Away she goes

We took Maddi down to school this weekend. We set up her room in her apartment, went grocery shopping and left her in her own place on her 18th birthday! Let me just tell you that two summers of having my kids leave is really starting to get to me! I am excited for her, it will be a great experience for her. I am just sad because I miss her. That is all I have to say for now because I don't want to start crying again, my eyes and head hurt from too much of that already!
Her little room in her apartment turned out cute, thanks to grandmas for helping her with blankets and pillows! She is all stocked up on Smart Pop popcorn and tortillas, she has it made.
Thank goodness I can at least call her and text her whenever I want and don't have to wait for emails!
Thanks to everyone who did so many amazingly nice things for her to get her ready for this adventure, we appreciate it so very much! Also very funny, of course she is wearing her Josh T shirt!(Sorry the pictures are so blurry, my camera is broken so we took these from her i pad )

Are you ready for some Football???

Jacob plays baseball, Jacob is good at baseball. I wish Jacob would play baseball all year long but.... he talked us into trying football this year. A lot of his buddies play and have been telling him how fun it is and his older cousin Tanner who he adores plays and his other cousin Gage, so he decided to take a break from soccer and see if he likes football. All signs are pointing to yes, he does like football!
He went to a camp at the high school and then he had try outs to see what team he would make . Little did we know that he was going to love tackling and he was going to do a really good job and he made the B team. I thought that swimming took up a lot of time but football is almost as time consuming! Practice every day and after practice you bring home a very sweaty, stinky kid but he loves it. I think all of his gear weighs more than he does. We will see how the season goes if he plays again next year. I know I know I said my boys would never play football but so far so good. We are three weeks into it and haven't played a real game yet.
Maddi took some cute pictures of him at practice the other day, I have been told (by Kevin) that cute isn't a word you associate with football, but he looks pretty cute in all his gear!

Josh Groban singing Happy Birthday

A Longer version that the mom of the boy sitting next to Maddi took

Maddi's best birthday ever!

Imagine you are turning 18 and you are head over heels in love with a guy named Josh Groban. Now imagine that for your birthday your mom gets tickets to go see him in concert and by the end of the show you have not only been 2 feet away from him as he sings but you have touched his arm and he has held your hand AND...sung Happy Birthday to you while sitting on a plastic couch drinking milk out of a wine glass. Sounds too good to be true right??? Well, it all really happened and it was the most crazy incredible thing ever.
Maddi knew I had bought the tickets over 5 months ago for her birthday present in August. That is all she said she wanted was to see Josh in concert. Well thanks to my amazing sister we had a chance to buy tickets before they went on sale to the public. So when my sister called me to tell me that she had the tickets and they were actually on the floor I decided to keep that a secret until we got to the concert. It was the hardest secret to keep but I had her convinced that we were sitting pretty high up and she was happy just to be able to be in the building!
When we arrived at the concert and she found out that we had seats on the floor she freaked and said it just cant get any better than this!
Then we walked down to our seats and realized that we were closer to the back than the stage but as we looked to our left we saw a small stage set up right next to us. Sure enough Josh opened his show that night on that little stage and we were right next to him. Maddi said, it just can't get any better than this!
Then we had to back up because he was going to the main stage and his body guards ushered him right past us and... she touched Josh Groban's arm!!! What did Maddi say??? You guessed it, It just couldn't get any better than this!
Before the concert you could text Josh and ask him a question and he would answer a few of them during the concert. I probably texted hundreds of times asking if he would sing Happy Birthday to her but when the time came he didn't pick my question but it was O.K because she was overwhelmed with the experience so far!
So later in the show he needed a married couple to come on stage so he could sing to them. For some reason he also said he needed a single girl to come on stage too. Probably over half the audience were single girls and Josh was not even close to where our seats were at the time. Then all of a sudden he shoots down the aisle and another one and heads right up our row. Maddi looks up to see her heart throb standing in front of her!!! We were all pointing to her and saying "pick her pick her" and he did. He reached out his hand and took her on stage, I don't know how she made it up there because she was on the verge of fainting. My sister and I left our Mom at our seats and ran up to the front to get pictures but we were shaking so bad it was hard to do.
On stage he asked how old she was and she replied that she was 18 and it was her birthday. Mr. Josh Groban then sang Maddison Happy Birthday. Let me say that again... Mr. JOSH GROBAN SANG MADDISON HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!! It was unbelievable, a dream come true for her really!
We thought we were being such good parents by getting her the tickets and it turned out to be WAY more than we ever could have hoped for.
I don't know how he could get any cooler in her eyes but he did that night. She will never ever forget her 18th birthday and how awesome it was to have him sing to just her.
After it was all over he wished for her that her Prince Charming would ride up on a golden unicorn and sweep her off her feet. What he didn't know is that for now, he is her Prince Charming and he did sweep her off her feet.
Oh how we love Josh Groban!!!

365

One year ago today Elder Mitch entered the M.T.C. One year ago today my heart broke just a little...well O.K a lot! It is hard to believe that a year has gone by. In some ways it seems like just yesterday that he left but in others it seems like he has been gone an eternity! It was so very hard to leave him that day, I didn't know how I would even make it to the next day. Now that a year has gone by I still miss him like crazy but I am so proud of him. He is an amazing missionary and has helped so many people learn about the Gospel and be baptized.
He LOVES being a missionary in Peru, he loves the people and loves teaching them how they can be happy. We have been so blessed having a missionary out and I have learned to love waiting for e mails on Mondays. I can sometimes talk about him without crying and I have stopped setting an extra place at the table. The thing I love most is hearing how much he is growing and learning and how much the Gospel of Jesus Christ means to him as he teaches the people of Peru. I wouldn't change this experience for anything, I know he is supposed to be serving a mission and that even though I wished for Idaho, he is in Peru where he is supposed to be.
So 365 days have passed and now each day brings us closer to having him home again. I know on his end he probably feels exactly the opposite, that he only has a year to do what needs to be done and that isn't enough time, I know this next year will probably go quicker for him than it will for me.
I wish I could hug him today and tell him how proud of him I am and make him a big batch of his favorite chocolate chip cookies but hey, I can do that in 365 more days!
Thank you to all the grandparents who send him care packages, I know he LOVES getting them. Thanks to everyone who writes him and if you haven't had a chance yet you should send him a quick note this week if you have a minute.
his address is...

Elder Kevin Mitchell Sheridan
Mision Peru Lima Este
Calle Los Agrologos 368
Urbanizacion Las Acacias De Monterrico
La Molina, Lima 12,
PERU

Just send him a note to tell him hi, he would love to hear from you! You just need to stop by the post office and get a 98 cent stamp .

Parker and Jake save the day!

Thomas is in California swimming at the Senior Zone Championship. Really his coach likes to take the team members who qualify to swim this meet to show them how fast everyone else is out of state. The boys who went from our team are used to being in the finals and being at the top. Well, they just came from Utah's Junior Olympics and we didn't expect Thomas to do anything great at this meet, just going for the experience. He swam a few events already and dropped a little time, added a little time and even was disqualified in an event for a false start( even though he insists that he didn't move and his coach agreed with him).
This morning he swam the 400 IM, a pretty tough event. He swam it almost a second faster than his best time so he was pretty excited about that. He missed the finals by 3 spots. They got to the pool tonight to swim a relay at the end of the meet and Thomas was just sitting there watching the swim meet when his buddies Parker and Jake frantically came running up to him insisting that he was actually swimming in the final and it was 2 heats away. I guess there were some guys who scratched and didn't want to swim it so he got bumped up but neither he or his coach knew that! He didn't even have a swim suit on so he raced into the bathroom and got dressed and then jumped in the water for a quick 1 minute warm up and raced up to the blocks. He must have had a huge adrenaline rush because he then proceeded to swim it and knocked 2 more seconds off his time from this morning and even beat a few of the guys he was swimming against! Come to find out that if his buddies didn't happen to see his name on the heat sheet he would have missed the final and been disqualified from the rest of the meet. Thank heavens for Parker and Jake!!!