Granite Ridge

Today was our last day with our neighborhood LDS ward, the Granite Ridge Ward. We had a "linger longer" after church, and then after that we all gathered together on the west side of the church to get a group photo. I'll share that if/when I get it. I did get a photo as people were gathering for the group pic. 

That is our historic granite wall of our chapel. The Christofferson's were in our ward for a while, and often when I look at the Granite wall from the other side, aka inside the building during sacrament meeting, I remember sister Christofferson saying how she would be aware of the passage of time when she would notice that his hair color changed next to the wall. When they first moved in, Elder C's hair was darker than it, then  for years it blended in with it, until lastly it became whiter than the gray stone. 

So last Sunday, there was a special stake meeting, where they told us they were going to announce the ward boundary changes. There we learned that our ward was going to be discontinued! Our ward members would be moved to two different wards, depending on where we all were in the neighborhood. Most of us are going to the Granite ward, and those further west on the ridge are going to the Granite View Ward. We knew we'd meet together one more time before the change (today) and so we planned for a "linger longer" after church for people to stay and visit and say goodbye and "see ya around" to friends. We had an hour visiting at the pavilion (where the 4th of July breakfast is). Kids on the grass (Peter and Owen in this pic) -

After eating and visiting, we took the big ward photo with everyone. Also, for the past year plus, the youth in our ward have played their musical instruments during fast and testimony meeting. It's become a wonderful tradition to bring in the spirit. We had fast and testimony meeting last week, and the kids all played, but since today was our last meeting as a ward, they played again today. A few of the mom's took pictures of them performing at this last special meeting. 

Some adults joined in too.

It was a really special day and a wonderful ending to this chapter of time in the Granite Ridge Ward. Last week, Hyrum said he feel sorry for his younger siblings who will not grow up in the Granite Ridge Ward, but it will still be wonderful for them. Not everyone was able to grow up in the 80s and 90s either like Corey and I did, but we trust that they can still have good childhoods ;)

So everyone was released in mass from their callings. I'm done as RS Secretary after a year and a half, and Corey is done after only a few months as Elder's Quorum president. The ward will be larger now, and I'm excited for that, cause sometimes it feels like we are all doing a lot, or we feel bad asking people for help cause we know that they are doing a lot already. Like Corey, last week, biked down to do a crops garden assignment, and yesterday he was in charge of a service project out in Magna. He didn't get a lot of people to sign up for the Hometown thing yesterday, so he took ALSN with him, which they weren't too thrilled with to have to wake up early on a Saturday morning, but they went to help and we're grateful that we have kids to boost the number of helping hands when we need them! Anyway, it will be good to be able to meet knew people and be blessed by them and learn from them, and we hope to be a blessing to them too in this stake of Zion. 

After church I took a long nap (I have not been taking naps at all this past few weeks, I think all the supplements are helping my anemia) but I let myself take one today. I started reading until I felt tired and then took a nap. BUT, I totally forgot about my 4 butterflies! I knew there were 4 eclosing today, and they were all black before church, but I didn’t check on them after we got home. I didn’t even remember them until after 5pm! I have NOT been a very good butterfly caretaker this year… When I went in, they were all off of their chrysalides but they weren't hanging on. I stepped carefully and looked around, I was able to find three of them pretty quickly, and these babies were anxious and ready to get going outside and live their life.

Natalie came and helped and she was the one that found it. but it took us about 15 minutes. It was in one of the white shelf bins. I have 5 chrysalides left and one that will prob be in a jhook tomorrow. I haven't kept good monarch stats, and I've given more than half of my eggs and caterpillars away, but it feels like it's been a pretty good year.