For a few days after Ryan left, this is how we felt:
It is always lonely when one of them leaves, and it feels like we're just waiting for something to happen.
But, we have found lots of things in August to keep us busy and distracted. We had a Montgomery Reunion one Saturday. It is always fun to get reacquainted with cousins and aunts and uncles.
The kids made lasting connections with each other...
We love P-Days!!! Ryan spent the whole month of August in the Mexico MTC. Maren's P-days are on Monday, and Ryan's are on Tuesday (just for the MTC), so her mission president suggested she jump on our Tuesday calls to say hi. He is such a kind mission president!
We've had a great time hearing about the experiences both Ryan and Maren are having. Ryan has been learning Spanish and learning how to be a missionary. Maren is training and serving as an STL (Sister Trainer Leader), both of which keep her busy.
Ryan and his comp got to teach Avery one day. She sent me this picture later. So fun!
We are loving all this time with Grant! He has been great to help me cook and talk to us and give us someone to pour out our parental energy on.
Date nights are really easy now! In fact, sometimes every night feels like a date night.
Dustin got a new calling in church this month. He was called to be the Branch President for the Marshallese Branch. It was a surprise! Our parents and Avery and her boyfriend Wyatt came to support him. We love the Marshallese people! We love serving with them and are excited for this next adventure.
Our garden is doing great! We've had tons of tomatoes, squash, zucchini and cucumbers. We had lots of potatoes and a few ears of corn. Overall, a good garden year!
Before school even started, Grant asked someone to Homecoming! He asked his friend Abby, and a couple of weeks later, she answered him.
We went to Logan to celebrate Rod's 81st birthday with pizza dinner together. Then we walked around campus. It was a beautiful night!
Dustin and I decided to be fake True Aggies, since we never did it when we lived in Logan.
We painted Grant's room!
Grant started school! He is in 11th grade this year. Only one child in school (except for Avery down at BYU). Time is flying by! Lifetouch sent us an email with some of Grant's pictures through the years. So cute! He has grown up so much!
To celebrate the first day of school, we drove down to Provo and had dinner at a Korean BBQ place with Avery and Wyatt. Wyatt served in the Seattle mission like Avery did, but they didn't ever serve together because he was Korean speaking and she was Spanish speaking. He taught us all the Korean BBQ ways, and we had a great night together!
Grant and I went down the next day, too, so that we could help Avery get moved into her new apartment at Raintree. I lived at Raintree for my first two years of college and have so many fun memories there! I hope it is a great year for her!
We had a date night with some of our friends, eating yummy dessert.
We are having an abundance of tomatoes from our garden, plus, our friend keeps giving us more tomatoes. Dustin has been making loads of salsa and spaghetti sauce. Yumm!
Swan Zucchini.
My niece, Khalina and her family came into town so we had a fun dinner at my parent's house. We love family visiting!
We went to another cousin dinner one Sunday evening. This time it was up in Logan with Dustin's dad's cousins. On our way home, we stopped to see my niece, Laney, who just moved to Utah State for school. So fun!
Hiking
Gramma Lana had a piece of art in an art show and that was fun to go see it and support her.
For Labor Day weekend we drove with my parents down to the property at Brian Head. They had left their trailer there in the summer, so we went to help them get it off the mountain. Avery and Wyatt drove down and joined us. Avery hadn't been to the property since before her mission! It is one of our happy places! We had fun at dinner in Parowan and then we spent the night and rode the 4-wheeler, hiked, and played horseshoes. That afternoon some of us drove to Cedar to leave the trailer and then we went to the Shakespearean Festival Green Show and Hermies for dinner. Just like old times!
