Birthday, Treats, Genetics, Pranked, Mission Farewell and Stuff, Girl’s Camp, Canning, Soccer, Sophie

These past two weeks have been absolutely CrAzY!!!!  So much has happened.  Here’s an overview.  This cute girl had a birthday and is officially a teenager.  She has some teenage sass, but is kind hearted, funny with a very dry sense of humor, loves to help, and LOVES to read.  The whole world could be on fire, but if she had a book she would never notice--haha!

You can’t be a true teenager without perfecting the art of selfies in the mirror, right?!  Haha!

She had a friend party to celebrate her birthday.  They had pizza and a movie night.  She requested cheesecake instead of a regular birthday cake.  She is a girl after my own heart!!  Here’s her cheesecake:

She has a really good friend group and they have been friends for a few years.  They are all good girls and I am glad they continue with their friendships.

She had her party on a Friday, but her actual birthday was on Monday.  We wanted Matthew to celebrate with us as well as G&G T so we had her birthday dinner on Sunday.  She chose tri tip for her birthday dinner with mashed potatoes.  Then she had another cheesecake for dessert.

Happy birthday cute girl!!

We were glad G&G T were able to come and celebrate with us as well as Matthew.

The next morning Dad got up extra early to get her birthday donuts which she graciously shared with her brothers.

Let me tell you about Sophie.  She LOVES treats.  However, she doesn’t get them as often as she feels she should.  When she needs to go outside to go potty she will sit at the back door and whine to let us know to open the backdoor to let her out.  She has discovered that if she whines by the back door someone will always get up to let her out.  However, once you have gotten up and have started walking toward the back door to let her out she will run over and sit in front of the treat bucket to psych you out.  She knew that whining at the backdoor would get someone up and therefore instead of walking to the backdoor you can walk toward the treat bucket to give her some.  DOH!!  I think she has us trained pretty well, unfortunately.  How can you say no to that cute face, though?! 

Matthew got some gift cards for his birthday.  Aaron took Matthew out to Five Guys for dinner the other night so he could use one of his gift cards.  Matthew LOVED it!!

Sarah met with the liver nurse practitioner and the liver doctor a few weeks ago.  She definitely has something weird going on, but no one knows what it exactly is right now.  Luckily, her elastography came back looking great showing no signs of liver scarring despite her liver enzymes being high.  They still want her to continue taking her Ursodiol medication twice a day, repeat the labs every 6 months and be seen in the liver clinic every 6 months as well.  One interesting thing, though, is since there is a very strong family issue on my side with liver problems Sarah did qualify for a genetic study that test for about 70 different genetic liver diseases.  I am very curious to see if anything comes out of those results, but they will take anywhere from 4-6 weeks to get any information back from that genetic test.  In the mean time she will just go about life just like normal.  Here she is getting her blood drawn for the genetic test as well to test for celiac disease to rule it out.  Good thing Sarah is a champ at getting her blood drawn!!

On the way out to our car to come home from that visit we got a bit of an unpleasant surprise.  Someone had dropped a pouch yogurt in the middle fo the parking lot.  Another car had run over the pouch of yogurt which made it projectile spray all over the back of my van.  Sarah thought that was pretty hilarious.  Me not so much, but what can you do?!  It was time for a car wash anyway is another way to look at it if I am trying to stay positive.

We met up with Dad for a fun birthday lunch for Sarah at Cafe Rio.

I still have been working a little bit these past few weeks.  However, I have really drastically cut down my work schedule while Josh was in the Home MTC just to be around and talk to him when he has his breaks.  One morning I had to leave really early for a shift.  Noah had asked me what time I was leaving in the morning as he was going to bed.  I didn’t think any more about it until I was getting ready for work and he stumbled sleepily out of his room and sat down by me.  I asked him why he was up so early because he is usually one that sleeps in past 7 or 8 am.  He told me he set his alarm so he could see me before I went to work.  That melted my heart.  I sat on the couch and snuggled with him for a few minutes.  I was a bit late for work that morning, but it was totally worth it!!!

Aaron pranked Daniel and Sarah.  You can type in a predictive text line in place of a regular word you use on your phone.  When Daniel and Sarah text they use text shorthand which made it easy to type in a phrase replacement.  Aaron grabbed their phones.  Daniel uses the response ‘K’ a lot for okay.  I guess ‘okay' takes too much time to type out.  So Aaron put in the replacement, “My farts smell like rotten eggs” when Daniel would type ‘K’.  Daniel didn’t notice this so he texted some friends a few times before he saw what was happening when he typed the response ‘K’.  He wasn’t too happy with Aaron, but he did think it was funny.  His friends were wondering why Daniel was telling them about what his farts smelled like.  Aaron did the same thing with Sarah.  Luckily, it only happened a few times before Sarah and Daniel  noticed and changed it back.  They told us they would get us back so if you see any texts from Aaron and me that are weird know that is probably the work from Sarah and Daniel--haha!

We had Girl’s Camp two weeks ago.  It was the last week right before school started.  It was the only open time Cinnamon Creek Girl’s Camp (up in Cache Valley by Logan) had open in their schedule when it was time to be booked earlier in the year.  However, as the days got closer to the start of Girl’s Camp the forecasted weather was not looking good.  The forecast kept getting worse the closer to camp it got.  Camp was supposed to start Wednesday morning, however, Tuesday morning the 7 day forecast it was going to rain straight for the next 7 days and the temperature was going to hover between 35 degrees up to 50 degrees.  With those temperatures and rain and Covid restrictions things weren’t looking very promising.  The Young Women President (we did not have a Camp Director) called and emergency leader meeting Tuesday evening and it was decided that making the 90 drive up to Cinnamon Creek to try camping in horrible weather was not in the best interests of Girl’s Camp.  Amazingly, we were able to shift gears and came up with an alternate plan.  We were able to reserve our Stake Center for all of Girl’s Camp.  That is unheard of since there are usually conflicts with other wards, but there were none during these three days.  All of us went home and gathered any and every Christmas tree we had available and headed to the Stake Center to decorate that evening.  Even though we couldn’t sleep over at the Stake Center we made it as camp like as we could.  Here’s everyone’s Christmas trees and some tents as well as a pretend fire.  All the leaders brought their Scentsy warmers and put pine tree scents in them and there was even a camp fire flavor that was put in one of the Scentsy’s as well.  Someone else had huge strands of Christmas lights and they were strung all across the ceiling to replicate starlight.  They also played background sounds of crickets and other night sounds.  It turned out pretty cool looking when it was finished being decorated:

We started Girl’s Camp the next day.

Seeing as everything had changed the schedule was planned a bit on the fly and written out during the day on whatever was handy to write stuff on.  This particular day is a styrofoam dish--haha!

Sarah and her friends took some interesting pictures.  Sarah shared two of hers with me.  I just laughed and now I have some blackmail pictures that might be useful in a few years--haha!

All in all despite the drastic change in plans I think it went over pretty well!!

There was a photo booth they tried out as well:

Here’s some other random pictures:

The camp skit groups:

There was also a watercolor painting class taught by the president which was pretty cool.

Here’s mine and Sarah’s masterpieces:

Girl’s Camp was originally supposed to end on Saturday, but since it was at the Stake Center after the testimony meeting ended Friday evening we stayed after and cleaned everything up.  It was a crazy, chaotic few days, but it all was good.

It rained every day here, too.  I still got up early to go to the track with Josh before I had to head over to Girl’s Camp for the rest of the day.  One morning it was pouring rain.  After being on the track for 30 minutes my hoodie was so wet you could wring it out.  We are in such a drought here.  I just think it is crazy that it hardly rained all through the summer, but during the few days of Girl’s Camp it poured rain.  What are the odds?!  Here’s Josh and me drenched by the rain:

I am glad camp ended a day earlier because I had so much to finish before Sunday.  Josh’s farewell was Sunday, but we were going to have a luncheon afterward that we had to prepare for.  During the week I had given Aaron a shopping list to take care of.  Poor Aaron also had to go to Noah’s and Sarah’s back to school nights alone, too.  He handled it like a champ, though.  Saturday Aaron and I spent time cooking, cleaning and running errands.  Saturday evening Aaron had a work party that we went to as well.  Since Aaron works in a secure building I never can visit and meet anyone he works with.  These outside parties are the only way to put faces to names and meet the people he works with.  

The next morning which was Sunday was a bit crazy.  Aaron had meetings that morning.  I got up early to get kids up and ready.  Then I had to go pick up Matthew from his group home.  Not everyone could join us in person for Josh’s farewell talk, but thankfully our ward is still doing some online streaming for Sacrament Meetings. We sent out the Youtube link to everyone that was not able to join us in person.  During Josh’s talk his aunt Jill did take this picture of her screen.  When Josh talks he uses his hands a lot as you can see--haha!  They also had to put the podium up so high since Josh is so tall--haha!

After his talk Aaron and I divided and conquered.  Aaron went to go and set up the park for the luncheon.  I stayed with Josh so he could visit with people that were not going to be able to make it to the luncheon.  His Cross Country coach and a lot of the team came to listen to him speak which was really nice!

After visiting for a few minutes I drove Josh over to the park where the luncheon was happening.  

It was nice to see so many friends and family excited for Josh.

Aaron smoked a pork shoulder for pulled pork sandwiches.  My family helped with pasta salads and chips.    We also ordered some brownies for dessert.  A friend also brought some homemade chocolate chip cookies which was really sweet!  It turned out really nice.

We are grateful for everyone that has supported Josh!!

Josh’s friend group also wrote a bunch of encouraging notes and put them all in a box for Josh to take with him on his mission.  That was pretty thoughtful!!

That Sunday evening it was the night before the first day of school.  We had to do our annual height measurements on the wall.  For some reason I didn’t take a picture of Matthew, but his height is highlighted in yellow:

Aaron also gave Daniel, Sarah and Noah their Father’s blessings.  Then Aaron and I got up early Monday morning to cook a nice breakfast.  Aaron took the morning off work to help see the kids off.  We did walk Noah to school, too.  I will miss it next year when I won’t have anyone in elementary school anymore.  Here’s their first day of school pictures for this year.  Even though Josh isn’t going to school he still had me take his picture for fun anyway:

Matthew started school a week later so Grandpa T helped give him his back to school blessing.  Aaron gave Josh his yearly Father’s blessing since he would be leaving the next morning for Chicago.

Daniel had his first Cross Country meet.  

They ran two miles at this meet.  Here’s Daniel checking his times:

Daniel also will be turning 16 soon so he decided to ask a friend to Homecoming.  Josh went along to help Daniel set it up.

Here’s what it looked like set up on her porch:

She answered him back last night:

We were lucky enough to get two bushels of peaches given to us from some friends last week.  I didn’t bottle anything last year so I was excited to preserve stuff this year to replenish our stash.  The peaches were in wonderful condition!  It was an all day very messy venture, but worth it.

I ended up getting 21 quarts of peach halves, 8 pints of jam, 27 jars of peach jam 1/2 pints.

Our own garden has been producing well, too.  I picked all the peppers from our garden--Anaheim and jalapeño--and made a bunch of pepper jelly.  You eat it with crackers and cream cheese.  I never thought I would like something like that, but it really is good!  Here’s the peppers I started with:

I also did salsa that day with our tomatoes and peppers from the garden:

Noah has started fall soccer.  His favorite position is goalie.  He did really well this last game.  It was fun to watch him play.

During Josh’s Home MTC he really missed running.  Since I can’t run as far or as fast as he can we compromised and went to the track.  That way he still has a companion, but he can do the workout he wants to do while I walk/jog.  His exercise time is early in the morning.  We got to see quite a few sunrises and each one was awesome.

Last Friday was our last day to go to the track together since Josh was flying out for Chicago on Monday.  It made me sad, but I was glad to have that time with him the last 6 weeks.

Aaron was at the store and picked up some milk last week.  He got the milk with the August 30th expiration date since that is the day Josh flies out to Chicago.  You know it is getting close when you can find a milk with that expiration date on it.

In getting all of Josh’s mission stuff gathered Aaron went and found his old missionary tag and put it next to Josh’s.  I love my elder Mancils!!

Aaron tells me he is NOT an animal person.  He wasn’t very excited when we got Sophie and still says he doesn’t like her.  However, when I see him with her snuggled up with him getting pets I don’t know if I believe it--haha!

Sophie can be entertaining.  Despite being 6 years old she still loves destroying toys and chasing her tail.  What a weird dog!!  Chasing her tail:

When Josh finished his HMTC classes in the evening he liked to go for walks.  Sophie LOVES walks now that Matthew doesn’t take her on marathon walks every day like he used to.  However, the route we usually take goes by Sophie’s groomer’s house.  Sophie HATES to be groomed.  So when we walk by the groomer’s house Sophie either pulls us along or puts on the brakes because she doesn’t want to be dropped off to be groomed.  Sophie is trying to pull Josh to keep going on our walk and not to stop as you can see:

I will miss our walks in the evenings, but it was a good time to listen to the days happenings or what he learned about in the HMTC.

Knowing that Josh was leaving in a week, Aaron made sure he got his hugs in:

I also let Josh choose a few of our dinners in his last week at home.  He picked his favorites so we ate Tuscan chicken with DIY sun-dried tomatoes, Chicken pot pies, chicken noodle soup, and smoked ribs with mashed potatoes.   Here’s the ribs and fresh cantaloupe from our garden:

We also had the opportunity to do a round of Initiatories at the temple.  That way he had a chance to experience it again before he left.  Afterward he talked us in to grabbing some quick ice cream from the Farr’s Ice Cream shop right next to the temple.

It definitely has been a crazy two weeks!!