A Thank You to Robin!

As I said before, I was pretty excited in march to see lots of green leaves poking up through the dirt. I couldn't wait to see what came up. It was like Christmas. These beautiful daffodils came up all around the border of our huge flower bed on the west side of our front yard. There must've been over 100 of them. I thought about sending Robin, one of our home's previous owners a thank you card. I should have. I imagined all the time it took her to plant those and how she must have missed seeing them this year after all that work. I am grateful for the good care she and Ross took of our home and the beautiful additions, like all the bulbs and our huge raised garden that make our home such a wonderful place to live.



These daffodils just made me smile everytime I went outside. They are little sunshines on a stem. They even survived two surprise snow storms, I thought for sure the big April snow, being so wet and heavy, would kill them for sure. They had just blossomed the day before the snowstorm. But they are resilient little things and looked none the worse for it.

November . . .

From NovDecFavorites

As the boxes got unpacked and we began learning where to find things, we started settling into our new life and felt very grateful for everything that brought us to this point. It really is miraculous. I think it was so appropriate that all the feelings, changes and events of the last few months come to an end during a season of gratitude.

From NovDecFavorites

Now does this look like "home" to you or what? Nat got all "cozy" one Sunday morning as we watched a little MoTab.

From NovDecFavorites

Our yard has 16 rose bushes. Our last house had about 12, which I thought was too many. We will probably be replacing some of them, but until I decided which ones, I had to do some major pruning for winter. I got extra motivated just before a big snowstorm hit - I was out pruning in 25 mph winds all bundled up. I was happy to get it done - I think it took a good 3-4 hours that day. Phew!

From NovDecFavorites

Angela and our white backyard!

From NovDecFavorites

I couldn't resist getting a shot of my Eskimos before heading to school one morning! I don't remember why Sarah is wearing pajamas. Must have been a party. This was before our real Lands End snow boots arrived, so my poor girls had a couple days of tromping in the snow in their galoshes! Poor things!

From NovDecFavorites

Angela wore this pilgrim hat she made at school for several days, including Thanksgiving. Here she is eating a "crabby patty" treat. I don't think the pilgrims ever tried one of these.

From NovDecFavorites

Hank got to dive right in to his church calling in Young Men by heading up the youth talent night. We came to watch and support. It was fun to get a glimpse at our new ward's youth. They are great kids and I was amazed at the talent! The boy above did the cutest song from a Broadway show about an older man looking through his yearbook and singing about how he never got picked first for any teams, but he got picked by his wife to be with her and that's all that mattered. Such a cute song and he really did a good job.

From NovDecFavorites

This is a familiar sight. I have similar pictures of the girls doing this at one of my YW activities in Hillsboro. (o: Some things never change.

From NovDecFavorites

Lots of musical talents were shared - what a fun group of kids!! We have tons of youth in our ward which will be so fun for the girls as they grow up here.

From NovDecFavorites

A new job to get used to!

Thankful

From Blog Favorites Sept.Oct.

Just a week after moving into our house, I got a scary phone call that my dad was in the hospital. He had an acute case of diverticulitis that had gotten to a dangerous stage and was hospitalized for several days until the doctors felt he was stable and beyond risk for infection. That first day, before we knew how bad things were going to be, I was so grateful that Bob* could take most of the day off and I was able to spend the afternoon with dad and mom. It was so much better than getting updates over the phone -which would have been the case if we were still in Oregon. And that is precisely why we came back. To be closer for the good and the bad times. I felt relief seeing that my dad still had his sense of humor and was able to joke around (although I could tell he was in a lot of pain). I also enjoyed going to lunch with my mom and visiting over Subways.

Unfortunately, the hospitalization forced my dad to miss the much anticipated home "blackout" game with TCU. I decided to come watch some of the game with him at the hospital to cheer him up. He had his Shakey "mask" above and all kinds of U of U paraphernalia in his room. Unfortunately, it was the worst game of the season for the Utes up until that point. Well, there was only so much cheering up I could do after that game. But at least he had someone to mope with.

From Blog Favorites Sept.Oct.

Later in the week, we all came for a visit. The girls were very worried about grandpa too and were so happy to get to see that he was okay. We were all feeling very thankful that dad was okay and that we were close enough to visit him as much as we wanted. Love you dad.

The amazing thing was that the next week, dad was able to go on his much anticipated trip to the U of U vs. Notre Dame game in Indiana that he and my mom had planned months before. When he first realized how serious his condition was, I think he was more worried about missing that game than anything else. (o: Happily, he got to go . . . Sadly, it ended up being a terrible game.

But that's not what matters most. I still feel very thankful.