Christel and TJ’s World

My birthday is coming up. I am going to have a party. Here is what we are going to do:

Today we hosted the Fund Family Birthday Party/FHE night at our house. We celebrated little Annie’s birthday from Mandy’s clan as well as that of Lindsey’s little brother Cody, who came with his dad Rob. Christel made a delicious pork roast and the others brought potato sides, salad, rolls and a birthday cake. It was certainly chaotic, but not as crowded as I thought it would feel. Poor Brewer fell down and hurt himself, but got back into the action a little later. I gave a little lesson about a few points from my Correct Principles summary from my MTC teaching days. The weather was beautiful today and we all had a great time.  

We met for the first time in our new ward building on Sunday. The building is called the Temple Point building because it is just across the street from the steadily progressing Ochre Mountain Temple. Our ward is pushing 800 members at the moment, and we left a stake center to come to a much smaller building. We set up chairs in every usable inch of the cultural hall, seated people on the stand, filled the foyers and even piped the meeting’s audio into the Relief Society room. Every seat was filled and we think there were even a few who may have gone back home because they couldn’t find a seat. We only have 4 nurseries at the moment though, so I guess it’s not time to split yet…

It is fun to be one of the first wards in a new building. Both the wardhouse and the Temple are at the end of our street – a 3-5 minute walk if the weather ever truly warms up (meteorologists are forecasting snow for this Sunday, April 20th!). Parking is very limited, but then again, virtually everything in Daybreak is supposed to be within walking distance … and it pretty much is!

Christel is currently absorbed in doing a painting as part of a celebration of South Jordan’s heritage. Well, I probably shouldn’t say absorbed, since she still spends most of her time caring for the kids, but whenever she can find a free block of time, she is either scouring the internet for good photos or reproducing them in her oil-paint collage of South Jordan’s past and present. I’m very excited to see it finished and displayed. It looks great!  

This was a fun weekend for us. Christel’s brother (Gerald), wife (Valerie) and niece (Valentine) were in town for conference this weekend and to buy a dress for Valentine’s wedding this November. It was great being able to spend time with them, and had even more to talk about than usual since Gerald was called into the First Quroum of the Seventy. Needless to say, their life is changing dramatically over the next couple of months. I am very excited, I think his calling will be a blessing for his family and also for all of the Church in France. I feel deeply that he has been especially prepared to do some wonderful things for the Church and I wasn’t surprised at all when he revealed the call to us. I know, that’s easy to say for a family member, but obviously I wasn’t the only one thinking it…

In spite of his new responsibilities, we had time to get together. Christel got to be with Valerie and Valentine when they found Valentine’s wedding dress. It is a beautiful dress and she looks great. Eloise spoke English with Valentine at the beginning, but by the Sunday she had figured out she could communicate in French with her. We also got to attend a few conference sessions and were there Saturday morning during the solemn assembly to sustain President Monson and to see Gerald take his place on the stand for the first time. Mom and Dad were gracious enough to let the kids hang out at their house while we were up attending the sessions. Eloise loves going to “Grandma’s house,” and of course, it doesn’t hurt that Mom made her famous cinnamon rolls this weekend. We also had a little conference get-together at their house with Abbey and Justin, John and Robin and some of the Call family.

I’ll add some pictures to this post when I get a chance from our other computer. 

Well, Spencer dubbed this week as the “best week of his life” last night, so I guess we’d better get it on record. It’s true that it was a fun week, with a number of extraordinary activities for us. It was their last of three weeks off track, and the first pretty solid week of warmer weather coming out of winter, so I’m sure that helped. Then we started it off with a bang at a Jazz game! Spencer and Alexi both got two complimentary tickets to a Jazz game as part of the Junior Jazz basketball league they played in. Unfortunately, they were on different dates, so we were going to have to split up or even not go at all. However, when Christel went to pick up Spencer’s tickets, someone had ripped open his envelope and taken his tickets! All the other envelopes were fine, just his was ripped open. A little blessing there, because Christel was then given her choice of tickets and was able to get tickets on the same night as Alexi’s, so we could all go together! (Because these were nose-bleed tickets, we were able to find 4 unoccupied seats all together with relatively little trouble.) We started off the evening with dinner at California Pizza Kitchen and finished with a big win for the Jazz against the Toronto Raptors. Kind of an atypical family home evening unless you feel that basketball is a fundamental part of Church life, as TJ does!

Tuesday Spencer finished up all but two of his requirements for his Wolf badge and enough achievements for two arrow points. Next month’s pack meeting will be great!

Wednesday was a pack meeting and, althought Spence still needs to do an outdoor flag raising with his pack for his wolf badge, they had a lot of fun launching 2 liter bottles filled with water and compressed air 50-75 feet in the air! True bottle rockets!!

Thursday was a day at the zoo with Grandma! Lots of fun animals to see!!

On Friday, we rented Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium from Blockbuster and had a movie night at home.  We liked the movie, although Christel and TJ thought the conducting scene at the end was a little long and weird. I would have much preferred a piano version of her song with her playing.

Then on Saturday, we played some Foosball in the morning and decided to finally use some gift certificates we had had for a while to all go see Horton Hears a Who at the Megaplex Cinema. (We gave up trying to see a movie in the theaters on date nights until the kids are grown…)  That was a big hit with the kids, and Eloise was great, even though a few loud parts had her grabbing on tight to us (no complaints from us!!).

Finally, to cap it all off, Sunday was Easter. We read the resurrection story for our scriptures today, and Christel set out pictures and statuettes of Christ in our main room to help keep us focused on the Savior. We did find time for a little Easter Egg hunt, however, and the kids now have their candy supply until Halloween (yeah,we pretty much only buy them candy two or three times a year…).

 So, there you have it! A recipe for the best week ever! At least in our household and in Spencer’s professional opinion…

We watched a fun movie tonight from the ’80’s. It was called Labyrinth, and the kids loved it even without any computer animation! Add a little pizza to the mix and it was a great evening.