Prom, Silver Medal, Special Olympics, Missed Calls, Leadership Conference, Performances, Miss Amazing, Road Trip

It has been an INSANELY busy two weeks.  I think it will take me a bit to recover--haha!  Here’s some of the things we have been up to the past two weeks.

Two weeks ago Josh had Spring Break off from school.  Of course it didn’t coincide with the rest of the kids spring break so it was just Josh and me when I wasn’t working.  One day we decided to go to the temple together.  It was nice to go with him.

Afterward I took him out for lunch at one of my favorite pizza places--Ogden Pizzeria.  It was delicious and a fun lunch date.

Sarah told me that she was going to get asked to Prom by a friend of a friend.  There is a formal dress rental place by our house that Sarah wanted to use to get a dress.  This rental place is used by a lot of the schools around the area so if you don’t get there soon, the good dresses will be gone.  Sarah assured me that she was going to be asked and wanted to go dress shopping one evening two weeks ago.  Looking at my schedule, that was the only night I had open for that week so I took her dress shopping even though she didn’t have an official date yet.  Anyway, it was fun having her try on different dresses and narrowing things down.  Here’s two dresses that did not make the cut, but were still beautiful:

She picked out a dress and I paid for the rental and reserved the dates to pick it up.  Sarah was sure her future date was going to ask in the next few days after we had gotten the dress.  Well he kept putting it off.  I was starting to get nervous because we had done things a little backwards--got a dress before the date.  However, I didn’t need to worry.  He asked the following week.  Sarah was so excited!!  Here is how he asked:

He made a poster and COVERED it with Easter grass and glitter, rang the doorbell and ran away.  After Sarah cleared the glitter and Easter grass off the poster this is what the poster said:

I think I will have Easter grass and glitter remnants on my porch for years to come because it got everywhere--haha!  Oh well, I think it was pretty cute.

Sarah got together with her friend and here’s what they came up with to answer him back:

They made a poster, picked up a 2 liter of Diet Coke and a bunch of Mentos.  They answered him back by putting the poster, Diet Coke and Mentos on his porch:

Prom isn’t until the end of April, but they are looking forward to going.

Sarah and Noah had different performances in two different places tonight so Aaron and I had to divide and conquer.  Aaron went to Sarah’s band concert at the high school and I went to Noah’s Solo/Ensemble performance at a near by junior high.  Here’s some pictures of Sarah’s band concert.  Sarah is right in front of the band teacher:

Sophie is a pretty lazy dog.  I think her idea of Heaven is just sleeping while laying in a sun spot on the couch.  What a funny dog.

Matthew had his regional Special Olympics basketball tournament two Saturdays ago up in Logan.  They were held on Utah State campus.  Aaron and I drove up to watch him play.  When we got out of the car there was a turkey just wandering around the parking lot.  Only in Logan, right?!  It was funny because Aaron steered clear because he HATES birds, but I ran over to take a picture because I thought it was funny.

Matthew was able to play in a 5x5 team game this season.  He is loving it.  It also helps that he is super tall and has long arms to grab rebounds.

He and his team had a great time.  I LOVED watching because everyone has such good sportsmanship.  They are excited for everyone to excel even others who are on the opposite team.  It was refreshing to watch because that doesn’t usually happen in regular sports.

Matthew’s team won the Silver medal and will be continuing on to the State games coming up soon in Herriman.  Here’s Matthew getting his medal placed around his neck after the game:

Go team!  Their coach is behind them in the picture wearing the dark blue shirt.  He was really great working with the team:

Matthew is loving his job. He is getting to know a lot of people in the school.  Matthew has gotten to know the office staff and all of the cafeteria staff pretty well.  I guess he told them about his upcoming state Special Olympics basketball tournament and they surprised him with a balloon and treats today as he got to work to wish him good luck at his tournament.  He was beyond excited.  I am glad they are good to him at work.  I always worry about that because Matthew has such a loud and strong personality that sometimes can rub people the wrong way....I am glad that he has some good people at work that are rooting for him.

Speaking of Matthew...he can be stubborn and persistent at times.  I had to work all day yesterday and couldn’t talk because I was busy at work. Matthew wanted to ask me a question, but again I was busy at work and couldn’t talk.  We are trying to encourage him to text if we don’t answer the phone after the first two calls, but it is still a work in progress.  Just to show...yesterday in the space of two hours he called me over 71 times.  I finally was able to talk to him right after that, but, wow.  Good thing calls are unlimited now--or is that a bad thing in this case?--haha!  Daniel called me (and he rarely calls) so I quickly answered and he let me know there was a supposed fire at the auto shop at school and that he was evacuated.  DOH!  Luckily, whatever happened was contained, but not until after they had been sent back inside the school to be evacuated with another fire alarm again because they smoke hadn’t cleared all the way.  It sounds like things were pretty exciting at the high school yesterday--haha!

Later that day I had a similar experience with Sarah, although not 71 calls.  She only gave me three texts in the space of a minute before she called me to ask a question.  Sometimes I wonder how my kids would have survived having just a landline phone connected to the kitchen wall without immediate access to whomever you were trying to reach just like how I grew up--haha!  Sarah just had a quick question to ask me...

We needed to get a picture of Daniel on Sunday.  Here’s how one of them turned out:

I still can’t believe he is a senior that will be graduating!!!  Earlier in the week Daniel had an FBLA (Future Business Leaders of America) tournament in Layton.  He had to get dressed up for it.  He forgot he had this gray suit in the back of his closet and finally found it again that morning.  I wanted to grab a picture, but he  didn’t want to pose for one so this was the best shot I could get--crusty/annoyed face and all--haha!

Noah has started the spring soccer season last week.  The poor guy got whammied because track started that day, too.  He went to track then straight to soccer.  The funny thing was for his young men activity they played basketball that evening, too.  Noah was exhausted by the time he got home that night.  At soccer he got to practice being goalie:

Noah played a piano musical number in Sacrament Meeting this past Sunday. He was pretty nervous about it, but did a good job.  He also had his track/yearly physical done this past week.  He was not excited about it, but it needed to be done.  He is healthy and now up to date on his immunizations.  

Noah had his district level solo/ensemble performance tonight.  He and his mallet duet partner did great.  They have to wait until tomorrow to get the results.  He was really nervous to play in front of a judge, but they did great.

Last week Daniel and Sarah got to go up to Utah State for a Leadership Conference with the city youth council.  They got to join up with 15 other city youth councils (roughly around 250 youths) for this Thursday through Saturday Leadership Conference.  They had a great time.  In the kickoff meeting they got a representative from each youth council to show off some dance moves.  Here’s Daniel’s:  

His adult council leader sent me the video of Daniel.  I thought Daniel did a good copycat of Napoleon Dynamite--haha!  Go Daniel!

Through the conference they got to attend many classes, workshops, team building activities and a nice dinner.  They had a great time.  Here’s the dress up dinner:

Cup stacking challenge game:

I only got to see a few pictures, but it looks like they had a great time.  However, their leaders deserve a medal.  Every year the kids try to see if they can do an all nighter Friday night.  The leaders have to try and keep an eye on them so I am sure they HATE it, but what can you do?!  The adult leaders probably came home and slept for days afterward.  I am grateful they volunteer to provide this amazing opportunity for these kids every year.

They have a cow bench outside the campus creamery that was fun to sit on:

Friday morning of the leadership conference Sarah texted me saying she didn’t feel very well.  I told her to  take some ibuprofen and to try not to stay up all night.  Saturday afternoon they got back home.  I was at work and so Aaron picked Sarah and Daniel up to bring them home.  As soon as Sarah got home she crashed on the couch.  Aaron sent me this picture.

When I got home from work I touched her forehead and she was burning up.  She ended up having a 103 degree fever.  I was worried about strep so I had Aaron take her to Urgent Care to be seen.  I had to go somewhere else so I couldn’t go with them.  They tested her for everything--strep, flu, RSV, covid, etc.  Nothing came back positive so it was just some random virus she would just need to power through.  Ugh.   Later that evening after the doctor’s visit Aaron and I went out to stock up on cold medicine and groceries. 

 

Earlier that morning while I was at work our immunization booth ended up getting put right next to the food booth.  It was an outdoor clinic which was interesting.  I had to layer up because it was chilly and I was going to be outside for around four hours.  The food booth was nice to us and offered to feed us at lunchtime.  They had smoked a pork shoulder and made pulled pork sandwiches for us to eat.  I felt like I was stepping out on Aaron while I was eating the sandwich--haha!  I texted him about it:

Poor Sarah has gone through the weekend and still is sick.  She ended up getting Pink Eye Monday morning along with whatever virus she has, too.  She is just miserable.  Luckily we were able to do a Teladoc appointment for the Pink Eye to get some antibiotic drops called in.  She said she is maybe starting to feel a bit better yesterday morning, but not much.  Josh is starting to get some congestion.  I am hoping the rest of us don’t catch it.  It looks miserable.  I did enjoy some binge watching some shows with her Monday afternoon.  I had a ton of other things to do, but I don’t get much alone time with her so I sat and watched some shows with her instead.  It was fun.

Noah had a band festival this past week.  6 different junior high bands got together at a school to show off their skills.  Noah loved playing percussion when it was his schools turn to play.  He is on the back row:

Matthew got to help with the Miss Amazing pageant this past Saturday.  Miss Amazing is a pageant for special needs girls and is pretty awesome.  Matthew liked being with all his ‘cute girls’.

His job was to help escort some contestants around the stage.  Here’s a few pictures from the pageant:

He was supposed to be dressed up, but decided to wear jeans and a button down shirt last minute....

They thanked the helpers at the end and Matthew took a HUGE bow:

Matthew was super excited about it because the two ladies he was assigned to escort ended up winning the pageant.  Wahoo!!

For Josh’s Spring Break he decided with a few returned Chicago missionary friends to fly to Chicago for a few days.  They all found really cheap airfare through the Provo airport with Allegiant airlines.  He was scheduled to fly out with 8 other people on a Thursday at 1 pm.  I ended up driving him down to the airport and dropped him off as I drove back to go to work for the afternoon.  Driving down to Provo was a bit sketchy because there was a terrible snow storm going on throughout the drive.  When I got to work Josh texted me saying that his flight got delayed.  He texted me an hour later saying his flight got delayed until 4 pm.  Then at 4 pm he texted saying his flight got cancelled.  DOH!

He then called me and told me about the cancellation, but that they have then decided to rent a van and drive cross country to Chicago through the night.  I was speechless for a minute.  I then said that I didn’t think that was a very good idea since the storm I had driven in was moving East and they would drive along with it as it moved across the US.  He told me they were still going to drive.  I got off the phone  and googled to see if there were any other flights to Chicago because I think driving would be a terrible choice.  I found a flight out of Salt Lake airport to Chicago with an overnight layover in Denver for $200 that would have left later that evening.  I called him back and told him about it.  He said he would talk it over with the group and see.  He called me back 5 minutes later and said they were going to drive instead. I then looked at their route on Google Maps and saw there was a HUGE winter storm warning across Nebraska.  My worry level skyrocketed, but what can you do?  I told him my concerns, but said that he was an adult and the choice was his.  They rented a van and started the 21 hour drive through the night.

It was fun at first:

Then at 2 am they hit the middle of Nebraska and the interstate got shut down due to severe snow.  He sent this picture at a gas station:

He then said not to worry because the side streets were plowed and they were driving on those until they could open the interstate back up.  Well I still worried.

The freeway closure delayed them by four hours, but they continued on their way.  They were supposed to get to Chicago at 4 pm, but got there at 8pm Friday night.  I am glad they made it.  They lost the entire Thursday evening and Friday day, but they made the most of their Friday night.  They turned in their rental car, got to the AirB&B dropped their stuff off and headed into the city for the evening.

They did a ton of things Saturday--visited their old mission president and family, went to the temple, visited different ward members across the city.  Sunday they went to a few different wards to say hi to a lot of the people they met there.  

They had an amazing time.  Luckily, the flight home was not cancelled.  However, when Josh got on the plane he didn’t fit in the seat.  He tried to squeeze in, but it was not happening.  He sent me this picture of his jammed up legs:

This is the hard part of being 6’6”.  Luckily, the flight attendant saw his predicament and was nice enough to move him to the front row where he had more leg room.

His flight landed at 11 pm.  He got a ride to his friend’s house in Herriman and then took an Uber the rest of the way home. He got home around 1:30 am.  He had class the next morning at 7:30 pm.  He was hating life when his alarm went off at 6:30 am.  He had an amazing time, though. I am just glad they made it there all right.  Parenting adult kids who have their own agency is not for the faint of heart--haha!

We just had to renew Daniel, Sarah and Noah’s passports since they were expiring in August.  Hopefully, we can get a chance to use them sometime soon.  It was pretty price to get them renewed, though.  Ugh!

It was our Stake Conference on March 9th and 10th.  March 9th before the adult session started they invited all the Relief Society Presidents and their spouses in the Stake to eat dinner with the visiting Area Authority, Lee G. McCann II.  That was pretty cool!  During dinner they asked each one of us what we enjoy about our calling and what keeps us up at night about our calling.  It was interesting to hear the different responses.  Afterward we went to the Adult session.  It was an interesting night.  The next morning I had an early leadership meeting.  Earlier that week they had asked me to say the opening prayer for that meeting.  I accepted, however, it made me nervous to do so.  I was glad when that part of the meeting was over with--haha!

Job Hiccups, Oldness, Crazy Weather, Ransom, Solo/Ensemble Performance, Parent Funny

Another two weeks have come and gone.  Here is what we have been up to.  Every summer Matthew gets to attend and Residential Summer camp for people with special needs called Camp Kostopulos located up Emmigration Canyon in Salt Lake City.  He has been doing this for about 10 summers--usually attending three (Monday through Friday) weeks out of the summer.  So every year he looks forward to the brochure that comes out around February/March where you can pick the weeks you want to attend.  This brochure goes to anyone who will attend Camp K.  We were surprised when we got the brochure to find that Matthew and two of his camp counselors had made one of the pictures advertising for the Camp.  That was pretty cool. This picture was taken last year during one of the weeks he was there.

Speaking of Matthew he is loving his job, but there have been a few hiccups.  Once he completed his 7 day training period his hours were cut to only two hours a day.  When he first got the job it was decided he would work 12 hours a week--4 hours, 3 days a week.  However, when the training period ended it got cut down to only 6 hours a week, 2 hours 3 days a week which was causing staffing issues at his group home.  Since he was only working 2 hours a day he couldn’t go to the day program, but didn’t need to leave for work until later in the day.  That meant the poor night staff person had to stay at the home until Matthew left making them work a really long unexpected night shift.  Matthew’s house mates were usually gone to the day program or school by 8 am so the night person could go home at that time so Matthew not working as much made it hard to staff the group home around that.  We had to have a group zoom call to talk about it and decide what happens next.  The zoom call was with his job coach, job finder, house manager, supports coordinator, etc.  We had that meeting two weeks ago and I am not completely happy with the outcome, but Matthew seems to be okay with it.  They are increasing his hours to 3 hours 3 times a week which mostly works out with staffing at the group home.  We will see what happens over the summer and next fall.  Things might end up changing again.  I am a bit frustrated, but at least he is finally working and enjoying it.

I am starting to really show my age.  It started with the gray hairs and now it has progressed to my eyes not ‘being what they used to be’ haha!  I had squinted a few too many times for comfort and finally picked up some reading glasses.  I have not had to wear glasses or contacts at all in my life up until this point so I am not too happy about this development...Oh well what can you do?!  Every time I wear them Noah says, “Hey Grandma” and laughs.  Boo!! I must admit it is nice not needing to squint to see small print anymore, though.

Last week all of us forgot to wheel the garbage cans to the curb for garbage pick up. Boo!! I didn’t realize this until I heard the truck rumble up our side of the street past my house--darn it!  I had to hurry up and run them out to our across the street neighbor’s house in my pajamas with my bed head and mismatched sandals.  Luckily, I got them across the street before the garbage truck came back down that stretch.  I need to put a reminder in my phone so this doesn’t happen again--at least for my neighbor’s sake.  No one needs to see me looking like that--haha!  Here’s our cans at our across the street neighbor’s house:

Two Saturdays ago we got to attend a wedding/sealing of Hailey Einzinger and her fiancee Josh.  It was crazy because I have seen Hailey grow up and then to see her get married was surreal.  It was a beautiful temple ceremony and reception.  I was glad we were able to attend.  Again, I am feeling a bit ‘old' at the moment.  I still feel 29 even if my body (including my blind eyes that now need reading glasses) feels 80+.  Haha!

Aaron sent me this picture last week.  It is a picture of one of his teams he works with on base in front of the flight simulators.  I don’t get to meet the people Aaron works with very often so it is nice to put names with faces.  Aaron is on the very back row 3rd from the right behind the guy wearing a red shirt:

Since it is March Aaron made Corned Beef and Cabbage for our family Sunday dinner.  Both of our ancestor lines have strong Irish ties so it just made sense, right?!  Just kidding Aaron likes to cook so he wanted to try corned beef and cabbage.  It was really good.  The leftovers are even better when he makes it into a hash the next day. Daniel’s girlfriend, Katie, even joined us for Sunday dinner.  It was great.

Spring in Utah is quite unpredictable.  Last week I was working in the walk in immunization office when outside it had started snowing sideways.  You can’t tell in the picture, but it really was snowing sideways.  The crazy thing is that it had been quite warm the day before. The weather here can be a bit bipolar in the spring.

What drives me crazy is that at the same time Aaron was on a work trip in Florida and was enjoying this 70+degree beach weather.  DOH!!  This beach was right outside his hotel.  Talk about not fair!! 

Here is a night time beach shot.  He went walking on the beach in the evening and came across a HUGE Heron.  He HATES birds so didn’t stick around for much longer after taking the picture--haha!

Sarah gets regular lab work done and it was time for another blood draw.  She doesn’t mind blood draws, but she still holds me to the rule that if they get a shot or blood draw that they should get a treat.  I didn’t mind having a quick breakfast date.  We stopped for a quick breakfast before I took her back to school.  

Sarah lost her wallet about 6 months ago.  We were hoping it would turn up since she is pretty sure she lost in the house somewhere.   Well after 6 months we have not found it so it was time to get her a new debit card and Learner’s permit. I got to take her down to the Driver’s License Division yesterday to get that done.  We were lucky enough to find an appointment at the end of school so she didn’t need to miss very much school.  I always dread going there since it usually takes such a long time.  However, this time we were in and out with the new Learner’s permit in 10 minutes and most of those 10 minutes were me chatting with employee about our favorite murder podcasts--haha!  That was awesome!!  Sarah is now really wanting to go out driving to get practice....ugh.  That is one of my least favorite things to do.  I know it needs to happen, but it doesn’t mean I have to like it.

Speaking of kids...there always seems to be a trail of ’stuff’ from the front door to the family room.  You can tell the kids are home because you can follow the trail of a jacket, backpack, shoes, socks from the front door to the couch.  I have been asking the kids to not do this, but they haven’t been listening.  I finally told them I would start holding their items hostage and they would need to pay me if I had to pick them up.  Sarah, who was at school at the time, didn’t believe me until I texted a picture of her dance bag on the floor in front of the front door and told her it now belonged to me.

If I would have had more time and energy I could have made a ransom sign like this, but I didn’t....

Instead I just texted her this and included her reply:

Interestingly enough there haven’t been as many things left in a trail from the front door to couch after this happened....haha!  I was nice and didn’t make her pay, but this was a one time pass.  Next time I should be $20 richer.

Noah’s Solo/Ensemble second round was last week.  Everyone in band prepares a musical number either a solo or an ensemble with other students.  They first perform in class and the teacher gets to decide who moves on to the next round.  The people who make it on to the next round perform after school in front of a judge.  This was Noah’s second round since he made it past the classroom round.  He was really nervous, but he and his partner did great.

He was excited to find out he made it to the third round via email the next day which will be at the district level later in the month:

The judge for the second/school round stopped Aaron and me as we were leaving and asked if Noah was related to a Sarah and Daniel Mancil.  She was the high school band teacher and knew exactly who Sarah and Daniel were--haha!  I hope she is okay having another Mancil coming up that will be in her class in a few years.  Noah is enjoying doing percussion.  We even found him a used drum set this past week.  He has been playing around on it and likes it.  He also had his CCR meeting with his junior high counselor this past week.  All the students in junior high have this meeting with their counselors and then they register for the next years classes.  In this meeting Noah got to talk about what career path he was interested in and the school counselor helped him register for the best classes to help him get started with it.  I can’t believe he will be in 9th grade next year!!

Daniel was worked over a bit this last week.  He had a yearly physical doctor’s appointment and an appointment with the dentist.  Daniel needed a certain test done so he got to come in and see me at work.  He wasn’t super excited about it, but he got it done.  He loved the fluoride treatment at the dentist’s office with the protective glasses, and suction if you can’t tell--haha! At least he didn’t have any cavities.  I will mark that as a win!!

Daniel has been doing a business internship this semester in school at Marketstar.  He has been loving it.  He is doing this internship along with many other students from different high schools in northern Utah.  When they all first started they got put into different 3-4 person groups.  Then they give them real world business problems that they have to try and solve.  Daniel is in with a group of 4 students that he didn’t know beforehand.  Marketstar has been doing different contests where the different groups pitch their business problem solutions.  The group that wins the contest gets an Amazon gift card.  Daniel’s group has won twice.  He, however, does not have an Amazon account so he will bring his gift card home and ask me to Venmo him the amount of the giftcard.  He then will give me the gift card since I do have an Amazon account and it is useful for me and the cash is useful for him.  Now when you use Venmo you have to put in an explanation of what the transaction is for which is visible to all the friends you have linked on Venmo--kind of like a social media of sorts if that makes sense.  Our last transaction I put this for the explanation because it was funnier than putting it was just for an Amazon gift card:  

Daniel was not amused....but the rest of us were.  He was fine with it.  I just got an eye roll from him.

Daniel got to go rock climbing with some friends this past week.  He had a lot of fun.  His arms really hurt the next day, but he said it was worth it.  He got to go to the rock wall at Weber State since he is a student there--a concurrent student, but still a student nonetheless.

Noah got to go to a friend birthday party last week at the Rush Funplex.  He said his favorite thing was the go carts.  He said he would get in front of everyone and then not let anyone pass.  If they tried to pass he would ram them into the sidewall.  Hmmm I hope it was all in fun....he also did a bunch of other activities with the other kids, too.  Here he is on the go carts pulling a cool face...

Josh is loving college life.  He went to the basketball game the other day with a friend. He was a true fan and showed his school spirit by wearing purple and painting his face:

Poor Sophie.  Despite my kids being older, they still like to mess with her.  They aren’t mean, but just like to snuggle with her.  Here they wrapped her up in a blanket so she could snuggle with them whether she wants to or not.  Luckily, she just waited until they were done and wriggled out of the blanket and went somewhere else.  She does still love us--I think--haha!

I will just say it has been a rough two weeks, but I am getting through it.  Just when I get over one hurdle another one is there to take its place.  Luckily, the people around me are supportive and we can all find humor in different situations.  I found this meme that I thought was funny:

I am waiting to see what the next two weeks will hold in store for us.