Sayonara Kodai

What a week! I had made plans for all the things we were going to do with Kodai, our Japanese student.

Going to see the witches and have dinner at Archibald’s restaurant at Gardner village was so much fun last year, we HAD to do that again. And for Saturday, wouldn’t it be great to go out to the Kennecott Copper mines? We’ve been wanting to do that for years!

But, our family is busy, and we couldn’t just drop everything that we had going on for the week.

Monday night, only Ryan and a few kids went to Provo to pick Kodai up, since the girls had volleyball practice and Cole had mucho homework.
Tuesday night was John’s first basketball game, so we were pretty much obligated to go to that one. We did go together and get frozen yogurt that night.

Wednesday I had bells rehearsal, and John had a pack meeting. Rather than having Kodai go to pack meeting with him, I dropped the kids off at the dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving point. They had a fun time there for a couple of hours, and then Ryan picked them up and brought them home. They especially enjoyed the sand and water table.

Thursday night we didn’t have ANYTHING scheduled (or so I thought), so that was going to be our outing to Gardiner Village. But no…Natalie and Megan just HAD to go to the ward volleyball game at 6. Cole had major stuff to get done before the last day of the term the next day. And then, (here’s the kicker) Ryan had to stay late at work to take not one, but two conference calls. Ok, plans, we’ll see you later! Instead, I decided to let the boys chill at home and play some Wii. They didn’t seem to mind. We also went to dinner at the great and wonderful eating establishment of Wendy’s.

Friday, we had a fun ward party planned, and we didn’t want to miss it. We decorated the trunk, made cornbread, and got everyone (even Kodai) outfitted in costumes, and went to our ward party at the church. There was a chili cook-off with dinner of salads, chili and cornbread, then games by the youth in the ward, and finally a trunk or treat. It was so much fun! I kept losing track of our student, but he seemed to be having fun with these crazy American Halloween festivities.

Saturday was the day to get all that fun in that we hadn’t had time to do during the week. But we still had 2 volleyball games and a basketball game to attend to, so we had to get creative. First, I sent Cole and Megan and Kodai to Trafalga to go do some laser tag. They did have a great time with laser tag and go carts while I went to a basketball game and then a volleyball game. Then we were all going to meet up at Los Hermanos for lunch. Everything was going according to plan–except that I wasn’t feeling well. I had a headache and was feeling kind of queasy, and even my beloved Los Hermanos didn’t make me feel like eating. I decided to opt out of the lunch and the afternoon activities. Luckily, Ryan was there, and he was ok to take them all bowling after lunch. I took his car and drove home, where I laid around a lot feeling bad that I wasn’t there with the family. Not to worry, though, Ryan had things under control, and he took them bowling, then to BYU where they did some down the hill rolling and art museum visiting. THEN they went to Timpview High for the exchange student dinner and closing social (I told you we crammed all the fun in!).

Sunday Morning we went up to the Salt Lake Tabernacle to attend the Music and the Spoken Word with a bunch of kids from his group. Afterward we went over to the church history museum and had a lot of fun up in the children’s exhibits. After that we went to Liberty Park and had a picnic. When we got home we pretty much all crashed, then had dinner, played games, and watched Amazing Race.

Monday morning we had to get him back to BYU by 7:15, so it was an early morning of goodbyes (and costumes, since it was Halloween). Fun, but busy week.