Opposition in all things

The greater the oppositon the greater the joy. January has been an opposition in all things month. Jared's brother Chad has been battling pneumonia at a time he is vulnerable due to a battle with cancer, and most of this month he has been in the hospital in montana, but was life flighted to the Huntsman center when things did not improve.  We have been so worried about Chad and sad that he and his family have had to face his life threatening circumstances, so Jared's siblings headed a project to help bring some love and encouragement to Chad and Robin and their 4 kids. We went to Jared and Justin's office building and recorded encouraging messages on a dvd, (which Jared spent quite a bit of time that night editing and putting together) tied and signed fleece blankets, donated money, and made cards to include in a large care package. They were so grateful, the Schauers know how to treat each other when there is a crisis!  We had a baptism planned for Chad's son Mitchell here in Utah but as Chad was still in the Huntsman during this time, he had the unique opportunity to baptize Mitchell at the Huntsman! As hard as it was to see Chad so sick, it was amazing to see him be able to baptize his youngest child and the Spirit was very strong there. We all had to wear masks over our noses and mouths so as to not spread germs, but there were lots of smiles under those masks!   Chad is home now (joy!) and we are hoping he has continued progress the rest of the winter.

 January we spend a fair amount of time in the hot tub. Jared and I have been trying to work out weights more and we like to end a workout in the hot tub if we have time. Opposition--hard work out and sore muscles but relaxing hot tub after. Weston is still in the middle of gym meet season, two down, four to go. He got another nasty rip on his hand from the parallel bars this last week, and he has had sore muscles from extra training and gym meets, its really not easy being a gymnast, sometime I wonder why we put him through it, opposition in all things!  When he does so well at a meet its very rewarding.  If you didn't see his last meet on 1/18/14 you can view it here

I had a rare opportunity to have a few friends from my masters of social work cohort come visit one evening (Ruth Tanya Adam Rachel Shannon Justin Sam Jenny). Its always good to see them when I do. We are all working hard to make the world a better place for people. Its tough work but worth the effort! Some of my valiant friends are dealing with very tough circumstances and I'm praying for them, these aren't the type of people that stand outside the fire.

Another struggle we Barretts are pushing through is getting my parent's basement finished so my 92 year old grandma can move in soon. I've been spending every spare day I can going to Eagle Mountain and cleaning and prepping and encouraging my parents to keep moving forward as it has been discouraging at times. Jared suggested they hire out the dry wall and mudding, they were really hung up at that point with my dad trying to do most of it himself. He has been working so hard! They did so and hooray some progress was made this month. We got the painting done yesterday and carpet is being installed Wednesday!  The end is in sight, which is very joyful. And to end I'll add some beautiful pictures from Karli Sue's wedding that Kelsy took that I absolutely loved. Kelsy and Jesse made us a salmon dinner last night and we watched a movie in their theater, we love hanging out with those guys and their beatiful Knightly! 

Gym meet season is upon us

Yesterday begun the series of gymnastics meets in various parts of the state and one out of state that Weston will be competing in as a level 5 junior division gymnast nearly every Saturday until March. This is his first year on team so we are new to this process, and I have had quite a frustrating experience trying to get accurate information out of the powers that be at AAG so I can prepare for this, but with lots of trust in the Lord and after having a successful experience at the Missy Marlowe gym meet yesterday, I'm feeling like we will make it. Once we finally got our hands on Weston's uniform we figured he must have grown two inches since they measured him for it back in September, or they measured him wrong, because the pants were way too small, but nothing we could do at this point, the meet was the next day! I was just grateful that after all the money we spent on it he would at least have it for competition. He was super excited to have his uniform so we took a picture.

We packed up at 6:50 am Saturday morning to travel to Salt Lake and be at the Salt Palace at the appointed time 7:45, which we learned was way too early as they didn't even begin warm ups until 8:25 am, and those lasted until 9:45, so the competition actually begun around 10:00!  I was so nervous for him, but didn't need to be, he did a fabulous job on all his events, and the main reason he got docked was because he forgot to look at the judge and salute after on 4 of the events. Learning experience! He still managed to get a 54.8 overall score which was 1.8 over the required by his coach, and he placed 4th all around out of all the gymnasts of incoming gyms in his division. Not bad for his first go at it, he has gymnastics in his blood, and has worked hard.

Jared came with me, thankfully, so I had someone with me as I patiently waited through this competition process for 5 hours, and 1 hour of awards after, and we realized when we came home and watched/compiled the video footage that the time spent watching our son actually compete was only a little over 5 minutes. Ha ha! So if you ever want to come watch him compete be warned, its a long wait for a short thrill. I still enjoyed watching all the gymnasts though, such strong boys out there!  If you want to watch Weston's events (again not much more than 5 min) you can view them by clicking here
Here are Westons scores:
Parallel bars 9.0 High Bar 9.6 Floor 9.2 Pommel horse 8.2 Suspended Rings 10.1 Vault 8.7 Total 54.8