Elder Wells the fourth

 This was a good good week - to start work was great. an easy three (2.5) days of work. Tuesday was my 26th birthday (hooray) and all my coworkers chipped in and got some slackwater pizza to celebrate. As I was looking at the schedule for Wednesday I noticed there were quite a few nurses scheduled to come in. SO I pulled the birthday card and asked my boss if I could just not come in on Wednesday so that I could get down to St. George even earlier than planned. Well we compromised and he told me to come in for the morning to do some education and help out with an interview then I could leave in the early afternoon. It worked out beautifully - I don't think Ive worked a full week of work in a long freaking time. Between vacation, "sick leave" and just straight up leaving early it's been pretty nice. 

After work on my birthday I went and got me a free dutchbros. Between that and my buffalo chicken pizza for lunch I was pretty content. 

Wednesday night I got to St. George around 6pm. Jackie wanted to go fishing and even though I think fishing is the absolute most boring thing in the world - I went because there's only a few more days left with little Jackie. 

Fishing is really only fun if you catch something - and guess what?! we didn't catch a single thing, not even one little nibble. 

A pretty night though chillin with the little bro. 

And what's a night out without a little dessert stop? Zeppes it is. 

Thursday was full of shopping with mom and lunch with grandma. 

Friday = pool day! with a side of totinos pizza

Friday afternoon drew and Emma came into town and we had an appointment for sealings. Mine and Jack's first time. It was cool and always fun to be in the temple with family. Then we headed straight to a nice post temple/ birthday dinner at longhorn steakhouse. Disappointing baked potato but the steak always hits. 

Saturday morning we were able to enter back in to pine valley after a long week of fires and hoping our house and garden/trees would make it through. The fire was the worse one we've seen in any of our lifetimes - took out 17 homes and came extremely close to so many more. Thank goodness for the firefighters who made our homes priority and fought endlessly to keep them protected. The fire is still currently burning up in the north eastern mountains, but as of right now the valley is all good. Since it's been two weeks since the garden was last weeded - there was a big ole project for us to conquer on Saturday morning. But Im just grateful we still have a garden to weed so luckily there were a few of us (Kason, Jeremy, mom and dad, Drew, Emma and myself) and we got the job done in about two hours. 

we even got our first harvest of the summer - some radishes yum

After our hard work and some delicious Mac and cheese and spam for lunch we all headed out on a walk to check out the damage. This picture is across the street from our house and just barely to the east. Completely fried. The McArthur's cabin, Mark and Marion's and the Empeys were all even closer than we were, but so far so good. 

We got to watch the helicopters drop buckets of water on the spots still burning closer to the valley up Forsyth trail. Im glad the mountain side burned instead of the homes, but it's crazy and pretty sad to see all the mountains just bare now. You can see in this picture where it goes from green to grey. 

Saturday night ended with a sunset bike ride to check out all the massive houses being built around us. We also played a lot of family games this weekend which has actually been so fun - our favorites being monikers and sorry Charlie. 

Sunday started with Jackies farewell!! It was a busy sacrament meeting with a kirchhausen farewells and Luke Davis's homecoming. Our chapel was full all the way to the back with people and the meeting went like 15 minutes over. Oh also dad got to the church at 7:50am to save seats due to the other families getting there at 7am. FYI church started at 9am. that's how crazy Sunday was. Jack crushed it though. 5 minutes of pure mission ready preachin'. 

After a delicious grilled chicken Sunday dinner we were back to the church at 4:10 for Jacks setting apart with President Thompson. 

And just like that we have our very last elder wells starting his mission. Jack has made it pretty clear that he is absolutely stoked and only very minimally nervous at this point. I think with the help of good examples like dad, drew and Seth - the nerves are eased and Jack is just ready to get this opportunity for himself. 

Now enjoy some photos from the happy day. Don't worry - the sad day will come (July 9th), but we get to enjoy Jackie for ten more days because of good ole home MTC. 

Story behind this photo: Jack says "I wanna throw up a gang sign, like if there was one for CTR" well my CTR ring that I have worn now for yearssss happens to be on my middle finger so I said "here's a gang sign for CTR for ya" haha ok that's the story. 

Proud of Jack and excited for the adventure he's about to experience. Im already counting down the days til he comes home. We finished off our Sunday evening with more card games and playing catch outside which was a whole lotta fun. The atmosphere in the house is already different having a missionary in it. More to come in the following weeks such as the dreaded MTC drop off. but as for now he has survived his first day as a missionary (It was P day today) haha ok bye