Lucie-isms and Life Update

life update as taken from a letter to our missionary written:   1/15/23
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Dear Elder G. (aka "Our Favorite Missionary in the World"),

First off, I'll start off with the barrage of questions.....
{boring, boring, boring}

Second off, I'm a little upset that you haven't called back your Portland weather yet!   Seriously, it's been raining/snowing every day for weeks and I am officially ready for Spring (only 2 months and 2 days according to Alexa).   😞  Next time someone here talks about a drought I'm going to loudly guffaw and say, "Drought.  Shprout.  Have you been outside lately, you little lout?"   I think it's going to go over very well and win me lots of friends.   

Speaking of friends, I Facebook stalked your companion and see that he's friends with my cousin's daughter.   Is he from Pleasant Grove?   Or does he know her from college?  And if you haven't answered me yet....how is everything going with your comp?

Speaking of comps, I am very happy to have a couple extra comps hanging out with us this week.  It's been so fun to have Cami and Lucie here.   Lucie has been a little on the grumpy side the last couple of days, but you will not be surprised to learn that she's still an adorable companion, even when she's grumpy.   This picture includes Jack K. (Katy's son, who is about 9 months old).

For your information, Lucie says exactly three words:
1. "Hi," which she uses with a wave whenever she sees someone/something with a face (including stuffed animals, dogs, snowmen ornaments, and people sitting behind us at church).  
2. "Doggy," which sounds like doodoo.   She is quite enamored with both Rocky and Denali and loves to softly pet them or beep their noses.  We are keeping her away from Kiwi, but she loves to wave at her from a distance (usually through the closed gate which we got for the top of the stairs).
3. "No," which she actually doesn't use super often, but also usually shakes her head to show that she means it. 

She also signs, "more," "water," "thank you," all done," "hot," and "milk."   In other words, she's quite good at communicating what she wants and quite good at wrapping the whole world around her fingers with her adorableness.😍  

She still isn't quite walking yet, though she can walk along furniture and crawl up the stairs now.  We've been working on teaching her to go DOWN the stairs safely and she's starting to get it! 

 Speaking of Lucie,  you've probably noticed that ALL the pictures for this week will include her!  😆

We took Lucie over to meet Denali's siblings today. 

There are 8 of them and she wasn't quite sure what she thought of them and their up-close-and-personal greetings.   

Sadly, most of the family was gone and we didn't get our dose of Natalie love while we were there. 

Puppy love was nice though...until one nibbled Lucie's ear.  

Here's hoping she sleeps well tonight, because the construction zone behind us seems to keep her up during the day.   Speaking of construction zones, the house behind us is going up warpspeed now that they've hired people to come work on it.  Every once in a while, we'll see the owner out there hobbling around (last week he was hobbling ON THE ROOF without a rope)😱, but we are glad there's action finally starting to happen there and have hopes that it will actually be completed before 2030 now. 

Alright, I guess I've sent you like 47 gigs of photos and told you all about Lucie.  What else is happening?  

Precious little.  

I'm still mostly staying home and trying to spend as much time as possible with Cam and the Goose (which is what Cami calls Lucie).  I've also finally found a way to share the Come Follow Me activity pages.   It's not very many people, but at least they won't be sitting there doing  nothing anymore.  

I hope the transition to Beaverton and your new comp is going well!  I can't wait to be able to talk to you later.   I LOVE YOU and am so proud of you!!!

Love,
Mom

PS  Here's a spiritual thought that came from Elder Christofferson's talk, "The Doctrine of Belonging."  "Thus, the doctrine of belonging comes down to this—each one of us can affirm: Jesus Christ died for me; He thought me worthy of His blood. He loves me and can make all the difference in my life. As I repent, His grace will transform me. I am one with Him in the gospel covenant; I belong in His Church and kingdom; and I belong in His cause to bring redemption to all of God’s children."

December 2017 --Baptism, Zombie Problems, and a Chocolate Fast

We started off December with my nephew, Davin's baptism.   He was a cutie pie and it was fun to spend the time with their family.  We also enjoyed running into one of Cami's friends (Elder Duffy), serving a mission in my brother's ward.  

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Don't ask what got into me, but I randomly decided that I was going to make the coolest white elephant gift ever for the high priest group party.   I did some research, made my plans, spent too much money, and put way more effort than I should have to create a Zombie Apocalypse Survival Kit.    

I put in all these fun things (along with a bunch of snacks on the bottom layer)....

I made this Zombie Identification Guide with pictures of men from our ward.    I was totally prepared for it to be the hit gift of the night.  Everyone would laugh and everyone would fight for it. 

That afternoon Glen found out that his job was ending in February.  His super sensitive HR director pulled him out of his work Christmas party to let him know.   

We didn't really feel much like partying at that point, but I had this super cool gift and some fun festive clothes to wear, so we went anyway.  

And it was all a HUGE flop.  The gift was the first one picked of the night and no one paid it one iota of attention.  It never got stolen and the people who got it couldn't have cared less and didn't even laugh at all the funny details I'd added, then they left early.   Combined with finding out about Glen's job, it all felt like a colossal waste of our time and money.  Next year, I'm definitely just going to the thrift store to buy something stupid, because clever/funny seems too elusive for me.

(And apparently I'm still a bit bitter about it six months later)!

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Right at the end of December, I ended my year-long chocolate fast.  It was amazing and I ate waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay  too much of it and made myself sick. 

And here are some more random pictures from December.

Our ugly sweaters....

Our Sunday best....

An epic Scrabble game with my brother Nate.

A new dam shirt my sister got for me...

Cami's best friend Katy got home from her mission....

It's crazy to me how much Ellie looks like her cousin, Bridgette!   

More random pictures....

Stake Conference and Missionaries x2

oops!   I was trying to schedule this for a future day, but messed up and accidentally published it too soon, which is why you've seen this in your feed before!

June 11:
At stake conference today,  Cami and her roommate, Katy, ran into one of their good friends from BYU, Ty, who is now serving as a missionary in our stake.  They were very happy to see each other, but  said it was very weird  not being able to give him a big hug.

Emma also had her voice recital today.  I missed her first performance, but was able to see her performing, "Hark, the Echoing Air".  The camera's sound quality is very poor and does not capture the clearness and the beauty of Emma's voice very well, but hopefully this will give you a glimpse of the difficulty of songs she performs.   I love hearing her sing!  

June 12:   Speaking of missionaries and stake conference, today I ran into the missionaries serving in our ward at stake conference and spontaneously invited them over for dinner.    We made lasagna, breadsticks, salad, and this cake.   It looks all fancy, but it's actually just an overcooked cake mix cake on the inside.   I may or may not have eaten more frosting than actual cake.   

It was a lot of fun to have the missionaries over.  We saw some cool birds on our deck during dinner (a bluejay and a ruby-throated hummingbird).  We ended up playing Telestrations with them and they shared a message about redemption.  

Other than Glen being out of town, it was a great day!


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Best Place on Earth

May 28: In amongst all the gunky things that have been happening this week, we had this happy day thrown in there. It was Cami's first trip to the temple to receive her endowments!

It was a wonderful day and made even more wonderful that she got to share it with her two best friends, Matt and Katy.    They're all heading on missions this summer (Katy to Argentina and Matt to Mexico), and we couldn't be more thrilled about  their friendship and where they're heading in life!

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Snaking the Clog Away

May 5:  
Today while we finished up our end of year testing, the pipe behind our washing machine became clogged and started spurting water everywhere.

It was a gross mess and I decidedly did NOT take a picture of it.

Luckily the plumber was able to come somewhat quickly and for a small fortune snaked the clog away.

Tracking down fans and pulling up carpets was definitely not something I wanted added to my already monumentally long to-do list tomorrow,  but, hey, on the bright side...we did have a great mutual activity tonight.  

And Cami has awesome friends who all three received full-tuition scholarships for after their missions!

Six Down, Eight to Go...

With Cami's graduation from early morning seminary this past Sunday, we officially have six years of early mornings down.....only eight to go!  

It's a huge sacrifice to wake up an hour-and-a-half before the rest of your peers....

to study the scriptures BEFORE school each day....

but this amazing group  (plus about 30 others from our stake) did just that every day for FOUR YEARS! 

These three...

will all be attending BYU in the fall!

As a parent, I am so grateful for her  teachers (Bro. Goodson, Bro. Atchley, Bro. Koch, Bro. Ferrel, and Bro. Liljegren) who sacrificed not only their sleep, but also their time in preparing the lessons each day.  

Glen was a seminary teacher for a couple of years back when Emma was a baby and it was a relentlessly exhausting (but rewarding) job to do!    A job without pay...of course!

I am also grateful for Cami's good friends.   What a great influence they've been and I'm grateful that their friendship is such that it can continue as they all head off to Cougar territory this fall!

Sunday

It's been a busy few weeks filled with good things that have kept me away from the blog.  There are several things I hope to get to blog about eventually, but today was too eventful to let another day go by.    Here's a glimpse at today...


Adam gave his first talk in sacrament meeting today.    It was a special experience working with him to write his talk and I think it turned out well.    Click here to read it.


Cami and her best friend (and future roommate), Katy, received their YW recognition awards together today.  It was a long time coming and I am so proud of their hard work to earn it!

Right after church we headed off to award ceremony where Cami received the "Women in Sports" spirit of sports award for her high school.   They chose one nominee from each high school and this was the district award ceremony where all the nominees were honored.   

The two nominees from FCHS.

 Cami was the "Spirit of Sports" award nominee and Preethi (pictured with Cami), our neighbor, was the "Sportswoman" award nominee.

After the very long ceremony, we came home and went on a family walk in the sticky weather, Emma made us delicious meatball sandwiches for dinner (from scratch), and I am excited to stay up later than normal to blog because there's no more seminary for the year!  

It was a great day and we are proud of our kiddos!  

Mormon Prom

So some of you non-Mormons out there are probably wondering what Mormon prom is and why is it such a big deal. It's a HUGE production that took dozens and dozens of people thousands of hours of work to put on.  My friend Cindy was the director of it and she has been working on it well over a year....all voluntarily and without pay.   The end results were absolutely phenomenal and after all the hours and hours of work, it really was the "Dance of the Decades."   

The entire church was transformed into a breathtaking walk through time and nearly 700 juniors and seniors from the surrounding 6 (or maybe 8) stakes showed up to participate in a magical night of good clean fun.   There was no drinking, no dirty dancing, no skanky clothing, and no offensive song lyrics.  It was simply a night when a big group of youth seeking to live with high moral standards could enjoy an evening together.   

The 1950's room bedecked as an old-school diner was one of  my favorite rooms.  My friends Ellen and Kylee designed this room and the details they put into it were mind boggling to me.  I can barely even decorate my own house...in fact I still haven't decorated months after our renovations ended...and together, they transformed our very vanilla YW room into an amazing step back in time to the 50's.  

Even the waiters and waitresses (which included three of my beautiful young women and a good friend of Adam's) looked like they stepped right out of an episode of "Leave it to Beaver".

The 1970's room, designed by my friend Linda, was another one of my favorite rooms. It had a  lava lamp lounge and an almost life-size VW bus for people to pose in!

Of course the room I related to the most was the 1980's room!  I felt right at home with the familiar movie posters, the Super Mario cut-outs, and 80's vernacular hanging around the room!  I daresay I also would have done much better on the 80's quiz that Cami said she failed miserably at.

It was a whole lot of effort put on by a whole lot of people, but it was worth every second of it for these wonderful youth! 

Last, but not least,  the reason why you're here in the first place....Cami's prom pictures.  She and her date, Matt, are good friends who have been in the same seminary class for the last three years.

 Cami originally forgot the boutonniere at home, so I had to make a mad dash home so we could get the proper picture of her pinning it on him.  It turned out to be one of my favorite pictures of the night.

Sadly Cami proved no less forgetful with the corsage he gave her. Shortly before taking off for dinner she took it off to wash her hands and forgot it on a friend's counter, so she went flowerless for all of about 30 minutes of the night. 

It's too bad too, since the ribbon matched Cami's necklace perfectly! 

Here are all the young gentlemen in their group...

Graham, Matt, Cole, Frank, Sam, Jesse

and the beautiful young ladies!    I seriously don't think they could have been any more gorgeous!

Faerlan, Maddie, Katy, Cami, Hannah, Jordann

Here are a few more pictures that I liked from the night!

Mental note for next year...before taking a group photo like this I will make sure that all the girls have their corsages on the same wrist!

I love how this one of Katy and Frank turned out.  They are seriously adorable! 

I take partial credit for the cute chalkboard in this group photo!  I saw a prom picture online that I liked with the chalkboard, so Cami grabbed hers off her wall and made it look cute!  I personally liked the fun touch it added.  

And here is one last glimpse at a few more of my beautiful young women... 

(NOTE:  a few of these pictures were taken by Bro. Nielson)!

Kate and Mary Kate

Meagan and Sarah

Cami, Ashley, Katy

Maddie, Faerlan -- Maddie, Hannah

I only donated a paltry couple hours of hanging up balloons and that token glimpse I got at the efforts that went into this night, made me all the more grateful for all those who sacrificed and worked for so long to make this happen.  

Thank you, thank you, thank you!  

And thank goodness that it's another 6 years before it's our stake's turn to host again!   

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NOTE:  The pictures of the decorations at the beginning of this post were taken by either Bruce or Ellen. 

Also a few of the pictures of the young women and their dates were taken by Bruce, since they did not end up in the same group as Cami.