June Wedding

Stephanie got married in June and we enjoyed going to her beautiful reception. It was really fun for us since the young man she married was from our former ward in Mesa. We had lived in that ward for 12 years, before moving to St. Johns and grew to love it and all the wonderful people in it. We were pleasantly surprised to see many of our old friends from that ward come to the reception to wish the cute couple well. Here are a few pictures from the reception....

A very happy and beautiful Stephanie!

Marcie and Josh helping out at the ice cream table.

The family, or part of us anyway...

Our favorite Auntie and cousins...

All the men....

Congratulations Stephanie and Joshua!!

Journal of June

It seems like the pleasant days of summer were a long time in coming this year. Our area had a terrible wildfire that began over Memorial Day and the entire region felt its affects for most all of the month of June. Also, the wind lasted forever up here this year, which was of course a factor in the "Wallow fire", which ended up being the second largest wildfire in the nation, second only to the Yellowstone Fire. Most all of the towns up here were evacuated. Ed went out one afternoon and took a few pictures of the smoke from the Wallow fire.

Early Summer Events

Over Memorial Day we went down to the Arizona Grand Resort again. Is always a fun and relaxing way to hang out with the kids and grand kids. Here are a few pictures.

More May Events

When you think of the month of May, you think of graduations, and we did have one in our family this month. Marcie graduated from High School! We are so proud of her. She is an excellent student and a wonderful person, graduating 3rd in her class even!
She was very busy this year, with her studies and participating in the orchestra, and student council where she served as Senior Class President. She also was in Honor Society and volunteered in the Big Brothers/Big Sisters program. Soccer took most of her extra time, the first semester, where it really paid off, as her team won the 2A state championship!! The second semester she took up Dance with one of her friends and participated in a local dance group. She loved that and did very well, although it was something she had never done before. It was fun to watch her learn and grow this year through her many activities and watch her leadership skills grow as she spent many hours fulfilling her duties in student council. Here are some pictures of Honors Day and Graduation.

Marcie and the senior class presidency reading the Class Prophecy at Honor's Day.

Recieving the Presidential Scholarship: Room, Board and Tuition and books.

Her graduation cake/birthday cake, since we were gone on her birthday and hadn't celebrated it yet!

Jaime, Marcie, Alissa and Shea at graduation.

Class of 2011.

Marcie playing the piano for a special number with some classmates singing, "We are the World."

Leading the class in the official "Changing of the Tassel" (or whatever you call it!)

Celebrate!

Congratulations Marcie!

The merry month of May

I am pretty far behind in posting on this blog. Let's see if I can catch up on a few happenings for the month of May. It was a very busy month, which is typical for this time of year, with school coming to a close and recitals and graduations, etc. etc.
Also, early in the month we took a trip out to Washington D.C. to visit Jason, who had been living in Alexandria, VA since January, doing an internship for law school for the semester. His job was coming to a close and since I had always wanted to see the D.C. area, we went back and took the opportunity to tour around a little and see the sights. It was very interesting and lots of fun. Here are a few highlights.

Loved the Washington D.C. Temple.

Jefferson Memorial

Arlington Cemetery with Washington Memorial in background.

This is Monticello, Thomas Jeffersons house. This was one of my favorite places we visited. I did a paper on him and his beloved Monticello earlier that semester for a class I took.

Me and Tom.

Dad in front of some of the gardens at Monticello.

The National Cathedral. This place was amazing. The archtitecture and deco of the building inside and out was unbelievable. They were having a festival on the grounds and there were tons of people, and arts and crafts exhibits, and things to do and see as well as wonderful food to eat. Was alot of fun, but the building itself was the show stopper.

Mt. Vernon, George Washington's home was another favorite place we visited. The grounds were impressive and from the large back porch was a sweeping view of the Potomac. The house was beautiful too, but my favorite part of these homes, were often the grounds and gardens.

Back porch of Mt. Vernon.

Jason and I sitting on George's back porch. I'm telling you, the view was amazing!

This is a picture of our capitol building tour. Jason's roomate worked at the capitol and drove us in one morning and got us tickets. Very interesting place with beautiful architecture and art everywhere.

We almost skipped the library of Congress and are so glad we didn't. It was really something. Every inch of this beautiful building was tiled, painted or decorated to the hilt in some fashion. The picture doesn't do it justice. Of course Ed went crazy, taking who knows how many pictures of this place from every angle imaginable. Another beautiful building.

One neat thing that happened was when we were walking downtown on our way to see the White House and happened to be in the right place at the right time to see Obama's motorcade leave. They shut down the intersections and made everyone stand back and pretty soon here comes half a dozen cop cars and then several black SUV's and ambulances and more cop cars and on and on. The President doesn't travel light, that's for sure. It was pretty fun to see the big procession, there must have been 15-20 vehicles at least in all.

Looks kinda like Obama in the back seat doesn't it?

Jason and I in front of the white house.

Me holding up the Washington Memorial.

View from the top of the Washington Memorial.

We spent alot of time walking to and from the subway and riding the subway.

Our other mode of transportation was Jason! Thanks Jason, it was a wonderful trip!

General Conference weekend

We enjoyed going to conference last weekend. We hadn't been for several years and it was also a good opportunity to visit Emily and Daniel before they move back east to go to school. We had a wonderful visit with them and we will miss going and visiting them in Provo. They are sad to leave such a great place, but are excited for their new opportunity to get Daniels masters degree and live in such an interesting area.
Conference was amazing as usual and the talks and music were inspirational. It was especially fun on Sunday morning to get to be in our seats early and get to see "Music and the Spoken Word" be recorded. The mormon tabernacle choir truly rocks!
Here are some pictures:

I love how the temple stands out against the night sky. (And I kinda like the guy in the picture too!)

On Saturday it was like springtime, complete with blossoms and everything....

The next day, we woke up to snow and it was quite cold waiting for the trax to take us to and from places. But still lots of fun. Love Salt Lake. We girls walked all over while the men were in the Priesthood session. Em and Marcie were smart and bought new jeans and shoes and changed clothes, leaving Mom in her dress and heels.

January Events

I must say I have never been a fan of winter time. In fact, I have no use for winter, except that the months of January and February must be endured I suppose so that we can eventually get on to the more pleasant, beautiful and important months of summer time. Nonetheless, life goes on in January, just the same as it does in any other month, and so here are a few of the more notable happenings of that grey, leafless month!

Sterling gets married! It was a beautiful wedding and it was good for 2! trips out of the cold country down to the the land of the warm. Hallelujah!

Also in January our dog had puppies. This was an endless source of delight to the 2 kids left at home, but Dad and Mom? Not so much. Yes, the puppies were adorable, but in January? when you have no choice but to be kind and let them stay indoors? Despite the fact that they don't always smell so delightful? However, we made it through and the puppies are now big enough to go to new homes. Takers anyone? (They really are sooo cute!!)

The kids favorite activity in January is skipping out of school for a day here and there to go up to Sunrise to ski and snowboard. We have taken several groups of kids up there over the last few years, and Marcie and Josh love it and have actually gotten pretty good! These are kind of old photos, I think from the first year we went. We didn't take alot of pictures after the first couple of trips.