This Week

Tuesday Jaiden's tumbling job conflicted with her Musical Review rehearsal. I let her tumbling coach know and said that she would miss the first hour but that I would pick her up a few minutes early from rehearsal so that she could be there for the second hour class. When I went to pick her up all of the doors to the high school were locked! I tried doors all around the building and they were all locked. I finally found one that was open for the cheerleaders, but then the doors from there to the rest of the school were also locked. Jaiden doesn't have a phone and so I couldn't call her. I tried texting her friend and the director to send her out. She finally came out -- five minutes late and so she was very late for her job. I was pretty stressed by that time! 

We give our kids phones at age fifteen (with limited features and NO social media) if it seems like they can handle it. There are pros and cons though. A definite PRO will be getting off of all of many of Jaiden's group text lists! She loves to be involved and since she doesn't have a phone she uses my number for everything. I like being on the YW text list and rehearsal schedule, but not other things, like student council when they are trying to make decisions for things and I get EVERYONE's texts and responses -- Including things like, "We are meeting in Mr. Ord's room right now for a lunch meeting!" I text back and ask someone to please let her know since she doesn't have a phone.

I am on the group text list for her student council, NJHS, NJHS officers, YW, young women's presidency, Musical Review, Dance, and sometimes even friend group text lists. One time there was a group of friends and one of them said, "So who is all on this text list?" Her friend started naming off the friends on the list and then said, "and Sister Jensen!" Last month I even got a text from a boy at her school telling Jaiden that he thought she was cute and that he liked her!! I could have had a lot of fun with that one (I am sure Rick would have, if it had gone to him!) but thankfully I am a nice mom and let Jaiden handle it. 

Tuesday night was also Jenna's first soccer practice and the RS birthday party that I went to. They had us bring baby pictures and then had everyone try and guess who they were. I don't look anything like my baby pictures and so no one guessed mine except for one person. She guessed 18 out of 20 correctly -- which seemed totally impossible to me! I could only guess two or three correctly! We told her she should be a private investigator or something, ha ha!  They had a light dinner and so get to know you activities. It was very nice, with beautiful decorations. 

Wednesday I brought Josh and Jaiden to the Orthodontist after school. Jaiden gets her braces off in three weeks!! She is SO excited! I was in charge of the Young Women's activity tonight and asked Danielle Ray in our ward to come and teach the girls about skin care and make up. We had a good turn out and the girls really seemed to enjoy it. 

Thursday my new ministering sisters came over and it was nice to visit. They also brought over some gluten free treats, which was nice! I then met Rick at his office for a personal DMBA financial planning meeting over the phone with a DMBA representative. DMBA is the insurance we have through the church. They provide these meetings every so often, which is nice. Rick plans on retiring when he is 60 -- which is only 9 years away -- and so we wanted to make sure we were on track.  

Thursday night Rick picked up Jaiden from rehearsal to bring her straight to tumbling and I brought Jenna to her first soccer game. Her friend, Anna, had come home from school with her wanting to see her "spa" and ended up coming to the game with us. 

Saturday morning Rick got up early and went to the temple. I went to Madison Barney's bridal shower (Janika's childhood best friend). I brought the girls with me and then I brought Josh to his soccer game. It was a beautiful spring day and perfect weather for a soccer game! Josh and I both got a little sunburned though! They lost. Fall season Josh's team was undefeated and so they moved up a level and this season they have lost every game so far! So it was been difficult for them going from winning every game to losing every game! It was a great game though -- very close! I enjoy watching soccer!  Tonight Jaiden went hot tubbing with friends.

Sunday we went to church. The YW and YM taught the primary classes so that the primary teachers could go do the fifth Sunday adult meeting -- which was on finances. The speaker is in the Bishopric and knows a lot about the subject. He only made it through half of the information and we would have been interested in seeing the rest! 

Rick had the "Come Follow Me" lesson and he wanted to do it on the temple grounds and so we went there and had a great lesson. At first the kids were whining because we were still fasting (we are trying to do a little better with fasting) but the turkey wasn't finished yet anyway. We came back and had a nice dinner or turkey and mashed potatoes and gravy and vegetables. Then I brought the kids to the park so that we could play soccer and burn off some of our dinner! We invited the Williams over too. I LOVE Sundays!  

MORP

Friday I interpreted and Jenna went to a friend's birthday party at Sand Hollow and Janelle went to MORP. The theme was movie duos and so her and her date went as Napoleon Dynamite and Deb. They doubled with a few couples and picked up Papa Murphy's pizzas with they cooked at someone's house. After the dance they got ice cream and then ended up playing Jack Box at our house. She said it was fun!

High School Dance Company Showcase

Today Jaiden participated in the High School Dance Company Showcase from 3:30 to 8:30. It was a concert with the dance companies from the various high schools in the area. At the concert they had numbers from Snow Canyon, Desert Hills High School and Middle School, Hurricane High School, and Pineview High School. Snow Canyon decided to join in at the last minute because they were told that the show might have to be cancelled if there were not enough High Schools participating.

Since our Dance Company decided to finish for the year after their concert in January (something we were really sad about) the girls had to throw together a couple of last minute rehearsals and also re-choreograph the song since there were now only 4 girls in it instead of the original 6 girls. It is too bad that Dance Company stopped rehearsing a couple of months ago. If they had still been practicing they could have had two or three really strong numbers. At least they were able to have one (actually two) numbers since they had the Dance Sterling Scholar from SCHS perform a solo also.

For the event today they had a dress rehearsal where they were able to watch each other's dance numbers and then had dinner and a guest instructor and then did hair and make-up and then the show! Jaiden had to miss dance tonight for Southwest because of the concert tonight. I hurried over to her parent meeting at Southwest and then watched the concert and really enjoyed it! Jaiden and three other dance company members performed "Mission Impossible."

Two Hour Church and Come Follow Me

I am absolutely loving TWO HOUR church!!! It is nice not having to prepare a YW lesson quite so often and I love getting home earlier. I also LOVE the new family centered "Come Follow Me" program! I have been impressed at how well the kids are doing on their lessons! We made a new FHE chart and then take turns with a different family member each week: Rick, Wendy, Janelle, Jaiden, Josh, and Jenna. When Janika and Brandon visited we had them take a turn too. Jase is almost always off at his YSA ward. The first time the younger kids had to do their assigned "Come Follow Me" lesson they complained that they didn't know what to do and I ended up spending a good hour or two with each one of them on their week helping them put together a lesson. This surprised me because it is not like they have never done a FHE lesson before!

Anyway, the second time their turns came around for "Come Follow Me" it was totally different. They didn't ask for any help at all and planned out a well thought out lesson! They just got busy working on their lesson and did an amazing job! Janelle and Jaiden made neat handouts with smart art for the family to reflect and fill out as part of their lesson. Josh and Jenna both made a powerpoint with Google slides that had quotes and pictures that pertained to the lesson. I was suprised at how well Jenna could summarize the scriptures stories on her Google Slides. We have really learned a lot from each other and it is amazing to see our children's teaching skills! I am grateful for the time we have had together as a family and I am grateful for the gospel of Jesus Christ! 

YW Temple Trip

The Young Women went on a temple trip today. We left this morning at 6:00 a.m. from the church. We were blessed to be able to get a 15 passenger van so that we could all ride together. Kaci said that they didn't have any available and so they were going to have to take two separate vehicles. Then when she went to pick up the rental car there was a 15 passenger van in the parking lot. She said, "Can we take that instead?" They said she could. When she asked how much more it would cost they said she could take it for the same price as the smaller vehicle! What a blessing!

We had our presidency along, Kaci, Heather, and me and ten girls. The first ward also came up at the same time with their girls. We had a nice visit on the way up and the girls slept part of the way. We went straight to the Timpanogos Temple and the girls did baptisms. That is such a beautiful temple! The experience wasn't quite as nice as the Provo temple though because the temple workers kept asking everyone to put their bags and purses in a locker when we were in the room outside of the font area. All of the girls came out with their bags after doing baptisms and were all told that they had to go put them back in the lockers in order to do confirmations. So there was a lot of walking back and forth getting things in and out of lockers, which seemed a bit unnecessary.

The girls did baptisms for the dead and then we all went out to eat in Provo. Some of the girls went to In and Out Burger and some of us went to Cafe Zupas. It was good -- but kind of expensive. Then we went to the Provo MTC temple. The temple workers were so nice and friendly and since Jaiden and Emily could only do confirmations the temple worker put them to work delivering names back and forth, handing out towels, and so forth. The person doing the confirmations shared his testimony about how the girls were in the process of releasing many in spirit prison who had been waiting a long long time. It was a neat testimony.

We headed back and stopped in Beaver on the way home and got ice cream at the Creamery. The girls slept on and off on the way home. We arrived home around 8:00 p.m. It was a long day, but neat to go to two temples with the girls and fun to visit on the way there and back!

Jenna's Spa

Rick and I woke up from our Sunday nap to discover that Jenna had set up a full-fledged spa in the basement complete with soft music, massage (with a variety of yummy smelling lotions), manicures and so forth. She even set up a make-shift desk with little tickets so that her siblings could pay for their services. She earned $6.00! Rick gave her a little bit of a hard time for "working" on the sabbath, but I thought it was rather ingenuitive -- and the first thing she did with her money was pay tithing!

Fiesta Fun!! (Spring Break)

Tonight after returning from my day long interpreting assignment in Cedar City I brought the kids to Fiesta Fun! Josh wanted to redeem a GOLD ticket and the girls agreed to help pay their own way. Janelle was at work and Mariposa came along with Jaiden. Jenna had two free gift certificates for mini-golf and so that helped. They had a great time and returned home with loads of prizes from the arcade games. Josh won a huge blow up soccer ball!

 

Disneyland Madrigal Trip (Spring Break)

Every other year the madrigals at my school has the opportunity to go to Disneyland, and this year was that year! Everyone had been anxious for this trip and we were all so pumped. At the beginning of Spring Break we packed up and headed up to Anaheim, California. I had been starting to get sick and so I had to wear a mask for part of the drive (We had some issues with sicknesses for the last trip and so Mr. Moore said anyone feeling "germy" had to wear a mask.) Anyway, it was a good long drive. We got there pretty late and checked right into our rooms and went to bed. In my room we had Ellie Kenworthy, Heidi Wakefield, and Annie Bearden.

The next day was our first day in DISNEYLAND! Everyone was excited. The first ride that we went on was Indiana Jones. It was great. Everyone had kind of split up into different groups that they stayed with. Some people would switch around groups though so our group usually ranged from about 9 to 12 people. We went on a lot of rides and then met at Toon Town at noon for the workshop. For these workshops we got to go backstage and learn a song from a Disney movie and they record it. Then they take the clip of the movie and remove the original voices and put in our recording. It was really cool! We learned two songs, the one from Frozen and one from The Princess Frog. It was fun, but I was still kinda sick and couldn't really sing. I just lip-synced most of it.

After that we kept riding rides and just enjoyed the park. We went on all kinds of rides in Disneyland. At the end of the day our group went to IHOP (It was across the street from the park). Then we went back to the hotel. That night there was a little issue with one of the groups being misinformed about the bed-check time and so some of the people were late including one of the girls from our room. They got in trouble but since it was a misunderstanding it was fine. We did have a little meeting about it the next day though.

Anyway, the next day we spent most of the day in California Adventure Park.  Overall, I think I liked these rides better than the Disneyland ones because they were more thrilling. Guardians of the Galaxy was awesome, let me tell ya. I could talk all day about that ride. We went on it twice and it was awesome. That ride used to be Tower of Terror, so it is a dropping ride. Another one of my favorite rides was Incredicoaster, which we also went on twice. That was a fun ride. I think that was all fun and then Guardians was terrifying and fun, but they were both awesome.

Another fun one was Radiator Springs in Carsland. That was a good one, and we went on it a couple of times. It starts out as a normal ride and then you come up next to another car and race them. We also went on other rides to like Soarin and went back to Disneyland a couple of times on this day. And we got ice cream once it got later. It was great. Anyway, after that we went to bed and everything and left early in the morning.

The traffic in LA was HORRIBLE and we got to our performances later than planned. We performed in a couple places there and then continued on the long drive. We were originally going to stop at the beach for an hour but the traffic was bad so we could only go for a half hour. I didn't bring a swimsuit so I wasn't planning on getting completely wet, but that was up until literally the second wave knocked me down and I got soaked. So after that I just swam in my clothes cause I was already wet.

Most people brought other clothes on to the bus and changed in the bathroom on the bus but I hadn't brought other clothes, so at the first stop I tried to find my suitcase with my clothes but I couldn't find it in time and so I traveled the entire drive with my wet sandy clothes. They dried pretty fast though, the only annoying part was that I had sand in my hair. Anyway, we got back to the school at a little before 4 in the morning. I came right home and went to bed without even changing my clothes. And then I slept in til 11:30. The trip was seriously so awesome and I'm so glad I got to go! I love all my fellow madrigals so much and it was a blast going to the happiest place on earth with them. It was a party!

Thunder Junction

Thank you to the Williams for bringing Jenna with them to Thunder Junction! 

Happy Birthday Elder Jensen!!

It was Jared's birthday today!! Here is the extremely meaningful text from his brother, cough cough. Janika and Brandon sent him a potato in the mail for his birthday, and Jared thought that was pretty cool that you could actually send a potato directly through the mail (not in a package) but with the address written right on it!

Jared had requested that we please NOT send him any junk food for his birthday. The only thing he wanted was juggling rings and a copy of Mormon Doctrine by Bruce R. McConkie. We sent him juggling rings and also juggling balls from Amazon. We couldn't find the Mormon Doctrine book because it is out of print (and Rick warned him that much of it is opinion and not actual doctrine). But we found it later and sent it him.

On his birthday Elder Jensen got to go to the temple with Catelynn, who was just baptized on Saturday, and he said that was the best birthday present ever! (Rick and I also celebrated Jared's birthday tonight by doing a session in the St. George temple). A lady in their area who is famous for singing to everyone on their birthdays called and sang "Happy Birthday" to him and members from his ward had him over for dessert! So he had a great birthday!! 

First Place Science Fair Winner!!

Jenna won first place in the fourth grade Science Fair!! Way to go, Jenna! It was a simple project, but even simple projects take several hours of work! 

A couple of months ago Jenna said that she was worried that she hadn't yet participated in enough extra curricular events to get the Arrowhead Medallion at the end of the year. I suggested that she do the Geography Challenge and so she did. It involved many many hours of studying -- and she did awesome!! She also wanted to do the Science Fair. To be honest, I wasn't thrilled about helping with another Science Fair project. (Do a search on this blog under "Science Fair" and you will see just how many Science Fair projects I have helped with through the years!)

Jenna suggested doing something with candles and I thought that was a great idea! At first she was going to compare different brands of candles to see which ones would last the longest. But we decided that it would contain too many variables and so we decided to use just one package with different colors to see how the white compared with the colored candles. Jenna thought that the white would burn the fastest, but it actually burned the slowest of the four colors. So that turned out to be an interesting experiment.

We then decided to go a different route and test to see if putting the candles in the freezer would help them burn longer. Jenna guessed that that they would -- and they did!! I told her that she could choose either of those experiments for her board and she wanted to do the one that involved putting the candles in the freezer (I think she just wanted her hypothesis to be correct, ha ha!)

Question:

Will a candle burn longer if it has been put in the freezer?    

Hypothesis:  

I think that birthday candles that have been put in the freezer will burn longer than birthday candles at room temperature.

Procedure:  

I will take 16 candles (4 different colors) and measure each one with a line one inch from the top. I will put 8 in the freezer overnight (2 for each color) and leave 8 out at room temperature (2 for each color). I will then light two of the same color and temperature candles  and time them with a stopwatch to see how fast they burn down to the line. I will take an average of the two times and compare the candles at room temperature with the candles that were put in the freezer to see which burn the longest.   

Data/Observations: 

I noticed that the colored candles burned faster than the white candles. All of the candles from the freezer burned longer than the candles that were at room temperature.

 Results:

These are the times it took for the candles to burn down to the line in minutes and seconds.  

Room Temperature                          Freezer

Blue: 3.80                                           Blue: 4.75

Pink: 3.57                                          Pink:  4.30

Yellow: 3.18                                     Yellow: 4.40

White: 4.30                                     White: 4.50

Conclusion:

My hypothesis was correct. The candles from the freezer took longer to burn down to the line than the candles at room temperature. I think this happens because the freezer makes them cold and stiff and so they melt slower than candles at room temperature.

Summary:

I wanted to see if candles put in the freezer would take longer to burn than candles at room temperature. I marked 16 candles with a line and left half on the counter and put half in the freezer. My hypothesis was correct. The candles in the freezer took longer to burn. This is helpful to know because we can freeze our birthday candles right before using them so that they don’t get wax all over our cake and burn down before getting a chance to blow them out!

 Bibliography:

https://www.thriftyfun.com/Freezing-Candles-Before-Use-4.html

https://www.bobvila.com/articles/how-to-make-a-candle-last-longer/

Janelle Driver's License!!

Janelle finally passed her driver's test today!! This was her third time taking the test and so we were really hoping that she would pass! Her appointment was at 8:30 a.m. and so I had Jenna go over to the Williams before school and Janelle drove us out to the DMV in Hurricane. It was raining on and off and I was praying that it wouldn't be raining during her test -- especially since her windshield wipers were not working very well! The rain let up during the thirty minutes of her test and so our prayers were answered! Great job, Janelle!