Ariel's Birthday

I decided I needed to drive to Utah and spend Ariel's 21st birthday with her. When my dad was sick and Ariel was living with them, she wanted to make a rag quilt. My parents went with Ariel to pick out the fabric and my dad watched as she cut out the squares. Ariel brought the quilt blocks home and they sat on a shelf for the past two years. She never had the time to sew the quilt. I would see the quilt squares from time to time and felt bad that the quilt was never made. One day I felt impressed that my dad wanted Ariel to have that quilt, so I made my first rag quilt. It was a lot of hard work, but worth every bit of it to see her face when she opened the gift. She had no idea that I was making her blanket for her, so it took a second for her to realize what it was. I love how she automatically assumed my mom made the blanket and her shock when she was told that I made the blanket. Very funny.

Todd wanted us to take a picture with the blanket and a picture of my Dad, so we did. Ariel said it was the most special present she ever received. That made me happy. I am grateful she appreciated it so much and was so surprised.

I went up to Logan for a few days so I could be with the girls on Ariel's birthday. I had a great time with them. We enjoyed a delicious lunch at Cafe Sabor. Mmmm, I would really like some more of that right now.

I went to the Logan temple while the girls were in class. I grew up right by this beautiful place, but had only been inside to do baptisms. It was very special to come back and go inside again.

I also got to go to class with Megan (which was great fun) and later on a drive up the canyon with Ariel. I love the canyons around Logan, I spent a lot of time in them growing up.

Ariel's roommates were so sweet, they made her fancy cupcakes, and gave her 21 balloons. We had her open presents and then ate the treats. It was a perfect birthday. 

I was so glad to spend time with my girls, I miss them so much.

Happy 21st birthday to my little girl!

The night ended with Ariel re-creating a pose from a picture that we recently found. It's a classic. Those double-jointed thumbs and all. So grateful for this beautiful girl and the incredible joy she has brought us her whole life.

First Day of School

This is a big school year at our house. Aaron started high school, it's hard for me to believe, but it's true. Like his sisters, he is in student council. This year, Todd decided he would take Aaron to seminary, so they leave the house at 6:45 a.m. It is quite different to have a boy in high school instead of girls. Aaron gets up when his alarm goes off, gets ready, and is on time every day to seminary. Yes, it is very, very different. 

The girls were nice enough to send me a picture of them on their first day of school. They had many years of sitting on the stairs for first day of school photos, and must have known how much I would want a picture of their first day.

Birthday 2012

I have turned 42. In spite of my age, I had a great birthday. I got to go out to a nice dinner, eat pie and open presents, what more could I ask for? I got a special package from the girls. I love Willow Tree statues and they sent me the one for learning, since I am a college student now. I also got the "forget me not" statue from my mother-in-law. I was excited to get two new statues! My girls also sent each of us an Aggie t-shirt. I loved all my presents!

  Hmmm...duct tape??

College Life

The girls are enjoying college. They stay very busy. Ariel has been applying for grad school and is preparing to graduate with her bachelor's degree in May. Megan has adjusted well to living on her own. Here are a few recent pictures of them.

We miss the girls!!!

Summer School Is Over

Aaron and I both had summer school, it was pretty intense. He was taking Algebra and I was doing Biology. I told Aaron, IF and when we finished our classes, and IF we survived, we would take a little trip together. 

My brother was working in LA so we decided to go visit him for the week. He told us the accommodations wouldn't be good. He said it would be like camping, except we would have a flushing toilet. He said, "This won't be like a Motel 6, it will be like a Motel 4." Well, all that talk was so enticing  so we went to stay with him.

 Aaron and I spent a lot of time at the beach, we risked our lives every time we had to drive anywhere. LA is by far the worst place I have ever driven. In spite of that, we had a great time and every night we came back to the "suite" (that's what I kept calling the place, Stephen wasn't sure why) we watched the Olympics and ate junk food.

 

 We enjoyed a roller coaster ride and carnival games at the Santa Monica Pier

 We went to the original "muscle beach" it was the best place to "people watch." We saw the guy from the Hanes commercial swinging on the rings. He was crazy, but a lot of fun to watch.

 Aaron spent several hours building a sand castle.

 He didn't like the finished product too much, but I thought it was awesome.

We had to check out Venice Beach. It was a scary place and we couldn't wait to leave. There was muscle beach there too (which was just an outdoor Gold's Gym.) There were some interesting guys trying to impress the public with their work-out skills, we weren't impressed. 

 My favorite part of the trip was visiting the DW Drum Factory in Oxnard, California. Even though the tour was full, Todd arranged  for us to see the showroom. Aaron was able to play a lot of the fancy drum kits on the floor, it was awesome!

We had a great week. The beach is one of my very favorite places, and just what I needed after such a stressful semester. We were sorry Todd and the girls couldn't be with us.

A New Chapter...

Megan graduated on a Tuesday, and left home three days later. It doesn't get any easier when your second child leaves home. We got her things packed and loaded in and on top of the van. She didn't have quite as much stuff as her sister did, but it was still a tight fit. We had grandma Susan still visiting  with us so she got to come on our trip north. 

About two hours into our journey, something went terribly wrong, the air conditioning broke. No more cool air, just hot air from then on. It was a pretty difficult ride after that, being that it was the middle of June, and we were traveling across a desert. I won't ramble on and on about the misery we endured that day, as traumatic as it was at the time. Let's just say I was close to a panic attack on a few occasions. I had to re-hydrate myself with a couple of big bottles of Gatorade and keep a bag of ice on the back of my neck as much as possible. Everyone else were pretty good sports about it though. 

We had planned to stay the night in Bountiful Friday night and go to Logan the next morning, to spend the day unloading, unpacking, and getting Megan situated. With the A/C problem, we had no choice but to continue to Logan that night so we could have the van in the shop on Saturday. I don't think we had it in us to go home without cool air. 

We stopped in Bountiful to see my mom for a few minutes and have dinner, then we got back in that hot box. We ended up getting to Logan after 9:00 p.m. Ariel had a crew of her friends there to help us unload everything and it was done in no time. We were completely exhausted and worn out from traveling all day in the heat, so we didn't get to spend much time helping Megan unpack. We spent all of about 45 minutes with her. I felt horribly sad about that, she was very understanding and wanted us to head back since it was so late. 

Megan and Ariel are living together for the summer and sharing a room. It was very hard leaving Megan on her own. She is ready for this experience though, and I know she will be just fine. She has always been my independent child. It started after the first four weeks of kindergarten were over, that's when her teacher didn't have to take her from my arms kicking and screaming anymore and drag her into class. Good times. Megan has been a true friend to me, and I am going to miss her.

Megan's Graduation

We had a house full for Megan's graduation. Both grandma's and cousin Beka came for the big event. My brother, Stephen, also got to spend a few days with us, but had to fly out a few hours before the graduation.

My mom was a good sport and posed with an AR-15 assault rifle. Everyone wanted to take a photo of her...

I took a photo of everyone else...

Megan was a highly decorated graduate with her medal, cords and sashes.

The official diploma...many years of dedication and hard work.

We had a huge fondue party before graduation. My brother and sister-in-law loaned us their chocolate fountain, and we had plenty of stuff to dip. I had never done a fondue party, it was delicious.

 Megan was happy about it,

 and so were we... 

  My mom and Susan helped so much. They cut up all the food and had everything ready by the time I got home from school.

  After we stuffed ourselves, it was time for the photo shoot. I tortured everyone, and made them pose for an excessive amount of pictures, but you only graduate from high school once.

 Megan served as the student body secretary this year, so she sat on the stage with the student body officers. This was fun for us because we could see her on the jumbo tron the whole time.

 There were so many names to be called and it took a really long time. We entertained ourselves by taking photos of ourselves and sending them to Megan.

It was an incredibly hot day and we ended up waiting outside for awhile before Megan came out, then I tortured everyone again with more photos.

When we got back to the house, we had ice-cream sundaes. It was a wonderful day, we were so glad some of our family was here to celebrate. We're so proud of Meg and this huge accomplishment in her life.

 We ended the evening by writing messages to my Dad on Meg's graduation balloons. She took them outside and let them fly up to him. We felt him in our hearts, but missed having him with us.