Memorial Day and Jaiden's Birthday

This beautiful girl was born on Memorial Day 17 years ago! Jaiden is intelligent, hard working, talented, kind, involved, gorgeous, spunky, and has the most amazing smile ever! She is now a Senior in high school and this coming year she will be involved in Exec Council, Madrigals, Theatrical Productions, Academics, dancing at Southwest Dance, teaching swimming lessons, and working at Tuacahn. She will also be preparing for the State Distinguished Young Women competition! Despite her busy schedule she still allows ample time for the gospel, family, and of course friends! WE LOVE YOU, Jaiden Jensen!! Happy 17th Birthday today!! Click HERE for my facebook post with pictures through the years!! This is one of those rare years that Jaiden's birthday fell on Memorial Day (just like on the day she was born). It is also one of the few years that her birthday didn't fall on the same day as her Southwest Dance Concert (the concert will be this weekend). So Jaiden was able to go out with her good friends -- Lizzie Bryner and Emily Williams. They brought her out to lunch and took her to a flower shop where they took lots of pictures of flowers and plants. They spoiled her with all sorts of cool presents -- yoga mat, yoga blocks, crumbl cookies.... (I can't remember what else -- I will have to ask Jaiden!) In a couple of the pictures above you can also see Jaiden's cook shoes that she painted herself!

Here is a picture of the same three girls on Jaiden's birthday 8 years ago (back in 2013, when Jaiden was turning 9 years old!)

I asked Jaiden what she wanted for her birthday dinner (on Sunday) and she said Cafe Rio style sweet pork. So I headed to the store at 11:00 Saturday night to buy all of the ingredients and started it cooking in the crock pot overnight. It was the first time I had made it and it turned out SO good! I made the lime rice and creamy cilantro dressing also. The power went off about fifteen minutes before we were planning to eat dinner and so the rice wasn't able to finish cookies and I had to finish it on the gas stove, but thankfully everything else was finished before the power outage and everything was delicious! Jase and Ellen and Jared came over for dinner and then we played a few rounds of Balderdash and had brownies for dessert. The power came on about thirty minutes later.

Monday night (on Jaiden's birthday) our family went to Tuacahn to see Annie! We had great seats and loved the show! I forgot to get a picture! That is NOT like me, ha ha!

Memorial Day

The Williams invited us over for a BBQ in their backyard tonight. It was fun to get out of the house and visit with friends! They also brought Jenna to the river again! I am grateful for great friends and neighbors! I am also grateful for the opportunity to reflect on the lives of our loved ones who have passed on. I have been doing quite a bit of family history lately and it really helps me feel a greater connection to my ancestors and makes me grateful for them and for their sacrifices! 

Family History Presentations, Church Lessons, and Seminary Council

Janelle got called to meet with a member of the Stake Presidency this morning along with her parents. So we went and she was called to the Seminary Council for next year! She is very excited! She knows a few of the others who have been called and they all happen to be in her friend group. She has a great group of friends!

Today Rick had the Come Follow Me lesson. He assigned each of the kids a chapter from today's lesson and said that some time today they had to come up with an art project depicting that chapter. He assigned it as follows: Jaiden -- Mosiah 25, Janelle -- Mosiah 26, Jenna -- Mosiah 27, and Josh -- Mosiah 28. They came up with some great work! Here is a picture of each of their art work:

Jaiden (Mosiah 25): 

Janelle (Mosiah 26):

Jenna (Mosiah 27): (The angel appearing to Alma and the four sons of Mosiah)

Alma with his parents...

Josh (Mosiah 28): (The sons of Mosiah refusing the throne and then preaching to the Lamanites)

The other homework they had for today (the kids had a busy day today) was a "Family History Presentation" for Memorial Day. Each of the kids were asked to research an ancestor and present it to the family Sunday night. They looked up pictures and histories on Family Search and put together a Power Point presentation on Google Slides. In between all of this we skyped Janika and Brandon and had a delicious dinner of barbequed salmon, squash, broccoli, beans, rice and salad with ice cream for dessert!

We then had the presentations! Jenna did her presentation on my Grandma, Lucille Erskine Westra Burgener. Josh did his on my grandpa, Joseph Ate Westra. Jaiden did hers on Grandpa Jensen's Grandma and Janelle did hers on Louelle Mcgee, my mom's grandma. We decided to invite Grandma and Grandpa Westra to join us through a zoom call for the presentations. They turned out great and even Grandma and Grandpa learned a few new things about their parents/grandparents! It was also nice that my mom and dad could clarify and correct any missing or ambiguous information. It was a fun activity and nice to be able to see and visit with Grandma and Grandpa!

Then we watched all of the Mother's Day Tea and Father's Day Flee videos through the years since Rick has been working on them all and adding them to our YouTube Channel. So it was really a "family filled" day!

Memorial Day

Happy Memorial Day! Rick and the kids slept out on the tramp last night. It was warm when they started but said that it got really cold during the night and that they were freezing.

I took Janelle, Jaiden, and Jenna hiking (walking) early this morning on a little trail that starts from the Jacob Hamblin home. We then picked up Rick, Janika, and Josh and brought some flowers to Eliza William's grave-site. Jaiden suggested yellow since that was her favorite color.

At the cemetery Rick asked me if we should consider buying some plots in that cemetery. When the kids asked why he would want to do that he was explaining that when a death occurred it made things a little easier if the plots were already purchased so that you aren't having to make a lot of emotional decisions while going through the grief process. He explained that he would be buried next to me, and Jenna said, "I want to be buried next to Clarissa!" You know you have a good friend when you want to be buried next to them! 

Rick decided it would be fun for the kids to have a summer "spelling bee."  A few days ago he printed off a list of grade-level words for each of our kids and today was going to be a practice for the real thing. The catch was when they missed a word, they got thrown into the pool. The kids all did remarkably well and Jaiden was the winner, and thus the only one who wasn't thrown in. But she didn't want to be left out and jumped in.  Actually we let Josh off the hook too (from being thrown in) since he has a cold/allergies.

The rest of the day we let the kids play with friends and swim and so forth and then had a barbecue tonight.