Leadership Conference, Birthday, Lagoon, Chuckles, P-Day Calls, Band Concerts, Track, Cookies

Another two weeks have gone by.  Two weeks ago Daniel had the opportunity to attend a Leadership Conference up at Utah State University in Logan.  His City Youth Council group got to attend.  During the Conference they worked on learning how to be good leaders, they did some team building, they got to attend a dance and they got to know each other better.  Daniel had a lot of fun.  His adult leaders have been great and we are grateful they are still willing to head up the youth council year after year.  The group also got their city youth council shirts and sweatshirts in time to wear them to the conference.  Here’s the back of Daniel’s sweatshirt:

Here’s some of the different activities they got to participate in:

They left in the middle of a Thursday which meant I had to check Daniel out of school and drive him over to the drop off point.  Later that day I had to go back and pick up his car from the parking lot to drive it back home.  I teased Daniel.  With the price of gas lately, it is expensive to fill up a car.  When I got into Daniel’s car I texted him a picture of the almost full gas tank that he had just filled beforehand and said, “Wow a full tank of gas!!  Oh the places I could go!!”  He didn’t think I was very funny--but I sure did.  I did just drive it straight home so there was no joyriding on that almost full tank of gas.

At the conference they stayed at a hotel during the nights.  He shared a room with 3 other guys.  They made it a point to stay up all night both nights.  Needless to say Daniel came home and was ‘Chuckles’--aka ornery.  He crashed on the couch in the middle of the family room and would get upset at anyone making any type of noise at any time.  I told him to go to his room if he wanted a quiet place to nap, but he said he was too tired to go all the way downstairs....  **Sigh** I know he got some sleep because there was a bit of quiet snoring going on after awhile.  Aaron covered him with a blanket to make sure he would stay warm and asleep.  That way we didn’t have to deal with ‘Chuckles'--haha!

Josh had a different P-day than Monday this last week.  A group of missionaries got to attend the Chicago temple on Thursday so his P-day was Thursday instead of Monday.  We missed talking to him on Monday, but it was nice to talk to him that Thursday.  Daniel even joined in during track practice for a few minutes.  Josh had called Daniel during his lunch so they talked for a bit earlier in the day which was nice.  Aaron joined in a few minutes later in his car in the parking lot at work since he can’t have his cell phone in the building at work.  Aaron talked with him for a few minutes then had to go back to work after a bit.  Then Sarah joined in when she got home from school a few minutes later.  Noah then joined in 20 minutes later when he got home from school and Sarah got off the call since she had to go to dance.  I am grateful for technology that lets us all connect even if it is not all in the same place or at the same time.  Here is when Daniel and I were talking with Josh:

Josh loves going to the temple.  He did take this selfie outside the Chicago temple during that visit:

Josh has been enjoying being with his last companion.  However, transfers came this week.  Josh is staying in his area, Palantine, but getting a different companion.  Josh was pretty excited because his new companion is ‘A Lot like me’ or at least that is what Josh said.  Hopefully, it won’t be too much of a good thing--haha!  I am glad he is excited about it.  Chatting with Josh I got to meet one of the new converts in his area and her son.  She was very kind and offered to cut Josh and his companion’s hair for free.  That was so nice!  I got to talk to her for a few minutes and to her 11 year old son who was helping her.  It was pretty cool.

For the past two years the elementary school has not had any mornings with mom or dad or grandparents due to Covid.  They finally had the first Donuts with a Hero this past week.  Aaron and I went with Noah and enjoyed it.  I have missed these fun visits.  It was also the very last mornings with Noah at the school since he is almost done with 6th grade.  That makes me a bit sad, but he is looking forward to starting Jr High.  He we are enjoying our donuts and chatting:

Daniel had a band concert last week.

He didn’t let us know until last minute.  Don’t you love that?!  I am just glad we were able to make it.  Here is his band performing:

Daniel still is playing the baritone saxophone.  Here he is walking to his seat with his saxophone:

Josh was the baker at our house when he lived here.  When he left there was a cookie void that hasn’t been filled.  Noah decided to try making chocolate chip cookies by himself last week.  This was the first time he had tried it by himself.  I had to keep checking on him to make sure he knew what he was doing.  We were running low on ingredients so if anything was mistaken he wouldn’t have enough to try again.  Anyway, me checking on him a few times frustrated him a bit, but he did a great job.

This past weekend was our Stake’s Women’s Conference.  We were able to participate in a service project Friday evening and then attend different classes Saturday morning followed by a luncheon.  The service project was putting together pantry packs/lunch kits for kids in Davis School District that don’t have access to food at home.  The next morning we got to attend the keynote speaker and then break out and choose 3 different classes to take form the 12 that were being offered.  It was a great morning and a yummy lunch. However, the kids were not very patiently waiting for me to be done because when I got home that meant we were going to head over to Lagoon for their opening day.  We finally made it and it was PACKED at Lagoon.  We were there for about 3 hours and only rode 3 rides.  It was insane!!  Hopefully, it won’t be that bad as the season goes on.  We did the Terror Ride first:

Then the Bumper Cars:

Last the kids rode the spinning swing ride.  Aaron and I sat that one out since we didn’t feel like being motion sick and barfy the rest of the day--haha!

With Daylight Savings that means that it is darker later in the mornings.  However, that makes for some pretty sunrises.  Sarah took this picture on her way to school the other morning:

Sarah also had an assembly at school the other day.  She said they had a famous drummer come and talk.  Sarah couldn’t remember what his name was, but she did get a picture with him:

We don’t follow March Madness basketball at our house.  This meme is the only March Madness that happens around our house and I am still losing--haha!

Sunday was my birthday.  It was a great day and sunny.  Very rarely is it good weather on my birthday.  Most the time it is raining a dreary so I was excited it was such a pretty day.  We went to church, but afterward Aaron made me tri tip for dinner and cheesecake for dessert.  G&G T were able to come and join us for dinner.  Josh got special permission to call me on my birthday and I LOVED it!  He called while G&G T were at our house so they got a chance to talk to him, too.

Then he got passed around everyone else so he could chat with them, too.  Here’s Sarah’s turn:

It was an awesome day!!  Aaron was still on the group phone call when it was time to take Matthew back to his group home that evening.  On his way Aaron stopped by to show Josh the progress of the Syracuse Temple.  They are starting to put up the walls which is really cool.  Things were going great until Aaron stopped at Matthew’s group home and parked.  As Matthew was getting out of the car his iPad slipped out of his hands and fell on the ground and shattered.  Matthew was quite upset.  It did have a protective case on it, but it didn’t seem to help.  We had to take it in for repair Monday afternoon, but the Apple Store said it couldn’t be repaired and needed to be replaced.  Wouldn’t you know it, they didn’t have any in stock. DOH!!  They placed an order, but it might take up to a week to get here.  In the mean time Matthew is filling his time with making multiple April fools Day phone calls to me, Aaron, G&G T, and his house manager.  An April fools Day call entails something like this, “Hello! this is Sergeant Mancil and you’re in big trouble!!”  However, he can’t keep from giggling the whole time.  I love him, but it is going to be a long week......haha!  This is why he has a specialized phone that only allows him to call 5 programmed phone numbers that we decide.  Otherwise I can’t imagine how many other April fools Day calls he would be making.....

Sarah has not been feeling very well for about two weeks.  She got to have some blood drawn Monday and we are still waiting to hear the results.  I am so glad she is not bothered by getting her blood drawn.  Luckily, they got her the first stick and it was not too rough.

Sarah had a jazz band festival this past week.  It is where all the different schools’ jazz bands perform for judges and get critiqued.  Here’s Sarah’s jazz band right after they performed:

Daniel had a track meet yesterday.  He ran the 1600 meter which is a mile race.  And he was also supposed to run the 3200 meter (2miles), but ended up getting pulled into running the 4x400 meter relay instead.  Here’s Daniel running the mile:

Running the 4x400.  Here’s the baton pass to Daniel for his leg of the race:

Finishing the race:

He also got to help with putting hurdles out and away for the hurdle races.

We have definitely been keeping busy.  Spring Break is next week so I am looking forward to that.

Toy Killer, Wedding,Pig Out and BINGO, Photo Sharing, Special Olympics, Access To Music Concert, Pie Day, St. Patty’s Day

These past two weeks have flown by.  My nephew Nathan got married last weekend.  Before the wedding we had a family wedding breakfast.  My other niece, Miriya and her son Wodin, were able to fly out from Ohio to visit as well.  During the breakfast Wodin really loved seeing Grandpa T:

It was a nice sealing that was done in the Ogden Temple.  Here’s the happy couple afterward:

Hugs for everyone:

It was nice to visit the temple.  Aaron and I took a quick selfie, too.  He got me right as I was about to say something...

Later that afternoon they had a ring ceremony for all those that weren’t able to be at the temple.  Then the reception that night.  It was a great day!

The next day we had our annual Terry family tradition of a ‘Pig Out’ and BINGO.  G&G T treated us to the ‘Pig Out’ at Golden Corral.  Then we went over to Bryan and Michonne’s church to play BINGO.  It is fun to see what interesting things you get and will probably bring back as presents for next year--haha!

Grandpa T got lots of help from Wodin:

Wodin was a pretty busy guy, but he did sit on my lap for a few minutes.  I loved it!!

Grandpa also got some help from Matthew:

It was a fun weekend!!

I have some insomnia which is not new.  I found this meme that I thought was funny and accurate--haha!

However, sometimes it can work in my favor.  On Josh’s P-days if I am awake early, early in the morning he will message me and I can message back in real time.  I love it.  Last week we were able to compare our different snow fall amounts very early in the morning--haha!  Here’s what our backyard looked like:

Sarah is doing great at school.  I love to get awesome updates from teachers at her school every once in a while.  Here’s one note in pink ink from Sarah’s history teacher:

Here was an email that the school sent to me which I LOVED!!

She also got to attend a Story Telling Festival at Weber State two weeks ago on a field trip for her English class.  She enjoyed it.  She also had a science group project this past week.  Here’s the friends she did the project on sea life food pyramid:

She had a band festival Tuesday night.  Here’s her friends as they were riding on the bus coming home:

It is fun to see memories pop up in Facebook.  I thought this memory from 6 years ago was funny.  Josh had just passed me up in height.  Little did I know that growth spurt would last a few years--haha!

Josh went to the doctor this last week in Chicago.  In his chart they highlight all the abnormal results.  I guess that includes height as well since they flagged it as abnormal--haha!

Speaking of Josh....when he did Home MTC way back in July he used our iPad.  However, what he failed to mention is that he had to redo all of our settings because the parental settings we had in place wouldn’t let him access Home MTC.  In doing so he got it to work for him through Home MTC, but messed it up for us when he left.  Aaron had to reset the iPad and our family sharing on all of our devices a few weeks ago.  We didn’t think this was too big of an issue, however, we had a hiccup last week.  On our Apple TV device we use the screen saver function which pulls photos from our shared family photo file and cycle through them.  It is fun to see old pictures of the kids and our family while the tv is paused.  Anyway, Daniel is in a weight lifting/team conditioning class at school.  He has worked hard on getting muscly throughout the year and is a bit proud to show off his hard work.  He thought he would be funny and take some selfie pictures of his flexed arms and abs in the bathroom mirror (he was wearing shorts in all the pictures) and then added them to the family shared photo album.  Right after he did that he waited for the screen saver on the Apple TV to pop up and then laughed when I saw his muscle pics show up on the TV among our other family pictures and rolled my eyes and said, “Really, Daniel?!”  That wasn’t that big of a deal, however, when Aaron reset our family sharing...he inadvertently reset Matthew’s iPad and added it to our family sharing plan.  That wouldn’t have been that big of a deal, but Daniel’s funny added muscle pics came up on Matthew’s iPad while he was riding the school bus to school that morning.  Matthew immediately called me to let me know about Daniel’s pictures and wanted to let me know he did not think they were okay and then showed all of the school bus staff.  Face palm moment right there--haha!  I then made Daniel delete all his muscle pics and told Matthew not to worry about it.  Daniel thought that was even more funny.  DOH!!  Here’s one of the muscle pics he shared so you can see it wasn’t a big deal:

I sent Daniel this meme because it describes him--haha!

I have now told him he is no longer allowed to add any pictures to the shared family photo file unless they have been pre-approved by either Aaron or me--haha!  That way we will be sure they pass the Matthew test beforehand--haha!  Being a teenager is hard sometimes.  We were doing scripture study last Sunday when I hear snoring.  I first thought it was Sophie, but after I bumped her and woke her up the snoring continued.  I then walked around the coffee table and found the snoring culprit:

I woke him up, but the snoring started back up again 5 minutes later.  After that I made him sit up and amazingly he stayed awake after that--haha!

Two weeks ago the high school had an ACT test for just the juniors.  To have that happen they dismissed the sophomores and seniors for the day.  That meant Daniel got the day off.  We had a bit of a lazy day, but we did go out to breakfast with Aaron.  It was pretty yummy and great company:

Afterward Daniel was lucky enough to run some errands with me--lucky guy--haha!

Matthew had one of his semi annual meetings with Vocational Rehab. We discussed his future job plans since he will be starting his last year of Vista in the fall.  The meeting went well and now we need to decide when to have Matthew start working with a job coach.  Matthew also has been substituting as a teacher in primary.  Aaron will go along with him to help, but Matthew has been team teaching with another brother in our ward.  Matthew is really enjoying teaching primary.  He taught his first lesson two weeks ago (with Aaron’s help) and did great.  It has been awesome!

Matthew has been enjoying participating in Special Olympics.  His team won their first round and got to go to state this past weekend.  We went down to the UofU to watch his team play.  They won a silver medal and he has been so excited about that.  He wore his medal to school every day for a week.  I wouldn’t let him wear it to church which he was quite upset about.  However, if I had let him wear it to church I don’t think he could have calmed down throughout the entire two hours we would be there.  The staff photographer took their last pictures made up a sports card for Matthew.  It turned out pretty cute: 

In preparation for his three games on Saturday his staff let him pack some snacks.  Before their first game started we had to change seats and I helped him move his stuff.  I picked up a grocery sack he had brought and it was heavy.  I peaked inside and found 3 full ziplock bags of E. L. Fudge cookies, 3 full ziplock bags of Pringles chips, and three full ziplock bags of Oreos.  I showed Aaron what his snack bag looked like while I was giggling.  His staff saw and said that she had tried to help him, but he insisted this is what he wanted for his snacks.  I was totally fine with it I just thought it was funny.  Here’s his ’snacks’:

Matthew did well.  He did make a few shots.  Thankfully since this is the Special Olympics they were pretty lax on the official rules--like dribbling, double dribbling, etc.  It made it so everyone no matter their cognitive or physical level could play at some point.

The games were only 12 minutes long.  They did have a 3 minute half time after the first 6 minutes.  Before the first half time was over Matthew was done with half time and went over and told the referee it was time to start playing again.  I guess that was a good sign he was enjoying playing rather than sitting around during half time.

Here’s a team huddle:

Here’s all the Chrysalis Knights:

Matthew’s team:

Their team won two games and lost the last matchup, but the whole day was great.

Tuesday evening we had the chance to attend the Access to Music Concert down in Salt Lake.  It is a concert put on by the Utah Symphony and the Utah Opera for those with special needs.  They do this special concert to accommodate those that can’t necessarily sit quietly or in the dark through and entire regular concert.  They help things by only dimming the lights and everyone that attends is either special needs or family/friends of those with special needs.  That way everyone is understanding of interruptions or anything else that may occur.  I was excited to attend this concert this year.  Last year it was cancelled due to Covid.  The year previous we weren’t able to attend for some reason I can’t remember so we have really missed it.  In order to get in to see the concert I had to reserve our tickets (that were no cost) two months ago.  Then at the door we had to show our covid vaccine cards and wear a mask throughout the whole entire performance and the whole time we were in the Capitol Theater.  Here we were waiting for them to open the doors so we could sit down:

Sarah had a band festival so she wasn’t able to come along with us.  Anyway, they shortened a regular program to just an hour and it was perfect.  Here’s the program showing the different musical numbers they performed:

We had 4th row seats and it was amazing!!

The awesome thing about this concert is that there was clapping and yelling and it was awesome.  Matthew LOVED clapping along to this song as did everyone else in the audience:

It was so cool!!  We even ran into Matthew’s principal at his school.  Matthew was so excited to see him!! Here we are waiting for the concert to start:

One of the songs they played was ‘Les Toreadors’ from Carmen, Suite No 1.  I recorded a small clip for Sarah since she couldn’t be with us that night. I recorded it because she is actually playing this song for a piano recital in a few months.  It thought that was pretty cool!

3/14 otherwise known as Pie Die happened this past week.  To celebrate Daniel was able to hook us up with some free pizza pies from Little Caesar’s Pizza.

We then had some pie for dessert.  We got to choose from peach pie, pumpkin pie or lemon meringue pie.  

It was a fun day to celebrate!!

Today was Saint Patrick’s Day.  We celebrated by having green alfredo sauce with spaghetti and broccoli.  I turned the alfredo sauce green by blending it with spinach since I didn’t have any green food coloring on hand--haha!  It was pretty tasty.  You couldn’t taste the spinach at all in the alfredo sauce.

Noah is not done losing baby teeth, yet.  I lost a tooth with a bracket a couple weeks ago.  That is crazy!  When they undid his wire at the orthodontist’s office it fell out.  They let him keep the tooth bracket and all--haha!

Sophie continues to be a lazy, velcro dog, but that is just business as usual for her.  She is cute though.

However, she does have a vicious streak in her when it comes to squeaky toys.  She tends to be a pretty serious serial toy killer.  She ‘killed’ this toy within 10 minutes to getting it.  She got the squeaker out and spread the fluff everywhere!!

Toy killing must have taken it out of her because she napped the rest of the morning in the sun--crazy dog!!

She destroyed another toy tonight as you can see the evidence on her face: