I am behind in blogging again. Life is going by fast at the moment. Here is a few of the things that have been going on with our family in the last two weeks.
Aaron has been traveling quite a bit lately. That means that the driveway and sidewalk don’t always get cleared as quickly after a snowstorm when he is gone. The other day it had snowed quite a bit. I had to take Noah to an orthodontic appointment the morning after a big storm. I hadn’t had a chance to clear the driveway, yet. It had snowed a bunch and wouldn’t you know it--we got STUCK in our own driveway pulling out of the garage to get to our appointment. DOH!! Luckily, Noah and I grabbed shovels and shoveled the car out and weren’t too late for our appointment. Phew. Here’s what a stuck car in your own driveway looks like--haha! It was a tad embarrassing to say the least. Luckily no one saw us so my pride was saved--haha!
Speaking of Josh....Aaron and I were out running errands on Saturday when we got a call that Josh had had a tire blowout. He was with Daniel and luckily they were both still in town and close by. We stopped by and they had already gotten the tire off and were able to take it in. Unfortunately, the tire was not able to be fixed so we had to purchase two new tires for that car. BOO!! I hate buying tires. There is no fun in ever buying tires, but they are needed and I am glad Josh will be safer now. Here’s the boys working in the tire when we got to them:
Fun times. I am still not great at hitting the balls, but it is fun to play.
Sarah has had a few dance performances these past few weeks. They do performances at a few care centers and then they have their big recital. Here is Sarah at one of the care centers:
Here she is at her dance recital/Winter Concert last Thursday:
Her ballet pointe dance:
She got to do a Hip Hop dance:
It is fun to watch her progress and dance. We were glad Grandma T was able to join us to watch her perform:
Matthew’s Special Olympics team had a special fundraiser last week. They had a ‘Polar Plunge’ at an outdoor community swimming pool. I am surprised Matthew actually jumped in. He HATES being cold, but he did it. He had fun meeting all the people there.
They even had a costume contest in conjunction with the Polar Plunge. Matthew dressed up as the Human GPS (not much different than what he usually wears, but it works)! It worked well enough that he earned himself first place in the costume contest where he won an adult size Minky Hugs blanket. That is a pretty sweet gift!! He was pretty excited:
Matthew said it was pretty cold. They did the polar plunge at North Shore Aquatics Center in North Ogden.
Matthew’s housemates were all there and had fun at the event:
A few weeks ago Noah got ordained the office of a Teacher at church. The cool thing is that Matthew and Daniel were able to stand in the circle as Noah got ordained by Aaron. Josh would have been there, too, but he was sick that day and had to stay home. Noah has been excited to help prepare the Sacrament every week. We don’t have very many Deacons so he still gets to help pass the Sacrament, too. He also gets to go Ministering with Aaron since he is now old enough. Since we have three sons of Ministering age, Aaron Ministers to three families and takes each one to a different family--if that makes sense. So one family Matthew gets to go, another family Daniel, and the last family, Noah.
For Martin Luther King Day they were offering half price day at Top Golf. We reserved a spot and took the family to go play. Unfortunately, Josh had to work so we took Katie, Daniel’s girlfriend, in Josh’s place. We all had fun. Poor Josh he was sad me missed it. Adulting stinks sometimes. Anyway, here’s some shots:
Here’s Matthew’s new blanket. When we took him back to his group home on Sunday he had us come in and see and feel his new, soft blanket:
Daniel had the chance to speak in Sacrament Meeting this past Sunday. He is the ultimate procrastinator. He has known about this for about two weeks, but didn’t start writing his talk until the night before. DOH!! The whole meeting was done by the youth. They had 4 youth speakers and both prayers were given by the youth. I was nervous because in timing Daniel’s talk at home it was only 6 minutes when they had asked him to take about 8-10 minutes. Amazingly enough Daniel was able to stretch out his talk while he was talking to about 11 minutes since the other three youth were short. Daniel was the last speaker. He did great. I think having his girlfriend come and watch him seemed to motivate him more than I could--haha!
Josh survived his first semester and started his second college semester. He continues to work as a phlebotomist at the plasma donation center. He is doing great--minus getting stuck in our driveway in a bank of snow--haha! He even got asked to be a facilitator for his YSA ward in teaching the Emotional Resilience class. He definitely does not take after me because that would terrify me to teach that class. Anyway, he is busy and not around a whole lot.
Noah got a chance to go to a coin show down in Salt Lake with G&G T. He had fun spending time with them. He was pretty excited to pick up a few things. He got an Indian Head penny:
Matthew has been anxiously waiting for the West Davis Corridor, a new highway by us, to be open. They have been working on it for years and it has been getting close to being opened. When they finally announced an opening date, Matthew sent out an announcement to everyone who he had an email address for letting us all know about it. Here’s what he sent:
Aaron knew he was leaving for a business trip soon. To help out before he left he made a HUGE meatloaf dinner so we could piece off the leftovers all week. He filled four bread pans full of meatloaf. Well when the kids eat the meatloaf for breakfast and dinner that meatloaf lasted all of ONE day. It was gone by Monday afternoon when Aaron had made it only Sunday afternoon. It is amazing how much kids can eat!!! Josh and Daniel ate 80% of the leftovers....Let’s just say smoked meatloaf is a favorite at our house.
We finally had a chance to get some family pictures taken. It has been hard trying to get everyone together all at the same time. I finally was able to track everyone down the day after Christmas and we were able to get them done. I told everyone a week beforehand to make sure that day was free. Matthew took it one step further and decided to get his haircut, unbeknownst to me, a week before. He decided to tell the stylist to make it a buzz cut as short as possible so he could be ready for family pictures. He was so proud of himself for taking care of such an adult task without help from us. He sent us an after picture of his haircut because he was so proud. I just had to sigh and laugh. I was proud he thought of doing that all by himself. I had to sigh because he now looked like a cancer patient who has lost their hair. What can you do?! I wasn’t going to reschedule pictures so this would just become a funny story that went along with this round of pictures--haha! Here’s the after haircut picture he emailed me right after he got it done because he was so proud:
Trying to find matching clothes and colors to wear as a family is hard. We finally settled on a few colors. Sarah and Daniel wanted to make sure their shoes were on point. Sarah looked in my closet to see what she could wear. Sometimes I really hate that we wear the same size shoes....Anyway, in the very back of my closet she pulled out my dusty ‘vintage’ Doc Martins. She was pretty excited to find them. I got those shoes back when I went on Study Abroad for a semester in London 20+ years ago. She kept tossing around the word ‘vintage’ and to be honest it made me feel a bit old. I got those shoes brand new 20+ years ago and now they are considered vintage. She begged me to wear them for pictures. So this is what vintage Doc Martins look like:
Here’s how all the pictures turned out:
