I'm gonna be sore tomorrow!

Today for the first time in about 2 months I went hiking. I was sluggish and slow. It was a nice 72 degrees but I carried water with me because I don't want to risk getting dehydrated while pregnant. On the trail I saw a bunch of my hiking friends and took the opportunity to tell them the exciting, life-changing news! They were all very supportive and happy for me and our family. They said they fully expect to see me hiking until I give birth. I told them that might be too embarrassing for me but they encouraged me so that they could have the joy of watching me and my belly push up the trail. We will see.

In other news today was the first day of school for all of my children. I asked the ones at BYU to take a picture together so I could photoshop it together with the one I took this morning of the 3 at home. We had blessings last night and with maps in hand and an early start this morning I dropped them all off. Now it's time to clean, shop and organize. Oh joy!

Get in line.

I'm pregnant. There. I said it. If you're shocked, startled, whatever, get in line. Due date in mid February. Someday when I feel like reliving all the panicky details again I'll write them here.

We got him!

I sit here in the hotel room and can hardly believe this day has FINALLY arrived! Yipee! This is great. He looks great and all is well. :)

The Whiting Reunion and 8 days

We returned from the Whiting reunion wet but happy. Never had anyone witnessed so much rain during a reunion at the homestead before. We even had fog roll in Saturday evening making Sierra Trigo invisible. Weird. We returned home to find a package containing a Texas shaped cookie cutter. Cool. We're excited to use it. Eight days until we get to see Collin. He thinks it's weird. So do we. He feels like things are picking up in his area just as he has to leave. That's just the way it goes though. Lots of cleaning and preparation this week. Both in Texas and home.

Coming to a close.

As I type this the counter says I'll see Collin in 16 days and 2 hours. It's hard to believe that the two years of his mission are about to end. If it has gone by fast for you, I believe that. It has gone by fast for me too. Two years is really such a short amount of time to devote yourself to serving your fellow man. Our whole family is real excited to see Collin. Spencer even volunteered to be the youth speaker the day Collin reports in our ward just so he could sit by him on the stand! I love that. Rich and I will be attending a special testimony meeting at the mission home when we get Collin. I hope I can hold it together. I'd probably be better off if I just brought a big wad of tissues. I hear his group is quite a large one so it should be a great meeting.

I've never been to Texas. Hot, humid and flat is what I'm expecting. Great mexican food and dualy trucks everywhere. Maybe Collin will have a drawl. He's excited to see his old areas and so are we. The people have been so kind for the most part. His homecoming talk is August 22nd at 9am at our building. He's home for such a short time and then off to school he and Emily go. Life moves quickly. Enjoy it.

A photo

I'll go out on a limb here and guess that this is gun barrel city, texas. Collin's not here anymore and this companion is headed home sooner than Collin. But, today we received an sd card full of pictures and I liked this one so I put in up here. In related news, we have all of Collin's travel information! I have a good friend who is a pilot for American Airlines. The route she flies most often is to Dallas. After I got all of the travel information I emailed it to her to see if she might be flying the plane we will be traveling on. She quickly replied and said that she has flown our returning flight no less than 1,000 times. wow. So if all goes well Rich, Collin and I will be passengers returning home on the plane flown by our friend! How cool is that!?

Words

I believe that the words you utter reveal more about you than you realize. Careful there.

More than just a bump on the head.

Since we live close to the bump and grind
trail we hike it a lot. We get there from our house by going up the
street and walking along hwy 111 a little ways until we come to this
bridge. We go down into the wash and under the overpass and it puts us
right at the start of the trail. Well Rich had hiked and was finished
and was coming out of the wash. It's easier if you get a run on it
because it's at an angle. He didn't see the end of the overpass
because of the brim of his hat. He smacked his head right into it. He
thought he was fine but knew that it was such a hard smack that it
could have knocked him out. Then he checked his hat and saw the blood.
As he was walking up to the house I was walking out to go on the trail
and I saw what had happened and I took him inside and cleaned it up to
see what we had to work with. It was quite a big tear and I knew it
was beyond my capabilities to stitch. Did you know we have little beads

of fat on top of our heads? He called an oral surgeon friend

and off we went to get him stitched up. He's good now. He will
probably suffer some hair loss in that area. It's right on the top of
his head. No big loss really. But a good story. And more than just a

bump on the head.

life as we know it

This gets more difficult to do as time goes on. My list today says bank,clean out the car, laundry, kitchen, dinner? Your list probably looks a lot the same. Life is going pretty well. Collin is still in Plano. His companion goes home this next week so that should be interesting for him. He's had a lot of success on his mission. Currently he's in the dog house with me for not sending an email this week. We'll see what his excuse is next Monday. Emily is loving life this semester even more than last if that's possible. She has a job and LOVES it. She designs stuff for the Theatre and Media Arts Department. She performed the other night at some place called Velour. They asked her to come back and do a 30 minute set. 30 MINUTES! That's a long time. Yikes! She says she's up for the challenge though. She has a semester filled with fine arts classes. Voice, Italian and french films, some music class, astronomy and some civ class. She's learning lots about life and how to manage money and time. Madelyn is busy with school and stuff like that. Spencer is busy with school and he's playing in a basketball league. Both he and Madelyn are excited to start ball kids for the BNP Paribas Open here in a couple of weeks. I'm excited also. I traded a week and a half of teaching seminary with the teacher in our ward for doing the roadshow. It's the same time as the tournament making it quite difficult for me to do both. Melissa is busy with school and volleyball. She's getting very tall. Hope all is well on your home front.

Busy, bizzie, bissy!

Ok. So it's been a while. We have moved into the new to us house. We've been in about 6 weeks. Boxes of stuff everywhere. The organization is slow and I'm still trying to be the happy Christmas festive mother in the midst of all this stuff. We have a huge load to take to D. I. when we get around to it. It all will be put away or thrown away eventually! Little bits at a time.

So yesterday I spent most of the day getting Collin's package sent off. Here's a pic of the cute ornament I made for him. I think it turned out well. I'm running busy everyday and wishing I had time to enjoy the season. Wishing I had sent out Christmas cards. Wishing I were 3 people instead of 1. But I forge ahead. Merry Christmas! Enjoy the season.