. Jorja was at school until close to 7:00 for theater. Once she finally got home we read scriptures and then watched a movie. We saw Coco and had ice cream. For some reason everyone but Maysen ended up on the floor. We were laying on each others stomaches to see if our head would move up and down when each other laughed. It was so funny.

Stephanie, Stockton, Preston, Mike, Jorja

 Jorja, Preston and Stockton having a grandpa war. No idea why.

 Jorja and Stockton

 Jorja, Preston, Stockton

We don't have any fun together at all . . . .

Swim/Dive Meet

Today was the first swim and dive meet of the year.  Jorja had only been to three swim practices and two dive practices because of softball. She still did it though.  Her dives were pretty simple.  That's okay. Stockton of course did awesome.  The one thing that was weird was they made him do a front dive and a back dive.  He rarely practices those.  His back dive was not good at all.  All of his other dives were great.  It was cute to hear the little kids talking about him.  'Watch that kid!  He's a legend!'  Ha!  The one thing I didn't like about the meet, and the reason I don't have any dive pictures is I was asked to be a judge.  I really don't like doing that, but I survived.  For some reason my kids suits didn't come with the swim team order.  I filled out all the paperwork on the first day of signups, just our information was left out. The kids swam in their regular suits.  Jorja will only make it to two meets this year.  I guess she will only have a team suit for one.  Maysen and Stockton stayed and watched Jorja and Preston in their swim meet.  Preston did the 50 free and 50 back.  Jorja did the 100 free, 50 breast and 50 fly.  She did not want to do the 50 fly.  She said there was no way she could finish it.  She was wrong.

Preston

 Jorja

I love watching Preston swim.  He is not competitive at all.  He is always the last one by a ways.  By the time he makes it back there are usually a lot of people cheering for him.  He has no concept how slow he is.  I find this extremely adorable.

Preston in lane 1

 Looks like his suit is having a hard time staying up

 Preston looking around....you're in a race Preston! Haha!!!

 Here he comes!

 Almost there and smiling at me!

 Finished with tons of applause!

 Back stroke

 This one really takes awhile

The kids were pretty exhausted when they got home.  Jorja and Preston also had swim practice this morning.  Stockton did two of his road drives.  That took several hours.  He just has his test left.  That will be so nice to have done!  Mike gave a late Family Home Evening lesson. He talked about the universe and how there are so many unknowns. People like to act like science is 100% accurate, but in reality science is always changing.  He showed a cool show about the universe and the enormity of it.  I guess the show was about more than the universe . . . 

Choices

Laundry day!  That is what I did today.  I didn't have scouts today which made this Monday pretty relaxing.  We had Family Home Evening today.  We watched President Monson's talk again.  We talked about how he was getting old and running out of strength.  He only had four minutes to speak to us, what do you think was the most important thing he wanted to say?  First he announced temples.  He then talked about choices and agency.  It was basically the Plan of Salvation.  He talked about faith and repentance.  Choose Christ. Make your faith strong.  Choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong.  I love that.  What a great talk.

I also showed them a short video I found on the internet.  I can't remember where I found it or who published it, but they were on the University of Washington campus.  They were interviewing people asking about their opinions about who can use bathrooms.  The interviewer was a white 5'9" male.  He asked several people what they would say if he told them he was female.  Most of them said they were great with it.  He asked them, "What if I told you I was Chinese?"  Some were confused, but ended up being okay with it.  Next question, "What if I told you I was 7 years old?"  Again, they refused to tell him there was no way he was 7.  He asked if they would be okay with him being in a first grade classroom.  They were.  He asked, "What if I told you I was 6'5"?"  They said that was fine.  He was able to get people to say he was a 6'5" seven year old Chinese woman.  Wow.

Globetrotters

Tonight we had our Family Home Evening with my dad and Max up in Salt Lake.  We went and watched the Globetrotters play.  It was pretty fun.  Big Easy was there, but no Flight Time.  I was surprised that they no longer play the Washington Generals.  Now they play the World All Stars.  It was weird, I liked the Generals.  The coach of the World All Stars enjoyed being the villain.  He taunted the crowd saying his team was going to do to the Globetrotters what the Bulls did to the Jazz. We had fun booing the coach.  I mentioned several times to Preston that it was okay to boo him because he wanted us to, but please don't boo real sports players.

Dad, Max, Preston

I'm totally annoyed at Jorja right now.  I took a similar picture to the one below right before I took this one.  I loved the picture of Mike, but Jorja was pulling an obnoxious face.  Really annoying.  What is even more annoying is that she deleted the picture off of my phone.  I tried to find it in my photos box, but it wasn't there.  Maybe this phone stores deleted photos at a different place.  It would be weird if she completely deleted it.  I'm pretty upset with her about it right now though.  If you don't want me to post obnoxious pictures of you, then stop pulling faces when I'm taking the picture.  Doesn't that seem obvious?

Mike, Maysen, Stockton, Jorja

After the game my dad took Max down to get his basketball signed by the Globetrotters.  Preston wanted to go with them.  I rummaged through my pockets and found a pad of sticky notes I had grabbed on Sunday.  Yay!  I asked my dad if he could get the autographs.  Preston looked at me and said, "Why can't I go down there?"  So, we did.  Mike and the other kids waited while Preston got autographs.  It was hard to get a good picture, but I kind of got one of everyone except Scooter and the picture of Animal didn't turn out well.

Woody

 TNT

 Titan

 Big Easy

 Preston waiting for Sweet Lou (Globetrotter coach)

That was all Preston was able to get.  They had a timer counting down and when the buzzer rang autograph time was over.  Preston said his favorite part was getting autographs.  Mike helped him put them in a sheet protector and they hung it over Preston's computer desk.

Okay, so I totally texted Jorja at school asking what happened to the picture.  She told me how I could recover it.  I don't know why she thinks it's cool to stick out her tongue in pictures.  Annoying.  I do love the picture of Mike though.  I'm glad I got it back.

Mike, Maysen, Stockton, Jorja

Raise the Bar

Tonight, for family home evening, we talked about going beyond the mark.  I read portions of Jeffrey R. Holland's address he gave BYU students in 1980 when he became president of BYU.  I won't go into all the details, but to summarize here are two quotes.  "It has made a wonderful difference in my life to have demanded just a bit more of myself."  "Work hard, work early, be honest, knock on one more door before quitting, stand out in the crowd through extra effort and personal commitment."  We then talked about a talk L. Tom Perry gave called Raising the Bar.  His son was practicing high-jump.  He asked him what height.  5 feet, 8 inches, that is the height to qualify for the state track meet.  Elder Perry wanted him to raise the bar and see how he would do.  His son didn't want to because then he might miss.  Elder Perry asked him, "If you don't raise the bar, how will you ever know your potential?"

Mike then gave examples from his work.  He talked about being the new guy and figuring out how they do things.  He would notice something that could be done better and work at home on a way to figure out how to accomplish that.  Then he would bring it back to work and present it.  He has done that several times.  Now, he has a lot of freedom at his work because they know that whatever he does, it is going to be well above the minimum required.  We decided this is going to be our family theme for the year.  Raise the bar.  Jorja wanted to make shirts.  Ha!

I tried and tried to find a good ponderizing scripture to go along with this.  We have dropped the ball on the ponderizing scriptures, but we're starting again.  I couldn't find one that I liked to go along with this lesson.  I ended up choosing a scripture that in a round about way relates to what we were discussing.

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:  A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;" --Ecclesiastes 3:1-2

I want them to spend this year raising the bar, but I also need them to know they do not have to be perfect.  If they try to raise the bar in every aspect of life they might become frustrated.  It is important to know where to put your effort.  Things that are required for me are not required for them.  Also it's important to know when to put effort into designing video games and when to put effort into schooling.  Elder Holland said in his talk, "You can get it all if you decide now to study first and play later.  The alternative is, as so many come to learn, to play now and study never.  You'll be surprised at how much time you then have at your disposal.  If you loaf early and try to work late, you'll be surprised at how much of your time has gone down the disposal."

Passing Dad

The kids had their first day back to school.  Mike also had his first day back to work in a long time.  I spent my time doing laundry and getting tickets to the Provo City Temple open house.  I also met Maysen at school and had an appointment with her counselor.  Maysen decided to keep taking early morning seminary.  Her counselor is not going to make her put a class in her fourth period slot.  Maysen's pretty happy about that.  After Maysen went back to class I talked to her awhile about Stockton's schedule.  It is so confusing!  He has been doing the technology pathway.  Ms. Court told me today that they are ending that program.  They will be having an engineering pathway.  Hopefully we are happy with that.  Lots of decisions to be made.

We worked on the Motors Away adventure for scouts.  Crew only has two weeks left.  Hopefully we can finish it up next week.  I have had such a good group of scouts, it is sad to see them leave.

Mike and I made Rudolph pancakes.  We wanted to make these for Christmas, but I left the eyes and nose home.  Matt and Sam gave Mike and I several different cooking mixes for Christmas.  These pancakes are s'mores pancakes with marshmallow syrup.  They were delicious! Maysen even liked them.  She says pancakes are usually too dry for her, but these were pretty good.

We didn't have enough pancake batter to make Mike and I a mini pancake that the nose sits on, so our Rudolph pancakes were one big one.  Still delicious though.

 Jorja was so excited when she saw the Rudolphs.

 Preston

 Stockton

 Maysen

 Stockton & Maysen

Stockton thinks he has now passed Mike in height.  I think he might be right.  They measured several different ways.

Mike & Stockton

Standing next to each other

 Back to back

 Arm span

 Closer look on that arm span

Stockton was quite happy.  We ended the day watching the movie Home.  Maysen and Jorja have been wanting us to watch it with them for quite awhile.  I guess they watched it together when we went to Vegas for the diving competition.