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.