Janae – Page 2 – Terry Family Shenanigans

Paperwork…and a Call

Matthew decided that he is going to go on a mission as soon as he graduates from high school. He started filling out the paperwork for it and submitted it this week. He has an interview next week and then within a week or two after that he should find out where he is going! We did a couple practice photos to submit with his paperwork. A lot of his friends have gotten there calls or have already left. They are going to Brazil, Sweden, Singapore, Philippines, Panama, Utah and Italy. He is really hoping to get somewhere out of the United States. He is worried that having asthma will make it so they want him to stay in the US. I think he could easily go to Europe or Australia. We shall see!

It has been a few weeks since I wrote the first part and it is time to find out where he ended up getting called to! Several people told us they usually found out on a Monday between 10-14 days after submitting their paperwork. When we were in that window we were anticipating it coming on a Monday, so I made some snacks and treats, Matthew put his friends and family on alert to come over Monday night when he opened it. Ryan was going out of town on Wednesday of that week so we were hoping it would come before he left too. Monday came and went…Tuesday came and went. The Stake president checked the status and it said it was still waiting for assignment so we figured it would be the next week on Monday. Wednesday came and went. We had the missionaries in our area over for dinner Wednesday night. They told us a way to check and see if the call was on the way. We did it and it still didn’t show us anything. Thursday evening I was sitting in Emilee’s room talking with her and Matthew called me. When I answered the phone he asked where I was because he had just gotten his call. We were all pretty surprised!

Matt decided he wanted to open his call with just his immediate family first and then read it again when he invited the rest of his family and friends over later. He said in case he was going somewhere lame he didn’t want to open it with everyone first. I think that was maybe a small part of it but I think most of it was he was nervous and wanted to be able to process it a little first. Which is just fine. The bummer part was Ryan was out of town, but he left the conference he was at for a while and found a quiet place he could face time with us.

Once we had Ryan on the phone he opened his call and found out he will be going to the Brazil Recife South Mission!! He starts online training in our home on August 11, 2025 and then will go to the Brazil Training Center on August 20th. I thought it was pretty touching that the day he starts happens to he his brother Aaron’s birthday. I like to think that Aaron will help Matt and be a companion for him throughout his mission from heaven.

After he read his call with us, we invited his friends and family over to read it later that night. We did a zoom call for friends and family that were not here in KC. Several of his baseball and school friends that aren’t members of our church came. It was really cool to see them support him and be excited for him. They all wrote their guesses on a white board before he read it. Many of them stayed for a while after he read it to start researching and finding information out about Recife.

It has been pretty exciting learning and starting to plan for his mission. The first thing we had to do was get the process started for getting his Visa. It take 4-6 months so they want you to get started right away. There were a few little hiccups but we got it done pretty quick and got the paperwork sent in. He will be speaking Portuguese while he is there so he got a few apps on his phone to help him start learning. It is 138 days until he goes from when I am writing this. We have discovered lots of people that have been to Brazil on there mission, some even the same one Matthew will be at, or have family or experience with sending a missionary to Brazil. It is comforting to have there advice and insight. I am sure Matthew will have a lot of amazing experiences and grow a lot. It will be challenging for him. It is exciting, and overwhelming and a little surreal all at the same time. There are a lot of things going on at school between now and when he graduates and the Summer is already starting to fill up. Ryan and I are trying to soak it all in and enjoy and appreciate the last few months with him before he leaves, as much as we can.

Valentine’s Day

Emilee told me several weeks in advance that she was excited to see what she was getting for Valentine’s Day this year. She loved waking up and seeing what was on the counter for her. So, I took her hint and did the same thing this year. I just leave them a little note with a small gift for each of them. Emilee also mentioned she was specifically looking forward to the candy because the girl has the biggest sweet tooth I have ever seen. I don’t love just giving them a bunch of candy but I did include a treat for them too.

Ryan gave me the flowers. He took me on a date to a new Mediterranean restaurant I had never had before called Meddy’s. It was very yummy. We came home and watched the next episode in the show we are hooked on right now called Severance and then we were going to go country dancing but since we had come home and settled on the couch we decided we were good for the night and saved that for another day.

Super Bowl

Well the Chiefs made it to the Super Bowl AGAIN! It is a lot more fun to watch a Super Bowl when your team is in it. We had a family party again and all got together to watch it. Ross and Lauren brought a big balloon arch they used at their gym the day before. That made it festive and fun. Allison and Leah made lots of football themed treats and Ryan, Ross and Roger made lots of food to eat. In the past we have watched it upstairs but we decided to go downstairs this time and watch on the big TV. And I am now told that because we switched up our routine and didn’t do things exactly like we have done in the past we are a contributing factor to why they had one of the worst losses the Chiefs have ever had. It was awful. It put a bit of a damper on the party- that is a downside to having your team in the Super Bowl, if they don’t win, its like handing out a turd at the end of a fun party. Several of us just quit watching, Matthew disappeared into his room for a while. It is the last Chiefs game he will watch for a few years so he took it personally that they lost. Definitely not how we wanted it to go, someday, probably the next day, life will go on. Hopefully we do better next year!

Matt arrived home from a church meeting and was excited to go put on his Chiefs jersey.

Wrestling

Winter was filled with Allison’s wrestling matches. This was Allison’s first High School wrestling season. It is from November to February, if they make state it is a few weeks longer. She initially started on varsity because she beat the girl for her weight class. A few weeks later another girl dropped down to Allison’s weight class and took her spot on varsity and she was bumped to JV. Allison decided to drop down another weight class and then wrestled in that weight class the rest of the season sometimes on varsity sometimes on JV depending on another senior girl wrestler.

I think she did pretty awesome! She didn’t seem to think she did overly great but when she wrestled JV she won most of the time. Two of her meets and one dual she took 1st place. When she wrestled varsity her record was pretty close to 50/50 wins vs losses. That’s were she thought she didn’t do good but as a freshman wrestling mostly Junior and Senior girls with a lot more experience I think that is a great first year.

It is fun to watch her and see her determination and commitment to it. Not just at meets but watching weight and maintaining it where she wants it while conditioning and putting a lot of time into practice between meets. Ryan and I learned a lot more about it too. I am still not an expert but I know how points are scored and more of what the verbiage and things the ref does or says while she is wrestling means. I also figured out how to combine her individual match videos into one so I can have one video instead of a bunch of short ones. Very proud of myself for that.

It was a good season. She loves to be busy so it was good for her to have that. She is contemplating doing track next…

This is a match that was far away so I didn’t make it to watch her but she won 1st place.

Here are a few of her matches. The first one is a dual she won by technical fall which means she won by getting 15 points ahead of her opponent.

This next one is a match that she wrestled seniors every time. She took 7th in her weight class.

The last one is her last JV match of the season and she took 1st place again. She dominated the first match, used her endurance in the second match, and dominated again the third match.

2025 Begins!

January was a typical January this year. There were a lot of social media comments and jokes about how January is a 12 years long, never ends and the most miserable month of the year. I don’t think that. February seems longer to me, ironic since it is the shortest month of the year. I get why people struggle though. It is a long cold and dreary month. I am ready for the calm boringness after several months of go go go with the holidays. We had a few things that spiced the month up though.

RJ and Dani decided we should all go to a show together at the Kaufmann Center downtown. They had never been and it had been a long time for us. We all went to Chicago together. I had seen the movie, never the play. I think the play was a lot better. It was a nice adult date night down town. Allison watched their son and dogs overnight at their house and Matthew and Emilee watched each other so we stayed downtown and used hotel points after the show. It was nice to not have to drive all the way home afterwards.

The following weekend was Ryan’s works holiday party. They rented out a speak easy under the KC Hotel downtown with a roaring twenties theme. It was pretty fun, everyone dressed up and had a good time. We were going to stay in the hotel that night too but mid week Ryan got sick and we didn’t know if we were going to be able to go or not so we canceled it just in case. Luckily he was better and we got to go. It is a pretty fun hotel but I didn’t mind coming home since we had stayed downtown the weekend before. I was talking to the new marketing person Ryan just hired and her spouse. They seemed really familiar and eventually we figured out that they come to my office for dental work, so they reason they looked familiar is because I have cleaned their whole families teeth for the past few years. LOL. Small world. There were some group pictures taken but I didn’t get any copies so I just have the pictures of Ryan and I. I thought we looked pretty good, Emilee thought we looked silly but she clearly doesn’t know how people dressed in the 20’s. Our costumes came with fake cigarettes but we decided to not carry those around all night.

The next weekend we had Grandpa Terry’s 73rd birthday to celebrate! Every year he says he just wants a very simple meal for his birthday dinner with everyone. This year he said he wanted tacos, Ross said that was boring and made chicken fajitas instead. They were very good… I think Roger enjoyed them and ended up being ok with the switch. Rhonda made him a carrot cake-she makes a very good carrot cake-and he blew out all the candles successfully. The Terry family has decided we are going to continue with the decades old tradition of blowing out the candles on a birthday cake despite COVID trying to do away with it. It is kind of gross if you think about it, but we have all survived this long. 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️ I do not have a clue why Allison is holding a candle up in an orange for him to blow out too-I would guess either an inside joke or she didn’t want to eat cake for wrestling reasons and was including her orange in the celebration.

And last but not least for January-for part of the kids Christmas present Ryan got tickets to the Chiefs playoff game…if they made it. Of course they made it to the playoffs. We have gone to the super bowl 6 times in the last 7 years and will probably go again this year. He had four tickets. I was fine with not going because if I watch the game I prefer to do it in the warmth of my living room. IT WAS COLD! Allison had some wrestling stuff she didn’t want to miss so she passed her ticket onto Matthew’s friend Carter. So Emilee, Carter, Matthew and Ryan braved the weather and went to the game. We won and it was a fun game. No one lost any toes or fingers to the cold. The Chiefs hold the record for loudest stadium in the NFL and Emilee said she believes it. She had a fun time with her dad and brother. Next we have to try for a three win in a row at the Super Bowl!

That’s A Wrap- 2024

The week between Christmas and New Years day it very unique. I love it. Ryan and I usually take it off and of course the kids are out of school. There is no structure. You bounce back and forth between constructive activities, and wasting time. There is no time. You don’t know what day it is. It doesn’t matter because there is no schedule, no demands. If there is something scheduled it most likely will be forgotten. Sometimes you go to bed at 8pm. Sometimes it is 2am. Sometimes you shower and get dressed for the day, sometimes you don’t. I get to be my true introvert self and rarely leave the house. A lack of a plan is the plan. We love it.

We had lots of relaxing, family time activities. The Bourne’s were at Grandma’s all week so my girls spent most of their days playing with them. The weather wasn’t to bad so they even went to the park a few times and got to be outside. I took them to the church one afternoon to play in the gym and draw on the giant chalk boards.

Grandpa Terry, Emilee and Jovee all gave talks on Sunday. We had a family dinner with everyone at our house afterwards to celebrate getting to go to three sacraments. Lots of games were played and football was watched. I caught Ryan getting a little extra snuggle time in with Emilee while he explained something about football rules to her.

Becky invited me to go to a paint class with her so we filled one of our afternoons painting a winter sunset scene. I really like painting. I never know what to do with it when I’m done, it is not good enough to hang up anywhere. It is a fun thing to do and I like learning the techniques and creating things.

Ryan and I worked on some projects together. He made some awesome shelves for my holiday decoration boxes. I can now take one at a time out without having to restack or take other boxes out of the way. I LOVE IT. I went through all my decorations and storage stuff and organized it and cleaned it out. So satisfying. We got a new security system that Ryan installed too. We live far enough away from people that there aren’t that many people but not far enough that I don’t think a weirdo wouldn’t wander by. Ryan got a dart board for Christmas so we hung that up and put a frame around it to help protect the wall a little from wayward darts.

We celebrated New Years Eve at our house with all the Terry Family. We had lots of food and yummy treats. We watched movies, played games, ate and visited while we passed the time away until midnight. I made a balloon drop with confetti for the kids to pull down when we got to midnight.

https://youtu.be/v5mnrlAsQ8E?list=PLBwkO01uWtw9DJu2WA-l0-1CZ6EuoK5Kl

It was a fun night to celebrate the last day of the year and the starting of a new one. It is pretty crazy to look back over a year and see and the things that happened and how things changed. It is weird how things change and don’t change at the same time. I think 2024 was good to us. We had some good times and made new memories together. No broken bones. I waited until 2025 had started before I typed that. We are not perfect but we are blessed and grateful for our good health and the comfortable lives we all have. There is a lot of crazy stuff going on in the world right now and we are mostly untouched by it. 2025 will bring a new chapter into our families lives. The foremost in my mind is Matthew will graduate and is planning on going on a mission and the dynamics of our family will shift from how we have known them for the last 18 years. For the last picture of this edition of my blog I thought I would put this picture. I wish I had one of our whole family doing this but this one will work. Ciao 2024

Christmas

It was Ryan’s families year for Christmas. The Bourne’s came from Idaho and the Ross and Ryan families are already here. The Lee’s couldn’t make it.

Christmas Eve we spent most of the morning cooking a preparing the meal. We had ham and cheesy potatoes, green bean casserole, rolls, jello salad, and Ryan smoked a brisket. It was all very delicious. We ate dinner around 4pm. After dinner and pie and cookies for dessert, the cousins continued to play and have fun together. Some of us watched a movie and played games or took a nap. When everyone was rested and not stuffed from dinner anymore we had a little family gathering. Emilee, Jovee and Tyler started us off by sharing a little thought they each wrote about what Christmas means to them and what some of their favorite parts about Christmas are. Then most of the grandkids shared some kind of talent. We had several piano numbers, a flute, a trumpet, dancing, and even a little acrobatics. Grandpa then gave us a Christmas message and we all had a family prayer together.

Later that night when we got back to our house we opened our Christmas Eve PJ’s and did any last minute wrapping and headed to bed.

Christmas morning we plan for 6:30am at the earliest to wake up for presents. The kids have the option to sleep in longer if they want but so far they have not taken us up on the offer. This year Allison woke us all up at 6:30 sharp with excited cheering that it was Christmas morning. The kids wait at the bottom of the stairs until we get into the living room and then they come up and we start opening presents.

Matthew got some golf clubs and a guitar. He pretty recently decided that he wants to learn the guitar. It isn’t the piano but I’ll take it. Allison wanted lots of clothes and some fancy head phones. Emilee wanted some lego sets to put together and she is currently collecting palm pals and had a list of those she wanted. I didn’t do a very good job of taking pictures this year. Here are the few I did remember to take. Last year we did a scavenger hunt for the kids for the family gifts. They seemed to like it so we did it again this year. The family gift was tickets for one of the Chiefs play off games in January. It will be a fun family event! I’ll post more about it after they go to the game.

After we opened presents and ate breakfast and chilled for a little bit, we went back over to Grandma and Grandpa’s house. We opened more presents there with them and then the Chiefs played at noon so everyone came over to our house to watch the game. We ate snacks and leftovers, played games and hung out together.

It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

December was just lovely. It flew by really fast but it wasn’t chaotic and out of control with to much going on. It was perfect.

We made treats, did puzzles, listened to music, looked at lights, drank hot chocolate, did toys for tots and the giving tree, wrapped presents, watched Christmas movies, went to Christmas parties, celebrated with family and friends. It was an awesome month.

Allison had another wrestling match. It was an away meet so we didn’t go but someone recorded it for us. Spoiler alert-she wins! I finally figured out how to combine her videos so we can watch all her matches for a meet in one video.

https://youtu.be/IAO7dOd16K4?list=PLBwkO01uWtw9DJu2WA-l0-1CZ6EuoK5Kl

Ryan and I went on a brief overnight date to downtown Kansas City. He gets a free weekend night as a perk through his Hilton credit card so we usually use it in December. We went with our friends Dani and RJ. We booked a few reservations at some of the Christmas pop up places they have for appetizers, dinner, and dessert and had a nice relaxing night with lots of visiting.

Christmas was on a Wednesday this year. The kids finished school the Friday before and Ryan and I had our last day of work on Monday. Then we had the next week off to celebrate Christmas, New Years and enjoy being lazy, and getting things done around the house that we wanted to. Ryan built some shelves for all the decorations in our storage room. I haven’t taken down all the Christmas decorations yet so I will wait to take a picture when its all packed away and finished. He installed a new security system around our house. I was in my purging our house of things that we don’t need anymore and customizing/organizing a few areas. I did Ryan and my closet, the pantry, and the storage room- which like I said is now just waiting on the Christmas decorations. We played games with the kids and hung out. There is a touch of a sad note for me this year because it will be the last Christmas before our kids start leaving the house and we start tip toeing into a new era in our lives. That is another reason I really wanted to soak everything in as much as possible.

That a girl

I am just putting a little ‘good job’ note in here for me. On December 12, 2024 I got all the way caught up on my blog. I have been several months behind at any given point for the last year or two. Woohoo!

Shadow Nativity

For part of our church Christmas party this year the youth were asked to do some kind of performance. One of the leaders came up with a shadow nativity. They basically act out the life of Christ to a song called Halleluiah behind a screen with a bright light so you can just see their shadows. It is about a 5 minute long song, so it is short but very sweet and touching. Emilee was willing to do it since no one could actually see her and there were no speaking parts. She was actually put in charge of turning the lights on and off when they needed it and thought that was perfect. Allison is living at the school gym for wrestling right now so she didn’t have time. Matthew said, “No thanks.” The leader in charge texted me and asked if I thought Matthew would be able to participate. I told her he would love to and let Matthew know that he was voluntold to do it. They went to the first practice and when they came home I anticipated a little push back from Matthew for making him do it. Instead I got a play by play of the rehearsal as he speed acted/sang through the song and all his parts. The reason the leader had asked for him specifically is because she wanted him to play the adult Jesus because he is older and able to be more mature and reverent than other boys that were participating. Matthew ate that up and was all in. It reminded me of the time I signed him up for a summer play of The Greatest Showman. He was not happy and protested the whole way to the first practice. Then I didn’t hear much protesting after that and he said it was going pretty well. When we went to the performance he was literally swinging from the ceiling on rope ribbons while he sang his little heart out. He definitely has a drama side to him, he just doesn’t let it out very often. It was cute to see him be excited about it. Campbell caught wind of it and said she was coming to watch and she told Ramey and he came to watch. Matt did a great job and Emilee nailed the lights.

I recorded it…I must have been holding my phone upside down though because it is sideways and I can’t get it to straighten. Add it to my list of mom fails. 🤦‍♀️ Just turn your head to the side while you watch it.

https://youtu.be/UP_kbdPS9Dw