Senior, Prom Pictures, Texas Trip, Birthday, Fecal Fest, New Job, Mission Papers, SOUT Speech

The last two weeks a lot has happened. I feel like I say that a lot... Anyway here's an update. Aaron was able to go to Texas last week. His Dad was getting eye surgery and needed some help. Aaron was more than happy to fly to Texas to help. His Dad, who is blind, is currently living in a Senior Assisted Living facility.

Aaron was able to also visit with his Mom who still lives in her house and his Sister, Jill and her family, who also lives close by to his Mom.

Aaron's sister, Jill, has recently been diagnosed with breast cancer. She has started chemotherapy treatment and is staying strong. Aaron was grateful to have a nice visit with her while he was in Texas. Jill has a lot on her plate right now between the cancer diagnosis, taking care of her own family and overseeing her Mom and Dad's care as well, so Aaron was glad to go out to help.

Aaron was in Texas on Daniel's P-day call so Daniel got to talk with them all as well as us when he called which was nice.

Aaron was gone over Josh's birthday. Josh's birthday was on a Wednesday which is a busy day for him. He was gone most of the day anyway between school and work. We ended up celebrating Josh's birthday on the following Sunday. Josh chose to have ribs, caesar salad, and jalapeño macaroni and cheese for his dinner. Here he is trying to blow out the candles on his birthday cake:

Josh is getting ready to graduate this Saturday with his Associate's Degree in Laboratory Technology. Wahoo!! He will continue straight into the Bachelor's program so not much down time for him. This week is finals week so he has been a little stressed. Last week, he did do a big 'Fecal Fest' lab. Each student had to go out in the wild to find and collect fecal samples from wild animals. They were testing for parasites. Ewwww!  Josh went to a friend who has chickens and collected his 'fecal sample' from them. He was hoping to find something since the chickens had diarrhea. Yuck! Anyway, while doing the lab they took this picture. Poor Josh got cut out of it. You can see his left hand on the far left side, but the rest of his body got cut out of the picture. He was a bit miffed about that.

They even made a slogan for their 'Fecal Fest'. It is a spoof from the popular movie K-Pop Demon Hunters. Anyway, here was their poster for 'Fecal Fest K Poop Intestinal Demon Hunters' ewwww:

Here's some slides from his lab:

Josh has been pretty busy between school and work so when they were handing out free Monster drinks on campus he grabbed one.

Noah has had some track meets. It is fun to see him run. Here he is waiting for his race to start:

He got to go to an Invitational Meet a few weeks ago down in Orem. He did great. We grabbed this picture before we took Noah out to eat for his birthday dinner after he finished racing.

Noah played a piano musical number in Sacrament Meeting yesterday. He did great! Leading up to that he did go over to the church during the week to practice a few times:

Noah got his very first job. Sarah reached out to her old Little Caesar's manager and let her know Noah was turning 16. The manager made sure there was a job opening for him. The manager is awesome because she has been Josh, Daniel, and Sarah's manager and now is Noah's manager. Noah even wore Daniel's old shirt to work for his first day:

Aaron and I had to stop by during his first shift to say hi. Noah stayed professional and pretended not to know us. I took the cue and we pretended not to know him either. However, when we took the picture it was a dead giveaway that we knew each other--haha! We didn't catch the eye roll he gave us in the picture, though.

Matthew was asked to speak as the spokesperson athlete on behalf of Special Olympics Utah at the University Tree Utah event. It was to promote the importance of conservation. Matthew was just excited to speak in front of an audience. That kid has no fear!! Here's some pictures from the event:

He got to help plant some trees:

He wrote the majority of is 5 minute speech himself which was pretty cool!

Here's a few recent pictures from Daniel's mission. He is staying busy. He is currently a Zone Leader in the Council Bluffs area in Iowa. We got an email a few weeks ago asking which airport Daniel will be flying home to. That was crazy! He has less than 4 months left!! He will be coming home the end of July and we are excited!

Daniel is standing right behind the Mission President and his Companion:

Last week I took Sophie back to the vet to check her corneal ulcer. Thankfully it was fully healed. However, during the week she was still on pain meds and it made her a bit high at times. Here's a funny picture of her just enjoying her travel pillow of shame while a bit tipsy--haha!

Last weekend was Prom. For Noah's Day date his group went bowling. Here is Noah before he left on his day date:

After the day date he came home and got ready. He then left on the evening portion of the date. Since he just got his license he is not allowed to drive with anyone who is NOT family in the car for the next 6 months. However, to make it easier on the driver for the date he did drive over to his dates house by himself so they could be picked up together.

He has driven very few places by himself after getting his license so I was pretty nervous to let him drive by himself. I know it needs to happen, but it still doesn't make it any easier. I was closely watching when he pulled out of the garage in the car.

I watched him pull out and then he parked in front of our neighbor's house so he could try to connect his phone to the car so he could play music while he drove. It made me even more nervous to watch him drive away from our neighbor's house hitting the curb as he went around the corner--ugh!! I am happy to report that he and the car did make it home safely at the end of the night. Phew!!

Sarah went to prom as well. She went with a group of girls. They had fun on their day date:

They came home and got ready for the evening. Beautiful girl!!

Switching back to Noah his group they went out for dinner at Texas Roadhouse:

Then they went and got their pictures taken. Here he is with his date, Sophie:

Their group:

The flowers:

He had a fun time.

Sarah after getting ready they went and did pictures:

Her group:

All the girls got their nails done. Sarah had never gotten her nails done before so this was a fun, new thing:

They had a lot of fun. It was Sarah's last Prom which is sad, but she is ready to be done with high school.

Since she is a senior we got her senior pictures done a few weeks ago too. They turned out great:

Another exciting development is Sarah submitted her mission papers this past Saturday. Now we sit back and wait for her mission call to come. We are on pins and needles!!  This is the first kid that Aaron hasn't been the clerk for so he is not able to watch the status updates. He texted our ward clerk and requested an update. The clerk sent us the screen shot this evening showing that her papers are at church headquarters and in progress: