Roommate Reunion

I think I am probably one of the luckiest people in the world when it comes to getting good roommates. Of course, my current roommate is my favorite, but I had some amazing roommates in college that have become some of my best friends. We were thrown together in the dorms our freshman year, and it's really miraculous how well we all got along. Our apartment number was 2010, so we joked about having a reunion during the corresponding year, hopefully in Paris. Unfortunately, Paris wasn't in our budgets this year, but a cabin in Kamas, Utah was! Our husbands/families were all very helpful and watched our children, and we had way too much fun.

Of our original six roommates, four were able to come, and we invited an honorary roommate as well (we're all friends with her and she lived in our same building freshman year, I lived with her at one point and most of us worked with her too).

Janelle (pregnant with twins! her fourth and fifth children. she is superwoman.) and Lisa (photographer extroirdinaire, and thanks to her detailed scrapbooks from our freshman year, we relived a lot of great moments)

Kristy (we've been friends since 9th grade! What would I do without her?) and Alicia (honorary roomie and we spent our entire college experience together- same major, same job)

And of course, what 2010 reunion would be complete without Utard hair?

I love these girls!

Family Reunion

Here I am again, playing more catch-up. Hopefully I can be more punctual...

In June we had a reunion with my mom's side of the family. We went "camping" in Heber Valley and had a lot of fun with my aunts, uncles, and cousins. (Okay, so we were staying in cabins with wooden bunks, we had flushing toilets about 50 yards away, and running water in our pavilion. So maybe camping isn't the best word to describe it.) I really wanted to document this so I could remember what a fun time we had.

First, let me describe my mom's family. She is the youngest of six kids (3 boys, 3 girls), and all of her siblings married and had lots of kids. :) There are 36 of us total, and all but 7 of us are married (1 engaged. Go Derek!). Between us cousins, we have 73 children. So, if everyone in our family showed up to a reunion, we would have 144 people. Of course, not everyone comes (we have them every other year), but we get a little different turnout each time, so I've seen nearly all of my cousins in the last 6 years.

This reunion was a lot of fun for me because I was able to stay the whole time, so I got to see everyone who made an appearance. Trevor and I had a lot of fun on the challenge courses (climbing tall things, going down zip lines, team-building activities, etc.) and playing games at night in the pavilion. Cassie loved putting on the helmets for the challenge courses and sleeping in a cabin (what fun!). I really loved hanging out with my cousins and their children that I rarely see.

Favorite moments:

• Giving Cassie a turn on a giant swing ("I bet she'll love this") and having her cling to me and urgently announce, "I'm all done!" before swinging at all.
• Getting 13 of us from a "sinking ship" to a tiny platform via rope swing. Including Cassie- Trevor held her while he swung. (Actually, that moment scared me, but it was really cool when it finally worked and no one was injured.)
• Playing "Who's got the button?" (or ring, in this case) and seeing it dangling from the string right next to Alysse's hands while her sisters try to get her to hide it.
• Watching everyone waddle with oranges between their knees and pie tins on their heads.
• Hearing everyone's memories of Grandma and Grandpa, especially Robert's memory of Grandma making him chew 24 times before swallowing. Classic.

The move

This post will probably be more interesting to me than to you- it's more for journaling/recording purposes.

Almost a year ago, I started thinking about our upcoming move (I knew it would happen sometime during summer 2010) and started to collect boxes and deep clean our apartment a little. I really dug in with the cleaning in April when I knew we were getting closer (no definite plans yet). I wanted to spread out the packing process, so from the time we knew we were moving (May 19) to the day we moved (June 12), I packed a few boxes every day. It was really nice to take it slowly- the only days I felt a little overwhelmed were the day before the move and the day of the move. (That's to be expected, right?) But we had planned ahead far enough and had so many things done early that we were able to go to the ward camp-out for dinner the night before we moved. It was awesome to relax a little and see our friends from the ward before we left.
June 12, our moving day, was super rainy. The trees outside our apartment had dropped crumbly little seedling (?) things and because of the rain they were sticking to everyone's shoes and tracking all over the apartment and the truck. I swept the sidewalk from our stairwell to the truck and I think it helped a little. We had SO many people from our ward help us with the move and cleaning! I don't know how we would have done it without help. Someone even babysat Cassie all morning. I am so glad that we moved on a Saturday when people were available to help, and I'm so glad our ward got so involved in helping people move.
After the truck was loaded, Trevor drove it to our new apartment, where he had arranged with the Elder's Quorum president there to have some people help with unloading. 12 guys showed up! They finished so fast, my brother and dad (who were on the way to help) got there after everything was already in the apartment. They stayed around, set up our bed, and unpacked a whole bunch of boxes for us while Trevor came back to Provo to return the truck and help me with last minute cleaning things. I had been cleaning with sisters from our ward who came to help. They were amazing. Really, it makes me wonder how anyone can move without having help. So many people helped us with our move, and I hope they all know how much we appreciate the things they did.
Anyway, thanks to all the amazing help we had, we were out of our apartment by 5 pm. And thanks to my dad and brother, we had a bed to sleep in when we got to our new place! We've been here for a little over a month now, and it feels and looks like home. Still on our to-do list: hang pictures in the master bedroom, buy a real kitchen table and chairs (still rockin' the card table), and buy matching nightstands and a dresser.
Things we love about our new place: More space! (twice the square footage, an actual dining area, two bathrooms, bigger bedrooms), dishwasher, washer and dryer, sliding glass door to balcony- lets in lots of light, we're right next to a playground, feels rural but we're close to shopping areas.
Here's a little photo-tour of the apartment:

Catch up: Memorial Day Weekend

We spent Memorial Day Weekend in Oakley with Trevor's family (minus Blaine, Becky, and Eliza, who live far, far away) and had a great time. I am forever grateful for a mother-in-law who takes lots of pictures and makes me CDs because I always seem to forget my camera. Please ignore all the zits. My face has decided, without my consent, that I am 15 years old and therefore must go through the pimply stage that I fortunately missed out on when I was actually a teenager. So annoying.

We spent Saturday morning at the elementary school playing on the playground and hitting softballs. It was fun and a tad chilly.
We flew kites in the afternoon.
Cassie fed the goats with her Aunt Kim and cousin Savanah.
The ever-popular Aunt Taja entertained the kids on the tramp.
And when the boys left to play basketball...












We got busy. Let me 'splain. Trevor finished the classes for his Masters degree in April, and was spending the summer finishing a project required for his degree while working for an engineering company and looking for a full-time job. He found a great job and started working on May 24th. I had been looking forward to him participating in the whole graduation ceremony at BYU in August (he didn't walk when he got his bachelors), but I realized with his new job that he wouldn't yet be eligible to take time off for graduation...and also, Trev really didn't want to walk. I had also been looking into a big graduation gift for him, since we didn't do anything when he finished his undergrad. A few days before we went to Oakley for the weekend, I called Trevor's mom and asked what she thought about having a surprise graduation party for Trevor that weekend. (Then I wouldn't make him walk in August, and I could really surprise him with an awesome graduation gift.) On Friday, a few hours before we left for the weekend, I bought Trevor a Droid (he has always wanted a fancy-schmancy phone and often mentioned that someday, when we had lots of money, he really really wanted one). By the way, the store where I bought the phone almost ruined the surprise- they canceled service to Trevor's old phone even though I had specifically asked several times to make sure they didn't. When I figured out what they had done, I had to solve the problem and make up a cover story so Trevor wouldn't suspect anything. It was stressful. Anyway, I got the phone to Oakley successfully without Trevor noticing, and we prepared an awesome little surprise while the boys were out basketballing. We turned all the lights off and yelled "surprise" and everything!

Sweaty man. "Wait, who is this surprise for?"
And yes, I wrapped Trevor's Droid in multiple boxes to disorient him.

Okay, this was my first ever attempt at cake decorating. Good enough.
Drooling over the new toy.
On Monday morning, Trevor's dad saw a little yellow finch fly right into a window, so he picked up the bird and let the grandkids pet it for a while. It must have been too dazed to fly away, because it sat in his hand for a long time while we all admired it before it finally took off. He walked right through the house with it, we were all calling the kids to come see Grandpa's bird, and we took some pictures. Afterwords, I went inside and mentioned something about it to Trevor, who was playing with his new phone. I'm sure you already know the outcome of this story. "What bird?" Trev completely missed the entire thing, even with his dad walking right past him and all of us making a fuss. Yup. That's how much he loves his Droid. He's had it for over a month now and I've definitely considered hiding it from him on more than one occasion. However, it has been a lifesaver. The last post would be picture-less if it weren't for Trev's fancy phone (again, my camera forgetfulness), and many of our summer activities would be undocumented without it as well. It also saved us when we were internet-less for a few days after moving in, and when we had some problems with viruses.

Sunday before church

Cassie and cousin Aubrey. "Cheese!"
Just chillin'. Sunday evening.
The infamous finch
S'mores 'round the "campfire."
Grandma curled Cassie's hair on Monday. Bee-ootiful!
Just a cute picture of Cassie and Aunt Taja
Jumping
And I'm done. Whew. We've still got a lot of catching up to do, so stay tuned.

Catch up: Birthdays

I've been a little too busy to blog with our move and summer festivities (more about these soon!) and virus problems (grrrrrrr) but I'm ready to catch up now. Let's start from the very beginning, a very good place to start.

Cassie and I celebrated our birthdays at the beginning of June. We had a picnic with my family on Cassie's birthday, complete with an Elmo cake. You know me, I'm a big Elmo fan. Actually, if anyone leaves a comment about why an Elmo cake really would be appropriate for me, I'll give you bonus points! (I think only those who knew me in Jr. High will know that.) But honestly, the Elmo cake was for the real Elmo fan in our house- Cassie. She still talks about it, even though it was a pretty badly done first-attempt on my part.


Cassie was pretty anxious to put her new presents to use right away. Observe:



The weather was perfect and it was nice to just be with family and enjoy good food. And I got some pretty awesome gifts, too. :) Honestly, I was pretty preoccupied with Cassie's birthday and didn't really think about mine as much. I can probably count on that happening for the rest of my life.

For those of you wondering, Cassie did not receive a dinosaur or a frog for her birthday...but she did get some water. We had some friends from the ward over for a little pool party a few days after her birthday, and the kids had a lot of fun. There are a lot of 2-year-old girls around Cassie's age in that ward- I sure miss that.

We moms had fun, too. :) I sure miss the quad 1 camp-chair mom posse.
Also, I just wanted to record some feelings that I had on my birthday. I taught some piano lessons, packed boxes, did the usual daily chores, and no one really knew it was my birthday. At first I thought it would make me sad to go without attention or a celebration, but it made me think about what really makes me happy. In the past I've wanted to be selfish and lazy and eat lots of junk food on my birthday (aka attention on me, let me relax, cake and ice cream), but of course those things don't make me happy. While I was driving home from teaching piano lessons with Cassie in the back seat, I had a really peaceful moment where I realized that the things I was doing bring me real happiness and satisfaction. That was a good birthday gift.