Birthday Season

Birthday season is upon us. At least that's how we used to refer to this period of time between August 29th and September 29th. Chris's family has a large concentration of birthdays in March and May, but in my family it was at this time of year with 5 of the 7 of us having birthdays within one month. So...

Happy Birthday yesterday David!!

My brother David was born on my 6th birthday, and it's always been fun to share. We've had some pretty great coordinating cakes in the past (Ms. Pac Man and a blue ghost, for example). We don't do that anymore, we just call each other and compare how our days are going. I hope you had a good celebration last night, Dave!!

Thank you everyone who commented on my blog and sent me nice birthday wishes via phone, email, and mail!

I've been very spoiled with CAKE this year! For everyone who provided a cake I am thanking you! I appreciated and enjoyed every one of them.

Tuesday night my very fun and spontaneous parents came up from Provo and surprised me with a cake and balloons. We had Chinese food, and delicious yellow cake with chocolate frosting, ice cream and hot fudge.

Wednesday morning I got up at 5:30 and went to a step-interval class. Hard, hard, hard, but exercise is always worth it, right? I was dressed and ready for the day by 7:30 when the doorbell rang and it was the bishop. He gave me a new calling, right there on the doorstep. I'm keeping you in suspense on what it is....

Jemma and I went to lunch at Noodles and Co. I ordered Penne Rosa and thought she would like the Wisconsin Mac & Cheese. It turned out that she was much more interested in my penne. Interesting, since it's slightly spicy and has spinach, mushrooms, and tomatoes. I ended up eating most of the mac and cheese. It's just like Jemma to do that though. She's always more enticed by whatever food Chris or I have. She's famous for saying, "I'll have what Dad's having." It was a good lunch, but probably better for cold weather days when it can warm you up from the inside out. It was 96 degrees yesterday!

Mary, our friend and neighbor, brought me a nice little chocolate cake with homemade chocolate frosting that she had made and decorated herself! It was so sweet of her, and tasty too. There were two nice birthday cards, one from Mom and Dad and one from Laur, in the mail, as well as a package from Leanne and Michelle. Very exciting to have good mail!

Chris suggested we take the kids out for dinner, which sounded good to me. We went to Tepanyaki! The kids were awed by the whole production and loved the food too. It was quite entertaining, and delicious. We went to Chris' parent's afterward. They gave me a nice book (watch for quotes in days to come) and we had some spice cake with fresh peaches and cream. Jemma was preparing to sleep over because she was being babysat there all day today. She was having a hard time coming to terms with the sleepover business, and saying that she would miss her brother too much. Chris told her she could think of Greg as her brother, which satisfied her.

The 4th cake is this very customized princess cake from Heath. He likes to call me L-Train, I don't know why, except that he has nicknames for everyone. Mmmmm.....vanilla with strawberry filling.

First Day of 6th Grade

Jordan's first day of 6th grade was yesterday. Sunday night he could hardly calm down enough to go to sleep -- he was so excited. He jumped up yesterday morning without any encouragement and I barely got this photo of him as he was on his way to the bus stop. He came home beaming and very happy saying it was THE BEST. He said school was the best thing about his day (which also consisted of playing with a couple of friends at their houses). So it made me think of a few things....

I think I'd be a big fan of year-round school. The summer gets long and it's so easy to get out of the habit of getting up early and keeping a schedule. Also, at the beginning of the summer Jordan was off to a good start by writing in a journal daily and reading - keeping up his skills in general. By the end of the summer none of that was happening -- we didn't slack off intentionally. I think he was suffering from a major case of ennui. With year round school I think the 3 week breaks would be much easier to maintain good habits and provide nice little breaks throughout the year and allow no time for boredom to set in. Ah well...summer is over now and he had a pretty challenging homework project last night. So we're back in the swing of things.

My first day of 6th grade & Kristin's first day of 2nd- 1981

The other thing I was thinking about is the traditional first day of school. I remember always feeling a little anxious the night before the first day of every grade! Anxious not in a happy, excited way - more in a nervous way. I was shy and a little apprehensive to meet new teachers and possibly new kids and just get used to going back to school. It was such a big deal - a momentous event and major change at the end of every summer. None of those feelings seem to exist for Jordan, and I'm glad about that. I'm not sure if it's because he's much more confident and outgoing as a person, or if our whole culture has changed in a way that school seems somewhat less formal now. It was no big deal for him.

End of Summer

The summer has sort of wound down and come to an end. No more sleeping in for the kids. I was thinking about what we did over our summer vacation and decided that it's worth documenting:

• Vanessa visited us from England



• Jemma learned to ride her two-wheeler (two-wheewer as she was calling it)



• Lara, Jereck and their kids came from Texas and we met up with them for an afternoon at Gateway. The kids had a ball and we want to go visit them in Houston now.



• Mom, Kristin, Hayley and Alyssa came up one afternoon in June and we went to the Tracy Aviary and then hung out at Gateway. A fun day!



• Chris and Jordan drove to Scottsdale to get the boat



• Spending most Saturdays out on the lake



• Family Reunion to celebrate Grandma and Grandpa Johnson's 60th Anniversary in Logan. There were about 100 family members there. We all stayed at the University Inn and had a nice two days on campus.



• Lauralee and Travis and kids moved to Flagstaff. (The saddest part of the summer.) We miss them!





• Our impromptu trip to San Diego for the 4th of July. Staying at the nice house, going to the beach and the Padres game.




• Youth Conference


• 3 Days in St. George


• Kevin's visit
  

And now...school.

Released

Today I was released from my calling as 1st Counselor in Young Women. I'm going to miss the fun girls, interesting experiences, and the other leaders! It's been challenging, and time consuming, but really good. I'm without a calling for now, but we were told that it wouldn't remain this way for long. Sacrament meeting is the last hour of church, so none of the girls knew about this today as I was teaching. Probably a good thing -- it made it much easier to end on a positive note, without getting emotional. I'm glad I managed to get a photo of us our class (with everyone there!) this morning.

Onabiyi Returns

Kevin Onabiyi was my first District Leader in the mission field. We were serving in Sutton Coldfield. He's such a laugh! One of the good things about Chris and I having served in the same mission is that we know the same people, only not from the same places at the same times.

Kevin's been to Utah a few times over the years, but it's probably been ten years now since we've seen him. He's only here for a week and has a tight schedule with a lot of people to see. Sunday night we met up with him in Provo. He hasn't changed a bit, although he is now a Head Master at a girl's school in London. He and Jordan had a wrestling match - he always seems to invite wrestling matches. I was wondering if it was customary for him to wrestle the people he visits, but apparently it's not. It's just us. We took him boating last night at Jordanelle Reservoir and gave him a little respite from the heat. In fact we made him shiver!

Kevin is our second visitor from England this summer. We really need to go back there, and take the kids. It's got to go on the 2008 agenda!!

Book Report After All

After reading Jill's comment on my No Book Report, I decided to provide my opinion of Twilight.

I wanted my first blog book review to be a positive one, which is the reason for my hesitation. There was nothing compelling me to read this book, except maybe curiosity. Our book group chose it as a light summer read and everyone seemed to have heard nothing but good about it.

The story line did not capture me. I got interested about 3/4 of the way through, and that part lasted for maybe 75 pages. The writing style was extremely repetitive and had too many inconsequential and completely unnecessary details. (At first I was trying to read into the details thinking they would become significant later.) How many times does the reader need to have Edward's amazingly stunning looks described!!? Must Edward and Bella have the same conversation over and over again!!? I found that the characters lacked substance.

On a more positive note, I did find the characteristics of vampires to be quite interesting.

At the end of the book, the first chapter from the sequel is included and it ends at a critical and intense moment. However, I was left with no desire to read on. (Although, I must admit that I did ask someone to tell me what happens.)

I feel like the odd one out on this one. I haven't met another person yet who didn't love it and highly recommend it and guarantee that once you start reading you won't be able to put it down. Honestly, I sometimes found it a little hard to press on. It simply wasn't for me. Forgive me, all you devoted Twilight series lovers!

St. George in August

We went to St. George for three days. Before we left I was questioning our timing -- one of the hottest times of the year to be traveling south. There was a good reason for it though, the kids had been there since last Saturday staying with Michelle & Cam, so we had to go pick them up. When we got there on Thursday it was about 107 degrees. We all got ready to head to Sand Hollow Reservoir, but as we were driving east we noticed threatening black clouds rolling in and lightning. So we turned around and scrapped that idea for the day.

Chris

Friday was much more promising. Chris, Cam, Greg and Jordan left early with the boat and enjoyed some wake boarding. Later, a van full of us met them there. Unfortunately, we were trying to avoid spending too much time on the beach because of problems with the sand making the kids all itchy. The great thing about it was that it wasn't too hot by the water and it there were hardly any other boats there (probably because school had already started there). It even rained on us a little, but it was a light, warm rain that just passed over quickly. Jemma was quite happy to splash around in the water with Brielle and Trey, she didn't even go on the boat.

Greg

Saturday was more of the same. We got up early and went out to further advance our wake boarding skills. We also had plenty of opportunity to practice navigating between other boats -- the place was wild with people by mid-morning. The water was beautiful! Clean and clear. Quite unlike the water we've become accustomed to (Utah Lake). We jumped off the cliffs, Greg did some diving.

It was a good getaway.