Happy Birthday Meghan!

Today is our daughter Meghan's birthday. She passed away four years ago. She would have been 25 today. Steve and I took flowers to her grave this morning. It looked so beautiful and I remembered to bring my camera... I thought in honor of her today I would share some thoughts about her from some of her friends.

"She was an amazing person and left an example of kindness and faith to everyone she came in contact with."

"I loved her constant enthusiasm and happiness."

"She was truly a great friend and the love of our Savior radiated in her countenance."

"Meghan had an awesome knowledge of the Gospel, and taught me so much. Her scriptures were never far from her and neither was the Spirit."

"Meghan was an inspiration to me. She was one of the best people I have ever met. Every day as her roommate was the best day ever!"

"She was always a constant, caring, loving, energetic, full of fun and wonderful person. Every good thing that there is in this world, any Christlike attribute, I found it in Meghan."

I couldn't agree more...

Happy Birthday Meghan. I love you!

Swim Time!

Austin is on the Swim team for his high school (a first for him)and today was their first meet. He was a little nervous and I was nervous for him. He swan in the 50yd. Freestyle(the length of the pool and back) first and got a time of 28.82 seconds. Not bad at all for his first meet! His next event was the 200 Medley Relay. Four team members each swim 50yds. of either the Backstroke, Breaststroke, Butterfly or Freestyle. Austin swam the Butterfly....


On your mark...Go!He's the one in the top of the picture. He swam a great Butterfly, can't remember the time but he had really good form for such a hard stroke.

He is the second swimmer from the bottom in this picture, finishing the butterfly. I promise to be better with the camera next time.

His next race is the hardest race of the meet - the 500yd Freestyle! That's 20 laps or 5 football fields! I couldn't believe his Coach put him in that for his first meet. You can tell from the above picture as he is getting ready how nervous he is.

And he's off! I prayed for him the whole way! He had never swam it before. I may or may not have even gotten a little emotional because I knew how hard this was for him.

He looked so tired toward the end but he made it! His time was 7:48 minutes. Not bad for a first time.

It took him a while to catch his breath and get out of the pool after he finished. His next race was almost right after this one. The 200yd Freestyle Medley - 4 team members each swim 50yds of Freestyle. Here he is waiting for his turn. He swam anchor (last). They placed fouth in their heat.

Over all he had a pretty good first meet and it was fun to watch. His goal now is to beat the times he made today. I like swimming because you are really only in competition with yourself. It's all about improving your personal best each time you swim.

Sunset Alert!

Just thought I would share some pics from last nights' sunset...after all, sunsets are meant to be shared with those you love. Enjoy!

Homecoming 2009

Saturday was Layton High's Homecoming Dance. Austin and his group decided to have their "day date" the night before on Friday. They went to the Pizza Factory and then came to our house to roast s'mores and starbursts and play games. Tonight they picked up their dates then went to Jason's house for picture taking before the dance. I took a few of Austin before he left. We had to get a close up of his awesome tie!

Austin and Jason standing guard? Austin's date, Katelyn is getting a kick out of them.

Austin and Katelyn...

Jason and his date, Sarah...check out that corsage!

Katelyn asked Austin to pull a silly face but she sure looks sweet! Actually, if you click on this picture to enlarge it you will see her tough girl look. She is such a cute girl!

The girls all pose so naturally and the guys,well....

Austin's group - Austin/Katelyn, Jason/Sarah, and Cameron/Kaycee. What a good looking group.

Austin said they all had a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious time!!!! It was "thebomb.com" It was "legit"-( all in his own words). Just from having them over on Friday night - it was obvious that they got along really well and had alot of fun together. I'm glad he has such good friends!

Weekend Fun

This weekend was General Conference weekend for our church, where we all stay home and watch a series of conference sessions on TV during which we receive counsel and instruction from our Prophet and Apostles. I love these Conferences. It reconfrims to me that we are led by a Prophet of God and that God still speaks to us today. The talks were wonderful and it was a great conference! The kids all came home for the weekend to watch Conference with us and Kyle and Han brought their Beatles Rock Band for the Wii. In between the Saturday sessions of Conference we all played. What a fun game! Some of us were much better than others...okay, pretty much the only thing I did decent on was the singing. I even gor a 100 for one of the songs!

Such serious players!

I thought the drums would be the easy ones but I seem to have a hard time keeping up with beat. Everyone else did great on them though.

Heather had way too much fun playing on everything! Here she is rockin out on the guitar!

Kyle and Han get to play all the time so they pretty much schooled us. Austin has quite the pose in this picture.

Clint was a mean, lean rockin machine!

We had so much fun! It didn't matter how well you did or didn't do it was just so fun to jam together! After the second session of Conference, we all made our own homemade pizzas. Homemade dough is great...much less greasy! Steve is putting the finishing touches on his.

Heather and Han posing next to their creations!

Then into the oven they went and presto! Don't these just look delicious!

Oops! Forgot to turn the picture of my pizza...

Heather and Clint made Lime Rickies for everyone. Cute pic of Heather and Han. Notice Heathers' cute new hair cut!

The guys got to eat first because they had to head off to the next session of Conference. I am not sure what Austin is doing with his pizza...

After dinner, the guys headed off and we girls took advantage of their absence to watch a chick flick. BBC has come out with new renditions of some Jane Austen classics and I borrowed "Sense and Sensability" from a friend.

If you haven't seen this one yet you are missing out! It is fantastic...very well done. It is a bit long but well worth it. I like it better than the one with Hugh Grant and Emma Thompson.

Sunday was more of Conference and a family dinner. To top it all off we enjoyed this beautiful sunset last night...

One of the many reasons I love living here is a view like this from my backyard! I couldn't have asked for a better weekend!

I'm Not Ready!

I realize that I have not been very good at keeping up my blog lately but with Summer at an end, I'm afraid we just don't have a lot going on in our lives. Having said that, I will try to do better, but I am making no promises.
Austin and I have been enjoying watching this hawk who seems to have taken up residence here lately. He usually dive bombs into the field behind our house, snatches a mouse and enjoys his dinner while sitting atop one of our neighbors' roofs but the other day he was sitting on our nieghbors fence and Austin caught a pretty good picture of him. He was very proud of his picture so I thought I would post it.

Can I just say that one of the things I dislike most intensley is that the weather tends to go from the 80's to this...

way too fast in Utah. I want to enjoy the Fall season and I am most definitely not ready for winter and snow! If we could just have three seasons,Spring, Summer and Fall, I would be so happy!