More Photos and Football

Hey there! So sorry I missed my email earlier in the week.  I had a house full of houseguests all day on Sunday and Monday and then I had a super early day at work Tuesday. I’m finally feeling a bit recovered!

I always look forward to talking to you on Sundays and hearing about your week.  I love hearing the interesting things you experience in such a different part of the world—the heavy rain, exotic foods and critters.  It seems like you are finding your groove and having some teaching opportunities. I'm so glad things are going well for your friend Xi Long. Keep working hard and good things will follow. 

This is what we were up to last week:

1. Tate started flag football and is loving it! He is so glad to finally be old enough to play on his own teams after watching his brothers for years.

2. Tate also started his new music class at Miss Amy’s house. Gavin is taking the class with him, and also his twin buddies Sawyer and Rider. They are going to have a great time. Last year his music class included a lot of play time, but I think this year the class is a little more disciplined. It’s sort of a precursor to piano, and she is teaching them rhythm and dance. Tate has asked about taking piano lessons from Amy, and I guess I will have to make that decision sometime in the coming months. He loves Amy so much and I’m inclined to let him stay with her, but I have a loyalty to Linda, and it might be hard to have kids taking from different teachers. Linda scaled down her studio by a few students this year, and I think she may be considering retiring at some point, so we will have to see how it all works out. I will say that it has been nice to only have Jett and Ethan to nag about piano this year. Getting Blake to practice last year was such a pain. Who knows if we will succeed at getting him to learn one more song and play in church?!

3. I got to work at Farmington Jr High taking photos last week. It was fun being back at my old school. I even found a picture of me and my 9th grade class on the wall! I got to take Nolan Bramhall’s pictures too!

4. I also picked up an extra shift working at Tooele High School. I had to leave the house at 5 am and got home at 4:00, just in time to go to a meeting at Endeavour and then start driving the kids all over town. Tooele was a fun location to take photos. There was a lot of diversity in the students, and tons of kids had brightly colored hair or crazy clothes or tattoos—definitely made photos more interesting! But that early morning was brutal and I hadn’t slept well the night before. I came down with a cold that day and bagged out of mutual so I could go to bed early.

5. Dad and Ethan went to mutual though and had a great time! They went boating for a combined youth activity. You know how much your dad loves to be on a boat! I was sad to miss it, but definitely needed the extra rest.

6. Thursday night I went to my “Global Reading” book club at Kristen Montierth’s house. We read a book called One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez—translated to English from Spanish. On some lists it is considered one of the top 10 books of all time. So basically a modern classic. I enjoyed a lot of it, but it was so strange and confusing. It chronicled 7 generations of one family, and half of the characters were either named Jose Arcadio or Aureliano. Can’t say I would recommend it, but it feels good for my mom brain to read something difficult every once in awhile. Also, I made a new Democratic friend named Julie Call (?). She brought Kristen a Kamala/Walz yard sign and we stayed late chatting about politics. So great to find like-minded friends int he area. I recognized her from when we went to Windridge, and I think she had a daughter you liked to play with in first grade—Kate? She was such a cute little girl. I’ll have to see if I can find a picture.

7. On Friday I drove down to BYU to go to lunch with some of my BYU roommates. Melissa drove down from Washington state to move her daughter Kayla to BYU for her first year. Kayla just got home from a mission to Argentina. It’s so fun to connect with my old friends, and crazy to see it come full circle as we send out kids to BYU now!

8. Friday night Farmington played Orem at home. Blake played well of course. His friends showed up to support him with R-A-W-S-O-N painted on their chests. Unfortunately it was another disappointing game. We were up 19-3 at half time and then didn’t score again for the rest of the game. Orem came back and scored over and over and beat us. Dang it! This week we play Corner Canyon, and they are always impressive. So Farmington is off to a rough start. Blake is doing his best though.

9. Saturday morning Dad and Michael went to the temple. I was planning to go along, but completely slept through that morning. I think I needed the extra rest to get over my cold. Apparently they have made more changed to the temple session and it is shorter now. It’s so interesting to see how they have modified so many times over the last few years. I went decades with the entire presentation memorized. No longer!

10. Jett’s team also had a disappointing loss on Saturday afternoon. Poor kid is not enjoying football much this year. It’s an exercise in attitude adjustment every day for him. Hopefully he starts enjoying it more as the season goes on. That afternoon we drove to Provo again and we met up with my other BYU roommate Aspen for dinner at Cafe Rio. She was in town dropping off her daughter Kayden for her 3rd year at BYU. After dinner we went to the BYU game which was super fun—because we WON! Always more fun that way! Alison and Zach drove to town for the holiday weekend and met us at the game and then drove home with us. I love having family come to town and stay. Ethan and Dad managed to squeeze in two games of Dune with Uncle Zach, but I mostly just spent time visiting.

Ok, well I’ve got to get going. I hope this is a great week for you, and look forward to talking to you soon!

Xoxo, mom