Adventures of Seth & Manina and their six kids from 2007-2020
Katelyn and Court went to Preference together. Although the school isn’t hosting dances for the kids, they rented an outside facility. On Friday they went sledding at Soldier Hollow with their dates and then on Saturday they went to Tucanos for dinner and then to the dance. She had a great time and looked beautiful as always!
Unfortunately with COVID, no actual school dance was organized. That didn’t stop this group of kids. They put together a small group and had their own Sadie’s dance and activities. Katelyn went with Josh. For their day date they went and swam in the crater in Midway. Then for the dance they went to their friend’s barn and danced the night way. The group theme was colors of the rainbow. It turned out so cute!
Happy 17th birthday Katelyn Paige! You can’t find many people with a heart as big as this girl. She is kind, empathetic, driven, crazy creative and bakes the very best treats! Her day was filled with sweet texts from family and friends, cake, presents, lunch with mom & dad, and later in the day, her besties kidnapped her and took her to Cheesecake Factory! I would say that’s a pretty great day. Love you baby girl!
The kids are getting older and I seem to be less involved in their Halloween costume ideas. They usually talk with their friends and come up with matching costumes together.
Drew decided he didn’t want to trick-or-treat this year but rather sit on the door step and scare trick-or-treaters. We never get many visitors because we are a little far from our neighbors and kids prefer high density homes but he was able to get a couple good scares.
Seth and I came up with a last minute costume for a neighbor’s Halloween party a couple weeks before Halloween, but COVID has taken the wind out of our sails a little this year. Anyway, we have a scary clown, an inmate, a grandpa, a rollerskater, and Felicity Huffman and the director of USC admissions. Happy Halloween!
Ellie’s softball season was pushed out until summer due to COVID, but thankfully it wasn’t cancelled. She play on a recreational team and Seth was the assistant coach. It was such a fun season. They won nearly every game. She was one of the top players and always got on base and made a bunch of awesome plays.
She loved it so much she decided to try out for an accelerated team after rec ended. She ended up getting on the Magpies 10U team. She quickly learned there was a lot more to softball than what she was seeing at the less competitive level. It was a challenging season, but she has improved and has learned to hit a much faster ball. She even got pretty good at sliding into home base. I am not sure she will continue playing at the accelerated level but I am proud of her for giving it a try, even when it got discouraging.
That’s a wrap! With the last season of soccer being cancelled due to COVID, we were excited to finally be back playing again. It has been so fun to watch Drew and Ellie, both of which play AA soccer, excel in their positions. Drew and Ellie play the position of forward, which means they get their foot on the ball a lot. We saw many points being scored by these two hustlers.
Drew’s team took first in their division this fall season and Ellie’s team took second place. Great job kiddos!
Ellie set a goal back in March to hike Mount Timpanogos this summer. She worked hard doing several tough preparation hikes. Today she did it. She hiked 15 miles round trip and was able to summit the mountain, even with a tough headwind the last two miles to the top. Drew offered to come along and do it with her. They both killed it with zero complaints. Drew and Ellie’s last comments were, “Hey, when are we hiking Lone Peak?” I guess that will be on the docket for next summer.
The hike itself was a great accomplishment, but the fact that she set a goal, prepared for it, and completed it – that was definitely the best part! Way to go Ellie!
Drew got tickets to a Jazz game against the Miami Heat for his birthday.
On the drive up Drew said all he wanted was a Jazz win. The last Jazz game we went to (two years ago) they lost to the Pelicans pretty handily, so Drew was feeling cursed.
We got there in plenty of time and watched the warmups and saw Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell get celebrated for making the All-Star game, which is later this weekend. They were playing the Heat which has two All-Stars as well in Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo. Both the Jazz and Heat are in fourth place in their respective conferences, so we expected a good game.
It was a slow start, so Drew and I got Chick-Fil-A in the 2nd quarter. We ordered Drew his chicken nuggets and fries and paid the $12 to the cashier. She must have thought Drew was cute or something, because she gave Drew a free large chocolate shake. She explained they made for a customer who couldn’t pay for it in the freezer and wondered if she could give it to Drew. Score! Drew was stoked about it even though the picture doesn’t show it.
The Jazz were down by 5 at the half, but they eventually buckled down and started playing better. There were a couple sweet plays in the 4th quarter that really got the crowd pumping and it was fun to see Drew cheer on the Jazz. Donovan Mitchell played well and hit a couple clutch shots to keep the Heat from coming back.
The Jazz won 116-101 and Drew was pretty happy to attend a game that came out in our favor. We had a great time together and had lots of fun. Go Jazz!
For Christmas, we purchased a pellet smoker. No, it’s not a Traeger (that’s the first question almost everyone here in Utah asks). After a lot of research and a $100 off sale, we bought a Green Mountain Grill. Specifically, the it is the Daniel Boone Prime WiFi model.
It took a while for the grill to arrive, but we broke it out this last weekend, set it up, and got it smoking. We are already excited about what we’re going to try next.
We baked a couple Papa Murphy’s pizzas on Saturday night after assembling everything. The pizza turned out great and was quick and easy.
Then it was time to prepare the main course. I consulted with my friend from work who is a smoking pro (the same one who recommended the make and model of the smoker). He suggested doing a pork shoulder butt since it’s easy, delicious, and hard to screw up. Here is the recipe and process:
Ingredients:
Directions:
We had tons of food and everyone loved it. Some added a little BBQ sauce, but it was plenty delicious without it. We froze the meat to save for leftovers and even sent some home with Grandma Jan and Grandpa Mike, who had volunteered to come down to be our official taste-testers.
I was pretty impressed with the GMG Daniel Boone Prime WiFi. It took a little bit to setup, but I was really glad to be able to look at the app on my phone throughout the cook. I could check on the temperature of the grill and also see the temperature readings from the two meat probes, and even set alarms and notifications when certain temperatures were reached. It worked out great.
Anyway, it was a great success and we’re looking forward to our next tasty smoking experiment.
MightyJohnsons 