It Never Stops

These kids of mine. They just keep growing, and having birthdays, and getting older. May turned 19, and I'm not exactly sure how that happened, but she seems pretty happy about it. She had quite the party with her friends back in June - kind of a combination of a late graduation party and an early birthday party. We celebrated with her on the day, and she requested dinner at the Asian buffet, where she loaded up on muscles and sushi - her usual. We were too stuffed for cake that night, so we got it later.

This girl has had quite the eventful year already. She graduated, she's got a steady, long-time boyfriend, she works at Arby's (before that it was Chipotle), she's planning on getting her esthetician license (she would really love to do FX makeup), she drives ALL the time (which is helpful and also, hey, where's the car?), and she has a lot of friends. We love her, and we're keeping her. Happy Birthday May!

Stadium Oops

At the beginning of the year Cora and Andrew said that they would be spending the 4th of July with us, but a few months ago they said that Andrew's family was going to Stadium of Fire, where the Jonas Brothers would be performing this year, and would we want to go with them - all together? Sounded fun to us. Well, it sounded fun to most of us. May never likes big crowds, and opted not to go, and Joseph isn't a fan of the Jonas Brothers, but wanted to be with us anyway. Cora insisted that we dress the part, so we all donned red, white, and blue. Andrew also had crutches because he had just had knee surgery. He didn't decorate them, so I guess Cora hadn't required it of him.

She begged me to buy these shirts for me and Joe, and who am I to refuse such perfection?

We met up for lunch with Joe's parents, as well as Hannah and Nigel. We had some really good BBQ (because what else would you have on the 4th of July?), and then some ice cream. We took our time. It was so fun to sit around and visit.

That night we went to the concert. We went a little early and just hung out on a shady, grassy area outside the stadium.

The craziest thing happened as the national anthem was finishing up, and the jets flew overhead - some rogue fireworks flew onto the field, and 2 flew right over our heads and into the section of seats right next to ours. At first we were just like, holy crap, and then people started yelling that some people were hurt. It took a little while for the people in charge of the program to figure out what had happened, but they eventually stopped the program and medics came up to help. Several people ended up being injured, one of them was pretty serious, and a few had to go to the hospital. I found this picture online.

In that picture it looks like the firework is hitting EXACTLY where we were sitting, probably because of the angle of the camera, but it actually landed a little further on - like I said, in the next section over from us. It was really crazy. After about a half an hour delay, things got started again. The concert was really fun, and we're glad we went.

The next day we went to a little local farm because their peach season was starting, and they had these peach sundaes, and some cherry pie sundaes, because sure why not, and we were divided about which sundae was better, but I'm all about the peach one.

For dinner that night we wanted to go up to the canyon, and build a fire, and roast some hotdogs and brats, and make 'smores. Well, things don't always go the way you plan, and we ended up in the park by Marie's house, with the realization that we could have eaten out at a restaurant for the amount of money we spent on supplies for this "simple" dinner. Somehow we managed to enjoy oursleves anyway, and Andrew taught us to make a new desert with croissants, nutella, and strawberries. Some people liked it more than 'smores.

Afterwards we drove to Provo for the Night Glow, which is the night time version of the balloon festival. The balloons don't launch, but fill up, and glow like a bunch of giant lanterns. At least, that's how it was discribed. That didn't go the way we thought either. They kept making announcements that it was too windy to fill the balloons up, and we were going to have to wait and see, but after waiting about 45 minutes we gave up and left. I don't know if they ever filled up after that or not. The next morning, very early of course, just a few of us chose to rise and go back for the actual balloon festival. The lack of sleep was totally worth it! I haven't been to this event forever, and I loved every second of it.

After that we went back and picked up everyone else and drove to Cascade Springs, which is always such a beautiful drive. We didn't get to walk around long once we were there, because of reasons, but at least we look like we had a really good time in the pictures, and isn't that what it's really all about?

On our way home we stopped and got some delicious shakes.

As all good things do, this trip (whith all it's ups and downs) came to an end too soon. But I was lucky because when I got home, I had a little surprise on my phone to remind me of how lucky I am to have my family. Thanks Jada. I'm the luckiest.

Changes

Oops, I forgot to mention Alex's 17 birthday. Alex turned 17. He didn't want a party or anything. Low key. At the end of the school year he wanted to do something really different with his hair. He has great hair, and he pretty much looks great no matter what he does to it. It was pretty long, nice and wavy, but he wanted to buzz it all off and bleach it. Okay. Let's go.

A glance into the mind of Alex - 17 of his favorite things. His favorite food is burgers. His favorite snack is gold fish crackers. His favorite flavor of ice cream is chocolate chip cookie dough. His favorite restaurant is Chilis. His favorite color is blue. His favorite school subject is math. His favorite movie is Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Askaban. His favorite tv show is Umbrella Academy. His favorite video game is Hollow Knight. His favorite musician is Declan McKenna. His favorite sport is soccer. His favorite past time is Youtube. His favorite place to take a trip is Tokyo (at least, that's where he most wants to go). His favorite season is winter. His favorite holiday is Christmas. His favorite thing about himself is his work ethic. His favorite mom is me. (Ruth, why do you have to make everything about yourself?) Love you Alex. Also, Alex went to Young Men's camp in June, and had a really good time mountain biking and other such things.

Universally Speaking

May decided that for her Senior trip she wanted to go to Universal Studios Hollywood. Joe and I love this one-on-one time we get with our graduating kids. We can't afford big trips to far away places, but that's okay. We can celebrate our kids just as well without selling our kidneys on the black market. I don't feel the necessity to go into the particulars of anything about our trip - it's self-explanatory - so I'll just end by saying that we had a really great time, and here are the pictures.

And then she graduated!

It's been really hard at times, but she did it, and we are very proud of her.