Mission Plaques

So we are in a new ward. We said goodbye to the Granite Ridge and hello to the Granite Ward last month. And good news: the Granite Ward does mission plaques for their missionaries! The Granite Ridge ward stopped doing those sometime during or after covid, so Melodie, Ethan and Hyrum never got one. The new Relief Society presidency came by for a visit last week or two weeks ago, I can't remember, but I mentioned how I have a missionary out and he gets home in January, and they said they'd like to make him a plaque. I guess one of the ladies, Bethany, who visited me has been ordering those. I was excited... I said I had other missionaries who never got one and she said she could do them too - sweet! I double checked with the kids and yeah, they said Joseph was the only one that had one. Joseph used one of these photos as the pic on it. Yesterday she texted me to send her Wesley's information and the other missionary, and then I spammed her for the next few hours! I sent her many texts last night and continued through this morning and this evening. My kids kept changing their minds about which photos to use. I sent Wesley's stuff with a photo, and then today when we talked to him about which scripture to use, he vetoed the photo I chose. Our text conversation went as follows:

Wes "What picture are they gonna use tho...?"

Me "This one?" (pic 4)

Wes "Yeah no, we can't have that. This picture I very much dislike. It displeases me" and he sent me this. 

This is a good photo, but I wanted to come to young Wesley's defense, cause I really liked that young man. 

Me "It's just your cute greenie self"

Wes "Yes, I was an ugly greenie though. I wanna like how I look, and I wanna look as seasoned as possible." 

They are all so hard on themselves, but I get it... it's easy to look back on your younger self and cringe, and from what I've seen, to be cringeworthy is one of the greatest offenses among young people today. Mel was ok to use her original greenie photo, reasoning that that's what she would have used if she had gotten a plaque back in 2020. 

I sent Ethan's photo for his plaque and he was against that too. 

He asked why he had to use a greenie photo. "I don't know, it's just what people do..." to which Ethan replied with a Fiddler on the Roof pic ~

He rejected the traditional photo though and went for a mission one, cause he wasn't going to want to look at it or ever have it on his wall if it was the greenie pic. It took him forever to decide, but tonight finally settled on this one.

Hyrum had four that he liked, and we voted and chose this one.

I couldn't find photos we took of Hyrum before the mission. I know we did, they might have never made it off the SD card? But that pic above was his facebook profile photo for most of his mission, so I thought that was good. When we talked to Wes, he mentioned how he was "finally" getting a mission plaque, and Ethan jumped on him: "What do you mean YOU are finally getting one?!?!? You haven't even waited! If it HAD been here this whole time, you wouldn't even have knows. The rest of us - we have been home for over 3 years and we still don't have our plaques. That is waiting! We've waited for over 5 years!!! You don't know the trial of waiting like we do!" They rib each other quite a bit, which is funny to listen to, but I do hope they make enough positive deposits in each other's hearts to balance out all the joking. When Ethan was talking about his mission photo, if he should zoom in more so it was just him or if he should leave the palm tree in, Wesley told him to not zoom in, that made it worse. Wes said he wasn't trying to roast him, he was just giving honest feedback, which is what Ethan had aslked for. Then Wes also mentioned how he fainted this past week:

We were eating dinner with some super cool members in the ward, and just talking about Brother Ritchies work (he's an eye surgeon), and we asked him what the craziest thing he's seen has been. And he was like I got some pictures, why don't I just show you. They were pretty gross, but still, I normally would've been fine. But we happened to be fasting for a friend that day, so I saw a bunch of bloody eye surgeries on an empty stomach. Suddenly, I just started to feel really weird, and the next thing I knew they were lifting me off the floor saying "are you ok?!" I had fainted, lol. It was the first time ever, but it was goofy. They said I just started to zone out and then I just fell to the left side out of my chair. They ran over and caught me though so I didn't hit my head on anything. Then they carried me over to the couch and I sat there for like 20 min. It was a fun experience.

Ethan teased that he should use this photo which probably shows accurately how hard he's been working as a missionary, just laying around being a slacker! But we know he's been working hard. We are chipping away at the countdown chain. We are almost half way through October! Then just two more months until he's home! Yay. Hyrum's been making plans for Wes to join him up at BYU Idaho and has done all the stuff for his FAFSA application and put a down payment on an apartment to be with him. They all know more about it than I do, but I appreciate Hyrum's taking initiative on that. I'm glad that the kids all have each other to help them out, cause I've still got little ones at home! Katharine and I had the car today, so we went "shopping" and got some stuff at the DI, Kid to Kid, and Walmart for her (A few toys and Elsa things). I know I'm going to have to face Peter's disapproval when he gets home from school. All the kids shake their heads at me that I am always buying her stuff, and it's not fair. I should probably show them some old blog posts of how I used to do this for them for no good reason either. 

I have a right to spoil my children with toys, and I've done it for all of you, you were just 3 and 4 years old when it happened though (much like the trips to Disneyland), so you don't remember!