Normal, Wonderful Life

Over Labor Day weekend, our good friends Jacque and Tyler Thomas, came to Utah.  We met them in Provo, where our friendship all began.  We grabbed Maren (it had been a whole week since we'd seen her!) and met them for lunch at a restaurant in Campus Plaza, where my mom lived when she went to BYU 50+ years ago!  After lunch we went to Bridal Veil Falls and then for ice cream at BYU Creamery.  It was such a lovely day with our besties from college!

                                     

We left Maren at BYU again.  She is having a great time and doing all the fun things!  (And studying a little bit, too)

Later that same Labor Day weekend, Danielle and Tyler and their family came to town from Colorado.  We had a fun quick visit with them.  We also had a cousin lunch down in Utah County and it was fun to see Dustin's cousins and aunt and uncle, who we hadn't seen in a few years.  We played games and went to the Bean Life Science Museum and toured his aunt and uncle's new house.  It was a fun visit with family!

The next day I started Preschool!  This picture was actually at the end of September and only has a few of the kids with me, but so far, the year has been fun!

Our youth came over to our house for a Wednesday night activity and we did an egg drop contest.  They used a bunch of random supplies that we provided and then Dustin dropped each of their eggs from various heights, until he finally drop kicked them off of our roof.  It was hilarious and the kids had fun (and not surprisingly, not a single egg survived...).

Ryan went on his first date!  He went to Homecoming and looked very dapper in his new suit.

(It was a painting trim day for me)

Dustin was a movie start for a minute!  He went on a local morning news show to talk about one of his new parks that just got finished.  He did great!

Missing Maren at BYU.  It is definitely different and more quiet every time one of our kids moves out.  We feel the difference without any one of them!

We've had lots of Cross Country races happening this month and Ryan has been doing well.  Plus, sometimes he wears sunglasses when he runs, and that's pretty cool.

The young men went on a hike to Ensign Peak one night.  And they found a tarantula!

Maren came home for a day, that turned into a couple of days when the train was delayed and couldn't take her back to Provo.  We ended up taking her home the next night.  But she was home for a cousin birthday party and that was fun.

Avery is doing so well on her mission!  She is happy and loving the work.  We love talking to her each week!

I finally finished painting the trim around our house!!  This last section was the scariest for me.  Dustin had to build me a little wooden stair extender so that the ladder could go on the stairs.  He helped me with the really high and scary parts.  Yuck!  I didn't like that at all!  Now that it is done, I have moved on to the carport. 

Lana came over for FHE and a little ping pong one night.

We met Rod in Brigham City for baptisms for the dead and a nice dinner at Maddox.  It was a fun night!

Dustin enjoyed the Ensign Peak hike so much that he wanted us to do it together.  So we did for a date night!

We also went to the Spanish Ward's celebration one night.  It was so much fun and there was so much delicious food from all over Central and South America.  Dustin and I are finding that date nights are not so hard to come by anymore.  It is harder now to find times when we can get our boys to come with us to things!  They are so busy with friends and school that we have tons of alone time now!

The Young Women got to ride a horse for an activity and that was fun.

The month ended with Maren coming home for part of General Conference weekend!  The talks were wonderful, the company was wonderful and the beautiful fall leaves were wonderful!