It's all about Jack

 Jack's mission farewell was on Sunday, May 26. It was a great day with friends and family. Jack did a fabulous job on his talk and even used his mystery word with amazing ease! (a tradition where uncle Ken gives the missionary to be a strange, random word they have to incorporate into their talks with only a few minutes notice to prepare). Jack's word was sphygmomanometer. Pretty awesome!

 It seemed like so long to have that call--5 months to prepare, but then, the last few weeks just flew by and were very busy!  We are so excited for Jack's adventure!

 Grandma and silvi

 Grammy and Jack

Lots of yummy food, what more could he want!

Visiting with the gang. It was a great day.

 Saying goodbye to friends and family the day before going into the MTC

Last chance for a few family photos with us all together. Even Harper jumped in.

 Finally, June 5th really arrived. We took Jack to Tucanos for lunch before the big drop-off.

Man, I think we have the best kids in the world.

 Everyone loved it and we were all very stuffed.

The MTC (the new west campus). They let us jump out and take one final picture. The main MTC was crazy busy with a record number of missionaries going in that day (over 900 they said), but the new campus was not so busy and they didn't even rush us like we were expecting. It was really nice.

We are missing Jack lots but are so excited for him and for his opportunity to serve. He is doing great and just arrived to Oakland last Wednesday- June 19.

May, 2013... means more birthdays...

 

First, it was Lucy's turn to celebrate turning into a TEENAGER. She had fun playing with her friends...

 

then they dressed in their dark clothes to go out to play night games in the dark... which was really fun for about 5 minutes until we had a 3-way collision of kids which ended with a ginormous bump/black eye for Lucy. How's that for a great birthday surprise.

When she opened her presents the next morning she looked a little thrashed!  It was still lots of fun, we promise. Her eye wasn't too purple yet here, but it ended up being one of the most beautiful black(purple) eyes I have ever seen and stayed that way a couple of weeks.

 

Emily had her end of the year percussion concert and did great. We are amazed at how fast she can do that.

 

Then it was Emily's turn to celebrate her sweet sixteen. I talked her into having friends over for a barbeque and it was a fun night too.

                                                                  She is so cute!

 The month flew by and it was Memorial Day. The annual lemonade stand with the cousins at Memorial Hill was a success as usual.  They worked hard and it paid off! 

 

And it wouldn't be Memorial day without tractor rides in Grammy and Grandpa's yard.

It was a fun and busy weekend.  We also had friends and family over for Jack's mission farewell on May 26... pics and details of that in the next post.

April, 2013

Trying to catch up. It has been a whirlwind of a few months, adjusting to life off the boat and back in Utah.  It is amazing how quickly it got busy. We all got jobs -Jack, Paul, and I , Em was back at WHS and still finishing several online high school courses, and we continued to home school  Lucy and Noah. We moved back into our home the beginning of april and were excited to see all our stuff again. It felt like Christmas!

Easter pictures. It was a good excuse to get new outfits since we only had boat clothes.

 

 

The beginning of April we went to visit our friends in Las Vegas.  We had a ball hiking around red rock canyon with the Martins.

 

 

 
 

Noah even got to have an early birthday celebration there too.

 

Noah is finally 9. He got some new legos, so life was good.

 

 

 

 

Welcome March and Bimini pictures

So very glad that March is here.  Ready for spring weather, that's for sure. Here's a couple of pictures from the past week.

This past weekend we went to the Kimball Art Center in Park City to see a cool exhibit with Lego scultpures.  If you like legos, you should go.  Plus, it is free so even better!  We enjoyed it.

Lucy and Emily have been working on a young women project which involves finding new recipes, shopping, and preparing some new meals.  They have been cooking lots and I am loving that!  Some of the things they have prepared are: chili and breadsticks, barbeque bacon chicken, grilled chicken salad, baked mac-n-cheese, and barbeque chicken pizza.  Lately they have started making it into a competion, like when they made the pizza's, they each made a pizza and called them pizza A and B and we all had to vote on which was our favorite.  Then last night they decided to each make a dessert and made everyone vote on their favorinte. Emily made a carrot cake -yes, from scratch, and Lucy made a lemon cake with chocolate frosting and decorated it fabulously.  They were both very yummy.  I am loving this project!

Oh, I was looking through pictures and realized I didn't do a post for our last stop in the Bahamas, Bimini, so I am going to put a few here.

Eating more coconuts that we had saved from Alder's Cay.  Had to put this one on with the crazy faces.

 

 The beaches and scenery and water weren't as nice as the Exumas, but still pretty of course.  We found this great beach with big rocks to climb on. We also found lots of pretty sea glass to collect.

 

This was a kind of sad couple of days, knowing that it was our last stop in the Bahamas while we watched the weather for the right wind/seas condition to cross the gulf stream and get back to Florida.

 

 

We left very early to cross the gulf to allow plenty of time.  It was very calm dark, and no waves or wind the first few hours.  It was so peaceful and pretty.  We just motored along.  Later that morning the wind picked up and the waves soon followed with it.  We made good time and got to Ft. Lauderdale by 2:00 in the afternoon. It was a good last big sail for us.

 

Watching the sunrise as we said goodbye to the bahamas.

adjusting...

It has been a very busy couple of weeks.  The kids have been really excited and are so happy to be back. Paul and I have had some mixed emotions.. it is great to be back with friends and family but we do miss the sailing, the beach, the water, the weather, etc especially since it is fairly cold here.  But things have been going really quite well and we feel like it is all working out. 
We have been very busy looking at housing options, buying a car, and still doing the kids school stuff. Emily has started back at the high school half time so she goes there every other day and was excited to get back on the high school drumline. Lucy and Noah are doing the home school thing and having fun seeing friends and cousins for sleepovers. Jack is getting busy with the list of things to do to get ready for a mission and looking for some money earning opportunities.  I just got hired back at the Heber hospital and will be starting that in a couple of days, so things are progressing well and we consider ourselves very blessed.

Here are a few pics from this past couple of weeks.

Our last picture of the boat as we said goodbye. A sad moment. It kept us safe and took us to amazing places.

 

We filled 13 army duffle bags to fly home. This was taken when Paul and the girls took the first load to the airport while the boys and I waited at the marina for our turn since the bags wouldn't all fit in one car load.  It was exhausting to lug those bags around!

 

Our first item of business when we got back to Utah... Jack opening his mission call.  Oakland/San Francisco, CA and he reports on June 5. 

 

Next item of business playing with our families and playing in the snow.

Superbowl extravaganza with Paul's family in Nephi.  We were in heaven to be able to have so much yummy food which we had missed while living in the middle of nowhere.

Paul's sister Wendy planned an awesome family valentine party at the classic roller skating rink.  Hadn't been there in years!!  We all made and exchanged valentines and we had a ball.

 

 

 

I have also been working on uploading past posts from the Bahamas and I will try to get that finished up soon.