She's Married?!

 It finally came! Katherine and Trevor had been planning their wedding for several months and Yes, even before the engagement - hahahaha! After months and months of checking tasks off Katherine and Trevor finally entered the month of April where time would not slow down. Katherine went back to Idaho shortly after Christmas and spent the whole semester doing school and planning for her wedding. 

Jamie and Katherine competing on Just Dance and we opened presents on Christmas Day (her last single Christmas!). 

Of course many other things transpired with our family during that time that I won't tell about because that will take too long and that will be too many posts to blog about. 

back to the story... So we are in April and the 13th is fast approaching. 

Well, I have to insert something else before I proceed to tell about April. Jamie calls me one evening and she says "so, how much time do you need before you commit to fly to Salt Lake City to help me drive back?". I sure was hoping that she was going to drive back with her friends but I knew that it was going to happen and I was going to have to go out there and help drive back - who wouldn't for their daughter? Anyway, I just dreaded driving the long distance. So the Tuesday before the Saturday (wedding day). I had to fly out to Salt Lake City and we drove back. We drove the rest of Tuesday up until like 9 pm. We spent the night at a hotel in Laramie then woke up to snow and ice on the roads and car. We started at 7 am and decided not to stop but drive through the whole day and night. The Lord really blessed us, especially me, because I had worried about not being able to drive for long periods of time and getting tired. Jamie did awesome, too! She drove through the worst weather in St. Louis and Kansas City. I picked up before the Ohio River and drove the 6 hours all the way to the house. We pulled up to the house at around 6:30 am. Oh and I got pulled over twice - one was a warning in Wyoming and the other was a 10 mph ticket over in Nebraska. The Nebraska State Trooper was a funny guy. 

Now we are caught up to Katherine's wedding day on that Saturday. It was a wonderful day and she was so happy. Not many people attended the reception, but it was still fun. 

I know that this is not enough details, but I apologize and hopefully I can do better in the future with capturing our families' history. 

Catch Up

 I have several posts that I need to make but I will start with this one. This will be relatively short because I need to dive into the others with details. I'll start this by saying that several things have transpired since Ethan left on a mission, so I will write a blog to document his return. Also Katherine returned from her mission in 2022 and is now married and sealed in the Birmingham Temple since April 2024. Jamie finished her bachelor's degree in financial planning. I took a trip to meet her in Salt Lake City and helped drive back home. Wendy also had an eventful getaway with her sisters and mother to Gulf Shores, Alabama. I am not sure how much I can document on that, but we'll see. Our family minus Katherine took a trip to Gatlinburg more than a week ago. 

I'll try to go back in my brain to conjure up all the history and happenings that took place with these events. 

The MTC at Home - kind of

 Today is the first day of Ethan's (Elder Hopper) experience in the MTC. He is having this experience at home, well really at Grandpa Glenn's house then he will fly to Manchester England where he will be taken to Preston, England where the MTC is located. For those who don't know the MTC is a Missionary Training Center. He will be prepped before he goes to his mission - England London Mission. He is very excited and nervous at the same time. It will be so fun to see and hear his first day experience. He has been preparing for this day for most of his life. 

Yesterday, we traveled as a family to the Gadsden Stake Center offices which are actually located in Anniston. Yea, that is not normal, but the brethren had to do what they had to do to get this stake going. Anyway, he was set apart at these offices by President Jeff Cote. I was able to stand with President Cote as he pronounced some wonderful blessings upon Ethan. Ethan was encouraged to write those thoughts down by Sister Hopper who is still on her mission in Idaho. Jamie was also in attendance while Elder Hopper was set apart. Mom did shed a tear or two after the blessing was over. 

I became his companion as we were at home and he is able to travel to Grandpa's house by himself as he attends his training. 

Basketball Season

We are reaching the end of the basketball season. This time of year is always busy because we would rather the little kids stay home for a couple of reasons - 1.) They don't watch the game. The play the whole time and they eat stuff from the bleachers. They also cause havoc to us and the people that are sitting around us. (This seems like embedded reasons) and 2.) Financially, it would be tough to bring them to every game.

A couple of weeks ago Justin Dowdle broke his pinky finger on his right hand so this enabled Ethan to start the next couple of games. I am not sure what happened but he began to be not as aggressive as he should have been - blocking out, rebounding and blocking shots. He kind of sloped off a little and wasn't producing like he should. This resulted in him not getting as much playing time and not starting.

We decided to go to the park with the kids on Saturday and even invited Luke and Brian and brought their bikes. We played basketball with Ethan and hopefully, we gave him some coaching that he needed to get better. I realized that he is a big guy and is very hard to guard. I will have to make sure that he gets to be in more situations or practices to get better.

I think that sometimes he is a gentle giant, but I hope that he can find some time to improve down on the low post and improve his shots. A year ago we played with a church group at Bethel Baptist Church. One of my co-workers attends there and plays basketball on Thursday nights, I believe. I'd like for him to go to the Civic Center but, money is the issue there. We'll see how this plays out. Maybe that is something that we can help him with that will encourage him to go more often.

Auburn

Hello Sister Hopper, 

I hope you are doing well. I hope your teaching pool is growing greatly and I hope that you are having wonderful spiritual and testimony building experiences. It is good to hear from you and learn from what you guys are doing to help Heavenly Father’s children come unto Christ.

We are doing well. Monday night we watched the National Championship game with LSU vs. Clemson. LSU won 42-25. It was a good game. The next day I had a trip to go to Auburn to visit a substation site and talk about a plan to replace transmission poles. It was a good trip but very rainy. The weather has been very wet in the last few weeks and temperatures are in the mid 60’s.

I’ve been a little sick the last 5 or so days (I am not sure if it has been that long but it sure seems like it – may be more). I took a sick day on Wednesday. The rest was nice but I am not sure it helped that much. So I went back to work today. Hopefully, I’ll get better in the coming days. Mom has been taking care of me and making sure I get the medicine that I need.

Ethan has a picture in the St. Clair Times newspaper. It’s pretty cool! We will send it to you so that you can see it. He has started on the Varsity the last few games. One of the starters (Justin Dowdle) broke his pinky finger and ended his season. It was tragic but Ethan and Tobias Perry have benefited from his absence.

Jeffery has been doing well. His attitude has been up and down. He still messes up every once in a while. We’re hoping he can learn to be better or get tired of losing. He is still growing. He got a haircut a couple of weeks ago and he loved it and so did everyone else. They hated his long hair.

Julie went to primary activities for the first time last night. It was so weird to see her there. There are about 4 girls and 1 boy that attend.

Nathan is fickle. One day he is so helpful, the next day he is reaping destruction everywhere he turns. Mommy is making him stand in the corner and taking away things that are of value to him when he gets in those moods.

Family Record – I don’t know what you can do about it regarding mission rules, but I have made our family blog site, our new family record site. There are still some updates to be made, but I have modified some settings to hopefully allow you to view and receive emails. This will be a way that we can keep up with what is going on around us and with us as a family. Hopefully, you can see it. If you can't then, I may copy and paste from this blog and send you what I have written. My goal is for all of us to write on this site so that we can always have this information. 

Julie on her bike

Nathan on his bike

Nathan with my hard hat on

Hopefully, you can see these pictures. Maybe Now. 

We love you, Sister Hopper, Have a good week!

New Family Record post

This is our new way of keeping a family record and to record those things that are happening in our family. I was reading an article or reading a book a couple of months ago and President Nelson mentioned that he was doing a family newsletter. That made me think of my family and including my wife's family and my parents and family. It was a great idea to do family history, to keep up with the goings-on of our family. It motivated me to do something but I wasn't for sure how much work it would entail, so I got distracted by doing other things and the holidays came. Then we started the new year of "Come Follow Me" in the Book of Mormon. Well lo and behold as we were reading our lessons on the second week, we came across the 4th lesson for the family. In this lesson, it outlines the following chapters - 1 Nephi 2:19-20; 5:10-22; 6.

As we read these chapters, it helped us understand what we can do as a family to be like Nephi and Lehi in those days. We jotted down some thoughts that we could include as we make a record of our family.

Reasons to keep a family record:

1. Remember the things (quotes) people say. This has to do with family history. What are the things that we say often? What do our parents and grandparents say that is unusual or funny?

2. Spiritual Experiences that help us or that may help others. These are experiences that we can share with the family.

3. We keep a record for family genealogy.

4. We want to remember the words of the prophets and for sure to remember the things that have changed through new revelation. We want to remember our feelings and contrast them through what was good, successful and maybe not successful.

5. A family newsletter to keep up with what is going on in our family, the current events and activities that are going on.

6. This record is to document our struggles and trials and the outcome of those trials. What did we learn? Did we improve, regress or stayed the same? We really can't stay the same, we can either be hot or cold.

7. We want to keep a record of our blessings.

8. We want to record the revelations that we have and share them with the family.

This will be a great opportunity for us to share with the family on how we are doing and be able to share the funny, the sad, the interesting and the educational things of our lives. By using this Blogspot, we will be able to insert pictures, too.

With (Sister Hopper) Jamie on her mission, she will probably not be able to use this Blogspot, but she will be able to receive all of our updates and posts as we compose them. We love you, Sister Hopper.

I also had a thought to include the grandparents on both sides but Wendy and I decided to just have the immediate family only (for the time being).

Sincerely,

Jason