Monday, May 26, 2014

Devyn and Miranda's Wedding

We had a fun trip this weekend to our nephew's wedding in Portland.
Devyn married Miranda in the  Portland, Oregon Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. What a wonderful occasion!  Here are some shots of us waiting outside the temple after the ceremony.



And here's the newly wedded couple!


What a bright future they have ahead of them!  Miranda is getting a Master's Degree in Speech Pathology, and then they will be on to Medical School for Devyn to become an MD or a DO.  I am so happy for them!  This is Devyn's niece Alayna (Heather and Anthony's daughter).  She was so vivacious and friendly to everyone!
We were delighted to see Jeremy and Marinna there!  We will be going to their wedding in July!
And some more shots of our family.
 This is my favorite picture!!
And one more of Josh and Peter waiting for the wedding luncheon.
And now we're going to have a fun Memorial Day!  Reports on that next week...




Monday, May 19, 2014

Last Week of School!

What a fun week this has always been, and this year we were not disappointed!

First of all, to start out the week, we had some great news from Jesse.  She got some scholarship money from the BYU School of Music for the Fall and Winter semesters next year!  Wahoo!  This is in addition to her academic scholarship for the Fall.  Jesse - you rock!

We laughed and laughed this week because Jesse was reading Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson, and half way through she called Bruce, Josh and I, who have all read the book, begging threatening bodily harm if we did not reveal what happened to one of the main character of the books who suddenly disappears.  We had some furious texting going on such as, "Don't tell Jesse anything!"  Ha ha  She finally finished the book, but apparently we are all "traitors" still.  Oh, Jesse!

Mary won a free photo shoot with a photographer on a FB contest.  Here she is on the way to meet with the photographer.
 And here's one of the photos she took.
Beautiful Mary!  It's nice to see a picture of her where she's not doing her "selfie" look (like the one above).  ha ha

Libby had an Orchestra concert this week.  She progressed a lot and sounded great on the violin!  This week she also shocked me by pulling out Peter's saxaphone and playing an entire song on it.  It blew my socks off!  I'm serious that I've never even heard Libby play one note on the saxaphone, so to hear her pick it up and play like that was incredible!  Apparently she learned how to play on a reed at her friends house a few weeks ago, practicing on her clarinet, and she says the flute fingerings are very similar to the sax, so she was able to pick it up quickly in the week I was gone.  Starch my shorts, but that was amazing!  She has a goal to learn to play five instruments, so she is well on her way.

I had chance to go and volunteer with Peter and Libby's Extravaganza at the school.  It was fun to see Peter and Libby socializing with their friends.  That same day, I also got to go with Libby to mutual (the youth activity group at our church), and it was a mother-daughter activity to make pajamas.  I love these yellow pajamas!
The last day of school, Peter got the Citizenship award, as voted on by his classmates on his team. This is a really high honor, and I'm so grateful that Peter is the kind of young man who could receive that kind of award.  Libby also got an award - for the highest amount of reading points in the class!  When the teacher mentioned that the award was for reading, there were half a dozen kids that called out Libby's name, because they already knew who should get the award! Congratulations Peter and Libby!

After the awards ceremonies, I hurried home to get ready for the WATER FIGHT!  When the kids got off the bus, we had 100 gallon trough filled with water on a trailer, and we had a great water fight.  I'm sorry I don't have any pics to show the fun, but I'm IN the water fight, not taking pictures, so I'll have to talk to some friends to see who got pictures!  And get this - it was WARM!  For the last 3-4 years, on the day of the water fight, it was in the mid 50's and raining.  Miraculously, the sun has always come out right in time for the water fight.  But this year, it was a beautiful day in the 70's and warm!  We were loving that!

Afterwards, we gathered down in our cul-de-sac and had hot dogs, chips and watermelon.  So fun!
Selfie with Tammy and Dana





Bruce, the hot dog man

Sabrina, Emalie, Jessica, Libby, Zoe

Sam
On Friday we got to go to the State Track Meet and watch our cousin Kaleb compete for his High School.  He placed 2nd in the Triple Jump!  Here his is in action!


Kaleb getting his 2nd place medal.
He also ended up getting 5th in the High Jump, and his high school won 1st place overall!  What a weekend for Kaleb!  We loved being there to cheer him on.

That night we had our first Family Street Dance of the year!  The good weather from the day before continued, and we didn't have mosquitos, rain, wind or cold, all of which we have endured in years past.  But this year it was PERFECT!  Mary took over being the DJ; in fact, she wouldn't even let us touch it!  Since she did such a great job, I just got to walk around and talk to people.  That was fun!  It's always really interesting to me to see who's going to show up to these events.  Some of the same people are there, but usually it's a wide variety of people that show up.  I love it!  Here's a picture of us after dancing to our family song, which is "September", by Earth, Wind, and Fire. 
 I love this picture!!

On Saturday night, Mary, Peter and Libby had a performance for their ballroom dance team.  They danced beautifully!  When Libby got done with her dance, I leaned over to Bruce and said, "Where did our little girl go?"
This was one of Mary's favorite dance partners, Marcus.
And the kids with their directors, Trevor and Chantal.  They were awesome!

And guess who's birthday was this week?  Mary turned 17!
We had a family dinner today for her.  The big surprise for Mary was that Chet got to come over and have dinner with us.  Grandpa and Grandma came too. We had Stone Soup, per Mary's request.  We acted it all out, and Chet joined in like a pro!
Mary and Chet
Mary got called to be on the Seminary Council next year, so she had responsibilities at Seminary Graduation.  She has some dear friends graduating this year, so this one was especially poignant.
Josh, Mary and Jake

Mary, Brooklyn, Shanda and Madelyn
Thank goodness for good friends, but it's hard when they grow up and leave you! 

When Mary got home and had the leftovers of Stone Soup, she found the stone in her bowl!  This was the best way to end her birthday!


And one more picture of Peter in his vest and bow tie (costume for ballroom dance).  He liked the look!


Joshua has settled back into life at BYU-I.  He has told us about half a dozen girls that he's been on dates with, so he's not wasting anytime in that area!  He got a 93% on his Psychology test, and Bruce told him that meant that he was "93% psycho".  Oh, Dad!

So bring on SUMMER!  Wahoo!


Monday, May 5, 2014

End of the Year Concerts!

What a great week for watching performances!

The Show Choir performance at the high school is the most fun concert of the year, and Mary rocked the house!


Mary sang "Only Hope" for side act (a number between the big team numbers).  She sang beautifully!


Peter and Libby attended a camp the weekend before, and learned a dance that they performed that night to "In Summer" from the movie Frozen.  Peter did one of his famous back flips, launched in the air by David.  It looked awesome!
Mary's friend Chester, whom she met at Choir Festival a month ago, came to watch her perform.
Here's Mary afterwards eating ice cream with friends. 
 Here are the three performers!
And the fam...
Then the next day Mary received was recognized at a Stake Young Women's meeting for receiving her Young Women's Medallion.  Our ward's Young Women also sang the special musical number for the night, Come Unto Christ.  Mary sang a small solo, and it was fun to see Libby singing with the Young Women for the first time!

The next day I got to go with Peter's school choir to their Festival and be a chaperone.  They did a great job!
That night, Libby performed in her Dance Recital!  She danced with two different groups and danced beautifully!


And then we were off to Choir Tour with Mary!  Bruce and I both got to go, and we were the head chaperones for Bus #2.  That means we got the front seats and got to pick the movies.  :)  We traveled to a high school on the Wasatch Front, in Utah, and sang  there, and then we went to Lagoon.  Fun times!

Mary and Sam

Mary and Mom and Dad



And now I am at my brother Craig's house because he and his wife Jenette just had a baby!  Grant Loal was born at 9 lbs 6 oz. and we are so happy to add him as one of our wonderful cousins!


Jesse has been a super-star cousin!  For the past ten days she has been here helping Craig and Jenette before the baby was born.  They said she was an amazing help!  She also got notice this week that she received an academic scholarship from BYU!  Way to go Jesse!  That is an amazing accomplishment, especially considering that when her freshman class entered, we were told that her class was the most highly qualified class to ever enter BYU.  So to get good enough grades among that elite class to receive a scholarship really says something about how hard she worked.  In addition, she received an A on her Juries for the piano performance program, and is still waiting to hear about scholarship money from that department.  Jesse worked incredibly hard to accomplish this, and learned life lessons that could be learned in no other way.  Maybe I'll have her do a guest post sometime so she can relate some of her experiences!

Josh is also doing great - I got to see him last night and he is fully into studying.  But the social scene is a little different.  According to Josh, "Girls are all dumb."  Ha ha!  That made me laugh.  We'll see how long that sentiment lasts.