August

I always think not much happens in our life but then I look back and it really adds up. August was a pretty busy month for us. The highlights: we went to Phantom of the Opera, the Leatham/Swanson Reception, had a couple days off, had Ashley & her family for dinner twice, met Carolyn & her family in St George for dinner, finished watching the Olympics, went to Utah, met our friends from Hong Kong for lunch in Moapa, had Carolyn and her kids spend the night, I got released from young women's and got a new calling, had our anniversary and had Jeff & Rachel come home. Pretty awesome!
While Jeff and Rachel were here Rachel wanted to do some shopping. Well I am always up for that!We really made the circuit that day. Of course we headed for the Galleria Mall.

That's where we met up withAshley and Benjy and their boys. 

Then after doing that for awhile I had a store credit to spend at Ross.

At some point in the day we got hungry so we all headed to the buffet at the Sunset station so we could all get what we wanted. Diet buster.

We came out from lunch and discovered it was raining. Evidently it had been pouring because we practically had to wade through a river to get to the car in the parking lot. Then as we were driving to Ashley's house it let loose again. What a downpour and then dry a few miles down the road. Crazy. We visited them at their house for awhile and got eh grand tour. I can't remember if we did more shopping or came home at this point? But I do know we hit subway on the way home to take back for dinner. One of my favorite tricks.

After we had our gourmet subway sandwich dinner at home we headed to the football game up at the high school. It's been awhile since I have done that.

The next day they went hiking and four wheeling. We watched about a hundred football games that weekend on tv and then we had Charlie & Alisha and Ashley's family over for dinner.

This is when we got out the cool toys because Jeff went up into the attic for me and got them down, thanks Jeff! That night we celebrated Rachel's 20th birthday.

Jeff lucked out and got his present from Charlie & Alisha too since they won't be seeing him in October. It was such a fun weekend. We watched our Alaska video and lots of football. What a combo huh.  Ashley and Benjy left that night with Cooper hollering goodbye all the way down the road...awesome. 

After church the next day Jeff and Rachel had to hit the road. We look forward to the next visit.

It was a pretty awesome month. It was screamin hot but that's just August around here.

30th Anniversary

  It's super hard for me to believe sometimes that Mendis and I have been married for 30 years now. Time has flown by but at the same time it feels like we have been married forever. We have been married longer than we were single! I look back on our wedding pictures and we look so young!

Well we were of course but still. Time has flown by. While we have enjoyed every bit of our life together we both agree we would not embrace the thought of going back and starting over. We love our life and like to look forward not wish we could change the past. Hopefully the kids have forgiven us (or will someday with enough therapy) for not being perfect parents. We learned everything the hard way. Maybe we can help them raise great kids by being perfect grandparents because it's not too late for that at least. We have an amazing family and we love each one of them so much and our struggles together have made us the team we are. Hopefully that's a good strong family that enjoys being together since that's what we are...together forever!!

Notice the black magic marker deposited by our excited 2 year olds on our first professional family portrait! Now it is cute! 1986

1991 I  think Jeff was 3

1992

Not sure of the date but around 2001 I think.

Just before Jeff left on his mission in in the fall of 2007

 Christmas Eve 2011. Just before Hayden left for his mission we got one more family picture session in but we didn't have Rachel. We will just do it again in 2013 and then we can add baby Comeau too!!

 So we were too broke for a honeymoon. Too broke at 5th anniversary! Too pregnant at tenth anniversary (Hayden). 25th anniversary trip got cancelled as we were boarding a plane (hurricane) so for the big 30th anniversary we decided to make up for it all and take the dream trip...

A cruise to Alaska.

 Mendis surprised me with kisses and flowers on our actual anniversary, August 20! Lovely

Looking forward to 30 more!

The "COOL" Toys

When I had my preschool years ago I invested in lots and lots of toys. Most of them were pretty incredible so I couldn't get rid of them thinking I should save them for my future grandkids to play with after my own kids out grew them. It's been a huge pain to save them all these years because we don't have much storage space. So they have been stashed in the boys closets and even the attic.
Well lately I noticed they would be perfect to bring out for Rees and Cooper. Horror of horrors the ultimate water toy had not made it. I remember throwing it out years ago because it started to leak and now that I wanted it I decided it was worth buying again. Yeah Amazon! It has changed a little bit over the years but the basic idea is the same. Not quite as good as the old one but close enough.

 Cooper thought it was more fun to annoy Rees and tip the toy and dump the water out! Rees and I had fun though. When I told Hayden that week in his email he said he was stoked the water toy was back and it better still be around when he gets home.
 So the boys had so much fun that night I decided to get out the next super toy when they came a couple of weeks ago...Marble Works...Another personal favorite of mine. Jeff climbed up in the attic for me to get it down for the boys to play with. We set it up for them and they loved it. Jeff and I loved putting it all together again. Brought back lots of memories.

Even Cooper had a mini one set up for him to play with. Notice he's is done though.

 So even with the super toys I knew they would love the other old favorite...the box.

 Luckily I saved it for them to play with since somehow I knew they would love it!

I am so excited for them to play with these toys. It makes saving them all these years worth the pain and suffering we all went through trying to store them.

Utah Trip

 I had a impromptu little trip to Utah this August. Carolyn and her family were staying at our house on their way up to Utah and we were talking about her week visiting up there. She told me Mom & Dad were going to be coming down to Karli's wedding and they were planning to see her family while they were in town. The night of the 13 I got talking to Mendis and said I felt like I was going to be missing out and he said I should go up. Say no more -off I went. I was on the road the next morning so I could be there in plenty of time to make it to the reception too. I met up with Christina and Mom & Dad for lunch first at Mimi's. That afternoon we showed them Christina's classroom and decided we could help her do some organizing before we headed up to SLC. We spent a couple of hours getting some stuff done for her but we had really only scratched the surface of all she had to do since she had switched classrooms this year.

We finished up for the day and headed up to SLC for Karli's reception. It was sure fun to surprise everyone because no one expected us to be there since it was on a Tuesday. It was super fun to see the family again at least those who could make it. After the reception we got started looking at houses and decided to take Mom & Dad up to the Draper Temple and those gorgeous homes up there. When we got there we discovered they were having a parade of homes which would have been awesome to do but it was closing in 15 minutes!! So we drove around for 15 more minutes then checked out the homes and drove up and over the mountain on the way back to Orem. We headed over to the motel and played farkle with them before we called it a night. Christina needed to get some stuff at Walmart for school the next day so we ended up getting a whole bunch of stuff to fix her classroom up with. We actually spent a couple of hours shopping and deciding on stuff. Then because she was not used to getting to bed early we watched a movie while we tried to sleep. The result was we got to sleep at 3am!!

The next morning we all met at Christina's classroom and got to work. We got lots done. Mom made these adorable curtains for her.

Dad and I finished up her word wall. I left my Cricut for her to add the letters.

 

The BEFORE picture of her bulletin board

AFTER I got it ready for her 3 r's

Dad made her this cute vase from an idea she saw on Pinterest

 We almost worked through lunch heaven forbid but decided to head over to Zupas!! Love that place.

Kinda the finished product. Still finishing up details but it looks so cute.

It was so nice to be able to help her out and get her room closer to being ready before school started the next week. I left about 3 and had to head home. It was a fun little trip. It was nice to visit with her and Mom & Dad. Ironically we never even saw Carolyn or her kids the whole time we were there!

Phantom!

So right after we got back from Alaska I had something to look forward to. (I planned it that way on purpose). Me, Ashley and Alisha went to see Phantom of the Opera in Vegas. I had seen it a couple of times before but it never gets old. It was the first time for the other two. That always makes it more fun. We started the evening off with dinner. We couldn't find a restaurant that could get us out in time so we settled for the food court and just got going. Bummer

Waiting to start!

The famous chandelier!

Okay so we knew you weren't supposed to take pictures during the performance but we didn't think it would be bad to take them after.....wrong! We got yelled at. OOps now I know they mean no pictures whatsoever. Not sure what the big deal was after because we didn't hold anyone up getting out or anything. Oh well. It's hard to document something with no pictures.
We had a super fun time. I just love the music with a live orchestra. I had hoped to take Rachel too but last I knew they weren't going to make it down when I got the tickets. Wouldn't you know if I had waited until August to get the tickets I would have known she was coming after all. Darn it would have been great to have her there too.

Day 12 & 13 Anchorge

Mosquito Zapper

 We began our last day at the lodge by taking in a presentation on the Good Friday Earthquake. It sounds kinda boring but it was really interesting. it happened in 1964 and it was 9.2. That's the most powerful earthquake in North American history and 2nd in the whole world. It was a pretty amazing presentation actually. After the presentation we decided to head out and take a walk around the place again.

The Alaskan fireweed was well over our heads

We headed here for all our meals...yummy

 While we were walking we came across this cairn or rock piles. They were delicately balanced and alot of fun. Not sure who did it..Alaskan pixies I guess.

 The trail was rough going sometimes. I am guessing the rain would wash it all out here and there. No wonder I kept tripping!

 All along the trails there were edible berries. We found wild raspberries and choke cherries and stuff. These were called watermelon berries and they did taste like watermelon a bit. I especially loved the blueberries along the trails!

 This was posted at the front desk everyday and we thought it was fun to record the sunset times we experienced. It was like we had 3 hours of twilight or more every night. It never got dark enough to see the stars at night either. There was also a sign on the front desk that I didn't take a picture of that I should have. If you wanted a call from the front desk telling you when the mountain was visible they would call you. Luckily we didn't need that one!

This was our weather that last day at the lodge. Hard to believe it is July...just perfect!

 So at about 2pm or bus left for Anchorage. That day we noticed the mountain was getting harder and harder to see without clouds in the way.

 By the time we left it was completely gone! We know we were extremely lucky to see it for days and days like we did.

 On the trip down to Anchorage we made an ice cream stop and this little "store" was there too. It looked like a garage sale gone bad. When we got to Anchorage we checked into the Captain Cook Hotel downtown and it was really nice. We walked and walked all over downtown looking for the perfect place to have our last meal in Alaska.  After about an hour of looking around we settled on the Snow Goose. It was pretty good for our last dinner in Alaska. We were pretty sad about that. We headed back and got ready to fly out the next morning early.

It was interesting. As we were headed to our shuttle to the airport in the morning we again saw the couple from Arkansas that we met on our very first day on the ship having lunch before we even set sail. We would run into them occasionally throughout the whole vacation. Sometimes we just saw the same people every where? Probably the most entertaining thing that happened to us on the way home was our layover in Seattle. For some reason we got our times mixed up and both Mendis & I thought we had one hour less than we really had to catch our next plane. We of course had to change terminals and everything so we ran the whole way and skipped the good places to eat all for nothing. What a bummer. That was nothing compared to the bummer when we hit Las Vegas though...heat even at 7pm. Oh well it had to happen. We were gone long enough that it was actually good to be home but we would all drop everything and go back in a heartbeat. In fact we plan on it sometime!! (wish it was soon)