We went to Zions...and Andrew graduated...and Makenna is adorable.

So, these pictures aren't really in any order and I'm too lazy to put a caption on each pic so I'll just tell you what we've been up to and you can connect the dots with the pictures. We went camping at Zion's National Park this Mon-Wed. with the kids. It was our first real family trip since Makenna was born. We saw deer, lizards, squirrels, and lots of fuzzy caterpillars (those were Parker's favorite). The crazy thing was how not afraid of us all the animals were. Parker fell out of the tent and scratched up his arm pretty bad and spent the rest of the trip telling us about it.(: The first day was great. The kids were having fun and the scenery was just incredible but Andrew and I couldn't sleep that night because we were so uncomfortable. The next night, the wind was howling down the canyon so loudly that we couldn't even sleep even with our newly purchased air mattress (thank you Huricanne walmart...I love walmart). Makenna woke up at about 4am crying because she was cold and scared and of course she woke Parker up. After trying to calm them down for about 45 minutes, we decided to pack it up and check into a hotel. We are now hotel people. I am a wimp and will take a nice air conditioned/heated, comfy bed, and place I can shower hotel over a camp ground any day. This trip pretty much converted Andrew too.

Andrew graduated from BYU this last Friday! I'm so proud of him. I know that he worked so hard to balance being a husband and father, working at his job, and being a student. It's been a long road, but he's finally done! Way to go Andrew!

Makenna is so dang adorable! I know she's my girl and so I'm biased, but she's such a cutie-pants! Today Parker was watching a movie and our bed and Makenna decided to make herself a comfy little spot with our decorative pillows. I love her cheesy grin! That's her patented "Makenna smile". She is talking so much now! She can say light, foot, stop. eyes, ouch, baby, bubble, down, up, etc... We were really starting to worry that she had a speech delay so all these new words are very exciting for her and us. We just love her!

What am I going to be when I grow up?...

Well, obviously a wife and a mother as I am already those things.(: But part of going back to school was the decision about what I was going to study. I started out 10 years ago as a vocal performance major which is basically just an opera singer. As we were deciding if I was going to go back to school I toyed with the idea of doing something else that was faster and easier to get through. In the end, though, I knew that if I was going to put in the effort to go back I wanted to do something that I had a passion for. And that is singing. While I have been truly happy in my life I have also had a nagging feeling that something was left unfinished. Things last week really fell into place for me to get back in the music program at BYU. They don't let people audition late for the program, but for some reason they let me and I had two days to put together some pieces to sing for them and get an accompanist. It was crazy, but it came together and I got back in. I really felt like that was the answer that this is what I'm supposed to do. So anyway, I'm scared and excited and I'm going to be an opera singer...someday.

My Easter Thoughts

"And with the morn,
those angel faces smile,
which I have loved long since
and lost awhile."

My life, though blessed beyond measure, has been marked with loss. These words have become my hope and my comfort. My battle cry when the hurt feels like too much to bear. I remember singing those lines from the hymn "Lead Kindly Light" just a few weeks after the death of my little sister. I had sung that hymn many times before, but that time those words penetrated straight into my anguished soul. Little did I know then that my mother would join her just five years later. Last year while waiting in the chapel of the temple, I was thinking about my mom and my sister when the organist began playing "Lead Kindly Light". I knew that the song was for me and it was the Spirit reminding me that one day that glorious morning of reunion will come. I'm so glad I know this and glad for my Savior and his atoning sacrifice and resurrection. I'm so glad that I will see my beloved mother and sister one day and that I will have my family back again because of Him.

Easter 2009

My sister tagged me for this quiz... It turns out I have read 31 of those books. Jane Eyre is my all-time favorite book and I usually read it once a year.
The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.
How do your reading habits stack up?

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen- X
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien -
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte -X
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling -X
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee -
6 The Bible-most of it-X
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte -X
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell -
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott –X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy-X
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare –
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier-
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien -
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk -
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger -
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger -
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot -
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell -
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald - X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens -
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy-
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams-
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh -
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky-
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck-
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll -
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame-X
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy-
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens -
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen-
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen -
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis -X
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini -
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden -
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne -
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell -
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown -
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez -
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving -
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins -
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery - X
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy -
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood -
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding -
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan -
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel -
52 Dune - Frank Herbert -
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen -
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth -
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon -
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens -X
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley-
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon -
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez -
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck -
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov -
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt -
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold -
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas -
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac -
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy -
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding –
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie -
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville -
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens -X
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker -
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett -
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson -
75 Ulysses - James Joyce -
76 The Inferno - Dante -
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome -
78 Germinal - Emile Zola -
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray –
80 Possession - AS Byatt -
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens -
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell -
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker-
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro -
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert -
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry -
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White -X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven-
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle-
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton -
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad -
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery -
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks -
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams -
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole-
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute -
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas -
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare -X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factoy - Roald Dahl -
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo –

I tag: Whoever wants to be!

Better late than never...

I'm officially going back to school...only about 10 years after I first started. I went into BYU this morning and I'm all set to start school again this coming fall. I am so excited! I know it will be a lot of work with the kids, but I really think I can do it. Anyway, wish me luck!

Doodle Bloom

One of my cousins is amazingly talented! Well, actually they all are.(: But, this particular cousin does some amazing photgraphy and announcement designs. Because I am in her family, I get lucky enough to see many of them for different family events. I have loved them all! And, Amber, if you are reading this, I would love to get you to take some pictures of my kids next month when the weather gets better. Anyway, if you are in need of some cute pics or some great announcements, check out her website:http://doodlebloom.blogspot.com/