Back to school--and A Hurricane Hits Texas!

Max and Mav.  Max' first day of pre-K

Getting ready

Mav's unhappy that he doesn't get to go to school with Max

 School's in session again.  It's fun to see the grandchildren growing up.  Hyeji started 2nd grade, and Doyeon was super excited for Kindergarten.  Gunnar will have his first year of all-day school.  Unfortunately, his school has had early out all the first week.  Ollie, Yuna and Ori will all be in pre-school this year.

Hyeji and Doyeon, 1st day of school

Doyeon in Kindergarten 

Gunnar

I taught Relief Society today.  The lesson was on the Conference talk, The Language of the Gospel, by Valerie V. Cordon of the Seventy.  He talked about how easy it is for immigrants to lose their native language after only two or three generations, and then he compared that to the "language of the gospel" and how it takes consistent effort to teach our families so that they remain constant in their testimonies.  I had Dan, Jieun and Hyeji come the last few minutes to sing "I am a Child of God" in Korean.  Of course, Doyeon and Yuna didn't want to be left out, even though they didn't learn it, so they went up, too.  Jieun played the piano.  I thought she was going to sing, but I guess it stressed her out, so they traded.  I think my Relief Society ladies really liked it.

Thursday evening a lot of the employee's from Roy's work came with their families for a BBQ.  In preparation for that, Roy got a nice volley ball set.  The little kids found the toys in the basement fairly quickly and the big kids had a good time outside.  Roy is such a good cook, he made delicious chicken and ribs.

Yesterday was a very busy day.  Roy, Caitlyn, and Nick and Sara got up super early to drive to Logan.  Caitlyn tended Ruby and Greta, while Matt and Crista and the above mentioned family members, rode their bike in the Gran Fondo.  It was about 65 miles, on a very hot day.  They all made it, but Sara promised it was something she would never do again.

Crista

Roy, Matt, Crista, Sara and Nick

Matt

Roy

Nick and Sara

While they were thus entertained, I got up shortly after they did and went to an early morning staff meeting at the Rec Center.  It was my turn to teach the Saturday morning class, so after the meeting, I stayed and taught water aerobics.  When I got home I went to work fertilizing all the plants in my yard.  The Tru Green guy told me that all my plants were stressed because they don't have enough iron.  After nearly 2 hours in the heat, I quit for the day and headed inside to work on my dirty house.

Nearly as soon as Roy and Caitlyn got home at 5:00 pm, Roy and I got in the car and headed to Salt Lake to pick up Christine and Steve on our way to a couple of wedding receptions in Utah County.  First was Emma Anderson's open house.  Emma is Sally Salisbury Anderson's (my first cousin) daughter.  There we saw my Uncle David Salisbury with his wife Lois; and Sally and her family.  We didn't stay very long there, because we also wanted to get to the reception for Austin and Kailee Nelson.  They are having an open house in Springville on Sept. 5, but as that is Christine's anniversary, we decided to go to the reception in Eagle Mountain.  It was a lot of fun to visit with all of Dave's family.  I talked a lot to Tiffany and Kylie.  We also had fun visiting with Kim, Liz and Heather.  Becky and Dave got back from dinner just before we left.  Tiffany is moving to Centerville and will live just down the street from us a mile or so.  They will be renting for a year and then they'll find a house.  Over all, a fun evening with the Christensen's and the Cook's.

Probably the most interesting happenings of this past week happened in Texas.  There was a category 5 hurricane.  Hurricane Harvey.  Elise has sent us texts, pictures, and updates.  Luckily, she is still in her home and they still have water and power, though they have friends who have evacuated their homes.  One area shut off the water because of contamination.  Elise and Andy filled the bathtub, a garbage can and water bottles in case they find themselves in that situation.  They also have not experienced flooding--YET.  Elise says it's probably because the sewer drains in their area had been worked on recently.  I had her write a couple of paragraphs of what she's experiencing:


I never watch the news. First I heard about the storm was when a friend dropped off a belated birthday present  Wednesday afternoon. "Steve and I have been running around preparing for the hurricane." Wait, what?? I look up the weather. It looks far enough away. It was supposed to hit land over Corpus Christi. Only a cat 1, we should be good.  Thursday, I feel the spirit telling me to get prepared. I was at the dentist all morning with Max, but my close friend was running errands and picked us up water and food. When Andy and I went to the store later that day there was no milk, eggs, bread, or water. Friday, Andy got work off. He helped me bag water and get things ready. That night the hurricane hit. My phone alarm for tornado warnings seemed to go off every hour. When we woke up Saturday it was wet, we had a large branch fall out of our tree but we weren't flooded. I felt untouched by the gravity of the storm until Sunday evening. We began getting more flash floods and members of our ward were having to evacuate. That's when it hit home. Our street flooded, but then when the rains stopped it drained just fine. We are lucky. Most of our ward doesn't have great drainage in their streets. We are hoping to not get much rain tonight, And really hoping that no one else needs to evacuate their homes.  Pray for us.

We talked to Elise this morning and things are still okay, but there's a lot more rain to come.  She said the water came about 8 feet up her driveway, and then receded again.  They are also keeping tabs on Jenny Cook Norton and their family, and so far they are all right also.

In this picture, you can see that Max and Mav are a little stir
crazy, trying to find ways to entertain themselves.

A Bayou near the Jackson home

We are grateful for their safety, and also grateful that we belong to a church that is already preparing to help in any way needed during this natural disaster, as well as many others that have occurred.
We invited all the family over for dinner, but only Nick, Sara, and Effie and Ori came (of course Caitlyn and Jennie were also here).  Everyone else had other stuff going on.  Oh, and Elise and Andy couldn't come because their city is on lockdown.

Mav, all tucked in

A couple of other darling pictures were sent out this week via group text.

Our very own Princess Sofia look alike.  

Ruby and Greta

Dojin, first haircut

Nick with Effie and Ori

Stake Conference I believe.  Looks like they're
getting a lot out of it. :)

I'm not sure if this is before or after the haircut.

This is an example of the many texts that have been going around with my kids.  I had to take off my apple watch when I taught my lesson yesterday, because it was buzzing very actively (not loudly) with texts such as this.