Monday was the first day of school! Benjamin started 4th grade and Bethany started 6th grade at Sage Creek Elementary. They are still doing Chinese immersion and have an English teacher and a Chinese teacher and a bunch of the same friends. I think for the most part they are happy to be back.

Cheyenne and Calianne started their first year at Springville High School as 10th graders! They were terrified to go. The anxiety was running very high here for at least three days prior. I am happy to report that, much to their own amazement, they did survive the first day of school. Cheyenne was the most vocal about her worries before school started. Cali was quiet but would nod in agreement. After the first day, Chey said, "That wasn't so bad." Cali burst into tears and said, "I never want to go back!' Poor kid! After much interrogation, I couldn't discover that anything terrible had happened, but am left to conclude that it was super scary and in true Calianne fashion, she threw herself into it and did it anyway and afterward was left to deal with the left-over adrenaline. Deep breaths. In reality, she did terrific. They both did and they continue to go back and I do believe its getting easier and they are enjoying what they are studying.

Sarah started school last week with the teachers, but she did go to the first day of school with the Brookside Tigers. She continued to observe and help for three days and on Thursday had instruction of her own from her UVU teacher. So far she has been struggling with boredom and is really missing her traditional college classrooms! She has been very jealous of McKay who started classes at UVU on Monday with a full schedule. We are hoping she settles in and starts to enjoy it more!

Mariah also started classes on Monday but down in St. George! She is taking mission prep at institute, and she has biology, biology lab, statistics, intro to recreation management, and Chinese 2! She is enjoying all her classes and feels confident in all of them . . . except that darn Chinese! She has five people in her class and they sit in their professor's office and go over the lesson--in Chinese, of course. I don't know. It sounds like how I've always imagined Oxford would be. Or is it Cambridge? Anyhow, hopefully she will give it time and she will learn great things. In the meantime, her friends were coming home this weekend, so she came, too! It's been so fun to have her at the house for a couple of days. We love that Mariah girl!

Savannah still hasn't started school, but she worked many long days so she could take off half of Friday to make potstickers and reconnect with her old friend, Miranda. Miranda brought her baby, Skylar, (so cute!) and everything was just like old times except the baby crawling around wasn't one of Savannah's little sisters. Ha ha!

I've spent the week working on my next book, hiking, and meeting with the new YW presidency of which I am the 1st counselor. Of the three, hiking had the best pictures.

Kevin has had a busy week. He did an intensive with five women who flew in to spend three days with him. In the evenings he mowed our lawn and played tennis a couple of nights and went for a walk with his wife on one. Don't worry, he did manage to get in some Tetris games each night on his ipad, too. On Saturday night, we had another pool party with the families of the stake presidency and Kevin got to play watermelon ball, which he can't decide if he loves because its so fun or if he hates because he gets so competitive. Ha!

On Saturday, I also took Beth and Ben to the reservoir for a couple hours with some friends. I think they had a pretty good time.