These past 10 days things have slowed down a bit. Sarah finished Weber State Prep. She had her closing ceremony last week. We met at the park and she was able to show me the different things she worked on in her 4 classes--Problem Solving, Algebraic Structures, Physics, Career Awareness/homeroom. The closing ceremony was for years 1 and 2. It was fun to look over the displays and talk to Sarah about them. We even got to see her cousin Miles with my brother Bryan and his wife Michonne. Sarah and Miles weren’t in the same cohort, but they were in the same year which was fun. Here’s Sarah and her friend showing us some things they worked on:
Josh got his mission plaque put up in the missionary cabinet at church:
Josh’s companion is from Colorado. He will be going to Chicago with Josh so that’s great that they will at least know each other when they get out there.
Josh thought it was pretty cool to see Sister Saddler in his 3 person breakout room. They are both doing Home MTC right now, however, she has been doing home MTC about a month longer than Josh has. She introduced Josh to her companion and told her that he was her neighbor, but they were both doing Home MTC at the same time.
Ugh!!! We try to be quiet, but life with kids all at home during the summer isn’t quiet--haha!
Daniel was out of town last week because he was at High Altitude Camp with the Cross Country team. They left early Monday morning and drove up to Red Castle to camp for the week. During that week they ran and ran and ran. They ran over 50 miles in those 5 days. They did two workouts a day at roughly 9300 feet elevation. The second to last day they did a grueling 24 mile run/hike out to Upper Red Castle. The next day they did a morning workout, packed up and came back home. Daniel wasn’t very excited to go to High Altitude Camp, but he had a great time. The kids on the Cross Country Team are all good kids and very friendly. He came home exhausted, but proud of his accomplishment.
Here’s some pictures from their trip:
They all made it to Upper Red Castle Lake which is an elevation of roughly 11,400 feet.
He hates running on a track, but it is better than exercising at home--at least that is what he said.
Home MTC is going well. Josh is really liking his district. Most of them will not being going to Chicago, but other Spanish speaking missions. However, Josh says they get along great which is good to hear. Here’s a picture of most of them during a Zoom lesson:
In addition to his daily HMTC Zoom classes he gets the chance to attend some extra workshops about different topics that might help him on his mission. He had one workshop yesterday which was available to all MTC missionaries. An interesting thing is that he got paired up with another Home MTC sister that is five houses down from us who is going to Georgia Armenia Mission speaking the Georgian language on her mission. The odds of that are crazy small, but interesting none the less!!
Josh was so used to being on the go before he started his mission, that he gets a bit stir crazy sitting in a room downstairs and staring at the iPad all day. He does get a 10 minute break in-between classes and he will come upstairs and tell us about what he is learning. I am enjoying hearing about that. However, he does get an hour break for lunch so he will quickly eat something and I will bring him along with me to the grocery store just to get him out of the house for a few minutes. In the evenings when his classes are done he will come upstairs and we have to turn off the TV since he shouldn’t watch it. Instead we have been watching Book of Mormon videos. We have also been playing some family board games. Aaron has also had us watch some of the missionary videos he used on his mission. We also have watched a few missionary safety videos as well. Even though Josh is doing the Home MTC we, as his family, are participating along with him when he is out of class.
However, since everyone is home things are not always quiet. Josh is tucked away downstairs in the basement with the door closed, however, when my kids fight oh I mean have 'spirited discussions' Josh can hear them. When they get too ‘spirited' he will message this meme to all of us to tell us to quiet things down.
I found this meme and it is pretty close to the truth. I am the out of gas person and Aaron is the keep the tank more than half full person. However, I have NEVER ran out of gas before, but I think I came the closest I have ever come to running out of gas last week. Luckily, I did make it to the gas station on fumes before it ran dry. I had less than a mile to go until I ran out of gas--glad I made it--haha! Aaron was not amused.
Now that Josh is out of commission and Daniel was out of town last week, Sarah finally talked Noah into learning how to mow the lawn because she didn’t want to mow the front and back lawn by herself. She was patient with him and taught him how to do everything. He mowed the whole backyard by himself. Wahoo! Aaron and I only have about 6 more years of cheap yard care (disguised as chores) left before the kids move out and we will have to do it ourselves. We need to take utmost advantage of those 6 years--haha!
Daniel was so glad to come home and have a warm shower and sleep in a bed again, though.
Matthew has been so excited for his birthday coming up. He will be turning 20!! His old high school teacher contacted me and asked if she could take him out to lunch. She took him to McDonald’s and Matthew absolutely LOVED it. I love that she stays in touch with him and enjoys seeing him so often! Matthew always keeps things interesting.....last week he went for a walk around his group home. He has an approved route that does not take him further than a half mile from his house at any point. However, it has been hot. He went on a walk and ran out of water. Instead of going home and getting another drink, he got really worried he would get dehydrated. His cell phone is a specialized one that will only call numbers that we program into it. It is so locked down that he can’t even dial 911 from his cell phone. Anyway, he got himself so worked up and worried about getting dehydrated that he went up to a passerby and talked them into calling 911 for him. DOH!! When he got home to his group home he got in trouble. They let us know what happened. All you can do is sigh and then try to explain to him what a real emergency is. However, we have had this exact conversation before and obviously it doesn’t sink in as much as we hope it does. Good thing we love him!!
Josh has to have a companion with him whenever he leaves the house. He has wanted to go running in the mornings, but Daniel was gone all last week. I can’t keep up with Josh. I told him if he wants to run with me he would have to do 18 minute miles. He was not happy about that. However, we came up with a compromise. We got up early 6 am-ish and headed to the high school track. He ran on the track while I walked. On his run he also ran up and back down the stairs on the bleachers to up his workout. Here was just after sunrise and if you look close you can see Josh running up the stairs on the bleachers:
We got some new shampoo for Sophie. When I went to use it on her I read the instructions and thought they were pretty hilarious. They are funny because it is true!! Read the highlighted part for yourself--haha!
Saturday was Josh’s P-day. He had all day until 6 pm. He did not want to sit at home so we went out. Sarah was at a friend’s house so it was just Josh, Aaron, Noah and me. We went on the Car Graveyard hike up Farmington Canyon. Noah was all energy at the beginning of the hike. Here he is while the rest of us were going slow and steady.
We did find the second wrecked car. Josh and Noah went down to check it out:
The view was great except for the haziness. There are a bunch of wildfires around Utah so it has made our air pretty hazy.
This one was about the size of two fists--it was HUGE!!
Here’s a feeding station that was full of butterflies:
A shirtful from Noah:
An armful from Sarah:
Needless to say we are having bacon wrapped Anaheim poppers for dinner tonight with some fresh salsa and cucumbers. YUM!!
Aaron dropped his white car off to be fixed after his car accident and was told it should only take two days to fix. Two days have turned into 10, but hopefully it will be done tomorrow. In the meantime he has this rental car he’s been driving.
However, as the hike went on Noah lost his pep and slowed way down. I kept up with Josh while Aaron fell back with Noah.
Josh and I made it to the first wrecked car:
As the hike went on there was some weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth. This meme summed up some of what we were experiencing--haha!
But you would never know it from the pictures--haha!
Here’s the 3rd wrecked car we made it to:
Josh was glad to get out of the house and do something physical.
Noah finished his summer enrichment/school last week. He enjoyed the schedule and seeing his friends again. He also got his headgear Monday. He is supposed to wear it for 12 hours a day. He won’t have to wear it to school, but he does have to wear it during sleep. He had a rough first few nights trying to get used to it, but I think he is doing better. He doesn’t like it, but if he wears it like he’s supposed to, hopefully, he won’t need to wear it for long.
This week Daniel went running with Josh one morning. However, he did NOT want to get up at 6 am again the next day so I went with Josh to the track again. It is always nice to see the sun rise:
Since Josh is doing home MTC I have cut back my working hours during those 6 weeks. I am still working, but not as much as I have been. However, yesterday we had our first in person staff meeting with the Core staff. We met down at Thanksgiving Point for 3 hours. We had a catered lunch which was yummy. Then afterward we had a work social at the Butterfly Biosphere. It was really nice to see everyone in person after being apart for so long! The butterflies were awesome to see, too!
It was super hot and humid inside the biosphere so my hair was extra poofy and frizzy. However, I still enjoyed myself! I still can’t believe we are gearing up for flu season!!That is crazy!!
On my way home from Thanksgiving Point I got a call from Primary Children’s Liver Clinic. Sarah got her labs drawn two weeks ago and her levels have really gone up--ALT, AST, and GGT. Since she hasn’t been sick (which if she had been sick would explain the spike in levels) they were concerned. They asked to do some more blood testing. They did a Hepatitis panel which all came back negative which is GOOD, but still doesn’t explain why her liver levels are high. Her autoimmune markers for Primary Biliary Cholangitis came back negative, but she can still have PBC not having those markers ever turning up positive. One interesting thing they did call me about was that her hepatitis B titer came back negative. That means that even though she has had all her hepatitis B vaccines, she never gained an immunity to it. She did gain an immunity from the Hepatitis A vaccine series so I have no idea why the Hepatitis B series vaccine didn’t take?! The Liver Clinic asked me to call her pediatrician and start the Hepatitis B vaccine 3 shot series over again. Even though her risk of getting Hepatitis B is extremely LOW they still want her to be immune. If anyone with a compromised liver can get a vaccine to prevent something from damaging it in the future they want them to get that. Anyway, she got her first round shot of the Hepatitis B series this morning. It is a 3 shot series so she will get two more shots over the next 6 months:
She is getting her elastography done next week and will be seeing the liver doctor right after her elastography. When they did call me to let me know her levels and they were concerned, they also mentioned they might want to do another liver biopsy. The doctor will talk more about it with me at the appointment, but I am hoping she won’t need to do that again....I guess we will know more next week.
Also when I am not home the kids get wrapped up in whatever they are doing and don’t always pay attention to the dog. As I walked in from the garage I was greeted with Sophie up on the bathroom sink, Daniel hopping on one foot and a Sophie poop that had been stepped on/smeared by Daniel. Since no one paid attention to Sophie all day, she never was let outside to go potty. She can only hold it for so long until she can’t. Daniel, unfortunately being barefoot, found where she did her business. EWWWW! Luckily, it was on the tile so it wasn’t hard to clean up with a ton of sanitizing spray and a bunch of paper towels. That wasn’t the most fun thing to come home too--haha! Next time they might pay a bit more attention to Sophie while I am gone--haha!
Speaking of Sophie she is always close by when any food is involved--haha! Here she is staring at Sarah while she is eating something.
Sophie is also a velcro dog. Wherever you are she is there, too and she’s not afraid to make herself comfortable. Here it looks like she has forgotten how to dog trying to get comfortable. What a weird dog!!
Our garden is really starting to produce. Sarah and Noah went and picked everything that was ripe this afternoon and there was a TON of stuff.
Interesting thing is that it has Idaho license plates. Oh well. Aaron will be glad to have his car back soon and so will I!
That’s all that is new with us. Until next time!!
