A quick hello!

Last weekend Ragnar's parents and sister came into town. The kids were so excited to see them. They had been waiting at the door for 2 hours. Unfortunately by the time they got there I had distracted them with a movie so they would stop waiting and then when they came they wanted to finish..I guess you can't win everytime ;)

Saturday we were supposed to go watch Cavin's soccer game, but it was rained out for the 3rd time. The weather has been so rainy. We went to the store and picked out pumpkins to paint instead.

The kids looked online to figure out what they wanted to paint and then got to work! They spent several hours on them.  

Channing painted Piggie from a book she liked called Piggie and Gerald that she had to do for a school project as well. Daphne helped Deacon create Pikachu which he was excited about. Ella painted a unicorn, and Cavin got pretty creative with his spider accessorized all the way up with a top hat! I loved to see the kids creativity.

We played some games and Ragnar, his dad, and sister played Skat. We celebrated Daphne's birthday and then had a BBQ.

Ursula sewed Ella's hole in her cow costume and then tried it on for good measure. ;) 

The next morning they joined us for church and lunch and they were off. It was such a short visit, but I am glad we got to at least say hi.

Ragnar turns 41!

Ragnar celebrated his 41st birthday on September 25, 2018. He was lucky to be able to share his birthday weekend with his father and sister Daphne. 

We were scheduled to have a soccer filled Saturday, but we have had relentless rain every weekend, so the games were cancelled and our day was open! He chose to go bowling and we headed to the ally! Ragnar BARELY beat Ella for the win on the first game and he also won the second. Birthday luck I suppose ;) 

We watched a movie and then headed to Saltgrass for dinner. Good food and good company. 

He loves bundt cakes, so we bought a chocolate bundt cake to share! 

Sunday we went to church and the big "kids" seemed more entertained by the toys ;) haha I guess at any age you gotta keep people entertained!

We had a nice short weekend with his dad and sister. On his actual birthday he had to work and then go to coach soccer practice. We got in another small bundt cake and celebrated with him a little in the evening. He was thrilled to get an apple watch. 
We sure love this guy and are glad he had another birthday to celebrate him. He is a hard working, dad joke telling, sports lovin, kind man and we are lucky to have him in our lives. I know his 41st year is going to bring amazing things!

A visit from the Fingerle's.

The last week of August, Ragnar's oldest sister Pamela came with her family from Germany to visit us. They have never been here, so it was neat to be able to host them for a week. They have been on a United States tour for a month and we were their last stop.

We took them to NASA one day and we enjoyed seeing amazing history of the space program.

Deacon loved seeing all the rockets and such.

We made it down to Galveston beach. It was a very hot day but sunny nonetheless. Mia and Channing played well together even though they couldn't understand each other due to the different languages they speak. 

Cute girls had matching hair and matching swimsuits! 

 

I really don't enjoy the beach as the stress of the mess of sand and all the prep and cleaning up makes it not relaxing for me. However, I do enjoy going a couple times a year as the kids really enjoy playing in the sand and the waves. We had a nice time visiting as well!

Next we showed them the World Champion Houston Astros baseball team. They aren't very familiar with this American Sport, so it was fun to take them on a once in a lifetime experience. It was a very long game, but we enjoyed chatting as they played.  

Aaron is great with Deacon. He always plays with him and wants him to sit by and hang out with him.  

Ragnar and his sister the night before they left. We played games several nights and it is always nice to play with their family. They are always kind enough to bring us a fun game and we enjoy what new ones they will come up with! 

 

We are very grateful that they took the time to come here and to spend time with us and see Houston. Regardless of if August is the worst time to visit Houston, we had a nice time and enjoyed catching up!

The 2018-2019 school year has begun!

The summer is officially over and we are back to school! Thankfully the kids love school, so they are usually happy to go back. I miss them when they are gone, but love to watch them progress throughout the year.

Their first day of school was August 20, 2018

Ella is now in 7th grade and started a new program at TMS called the STEM program. There are 80 students in her grade doing the program and she was excited to be chosen. They will still take them through the AP class material, but will do most of the learning through hands on learning and projects to understand the concepts. I hope it goes well and she is really looking forward to it! She also is still doing her concert orchestra and is playing the cello.

Cavin began 5th grade and his teacher is Mrs. Pickard. He was so excited about school starting that on Friday he asked if we could skip Saturday and Sunday so we could just start school! He has always been an incredible student. He is playing soccer again and excited about starting that soon. He also does safety patrol at school where he basically opens the car doors before and after school to let the kids in and help the car line go quicker. He is excited about it because he is the big 5th grader on campus and he can do that now. Also he was told he is going to be the captain of the math Olympiad team, so he was really looking forward to that!

I caught a quick shot of him opening the doors the first day of school. :)

Channing started 2nd grade with Mrs. Petzold. She has a teacher who asked to move up with her class, so she has the same kids and same teacher as last year. I was excited about that since she is a great teacher. She was super excited about school all until the morning of. She woke up crying because she said she was so nervous. She kept saying her tummy hurt because she was so nervous. She finally was able to get out the door and a few hours later the nurse called and said she had been doing ok, but now she was crying again. She let her talk to me on the phone and the conversation was heartbreaking. She just said "mom please can you just come get me, I want to be home with you. When I said I couldn't, she just cried and said "please, just come at least give me a hug and I will feel better." It was heartbreaking. I felt like I had abandoned her. It was unusual for her and even her teacher wasn't sure what was wrong. She had a rough couple weeks and now we are fine. She just wouldn't hardly eat and would cry every morning, had a bloody nose, just very unusual things for her when she has always loved school.

So after our company left I took her out for a couple hours with just mom. Sometimes that is what you need!

Deacon is 4 now and he begins preschool tomorrow with his teacher Mrs. Brittany. She does a preschool of about 12 kids from her home. He will go Monday and Wednesday for 4 hours and was very excited that he is big enough to go!

I hope this year ends up being a great year of growth for the kids! They are growing so fast and time is flying by!

Literacy Girls

The past two summers Ella has had the privilege of being a part of a book club called Literacy girls. She loves reading, so she obviously loves the group. This summer there were 14 girls all between ages 10-12 who she would meet each week with and study books. The focus for this summer was great american women so they studied women like Clara Barton, Pocahontas, Helen Keller, Abigail Adams, Harriet Tubman, and Esperanza Rising. They took them through the history and did simulations of their life period and learned to knit and make different foods, quilt, find constellations, read braille, all sorts of incredible things. Jeri Wyn Mumford, the woman who puts it together does an incredible job and I am so grateful Ella gets to learn from her!

They were learning a conversational game here. 

Then they were going through the work simulation that John Smith went through. 

Today they got to learn archery and she did pretty well.

This was the last night where they had family night and did their skits about the women. Her group was responsible for Esperanza rising. 

I love that Ella loves to read and that she can keep studying wonderful things throughout the summer!

Celebrating our 14th Anniversary!

Each year we do our best to take a little trip somewhere without the kids to celebrate our anniversary. Due to the fact that my grandparents are very old and that we likely won't be able to get back to Utah for a couple more years, we decided to combine our trip and see some family before we spent some time celebrating. We decided to head to Utah and arrived on Friday, August 3rd. Ragnar happened to have 3 of his 4 sisters in Utah as Sandra lives there, Pamela's family was on an American tour, and Daphne drove up from Louisiana. With that, we were able to meet together at Chuck A Rama, his Oma's favorite choice while she was alive, and we had lunch together. 

It was nice to be able to be all together. We were just missing Naomi!
After lunch, we drove the 3 hours down to Vernal to visit my grandparents. We stopped by my Grandpa Haws' and said hi to him and then headed over to my Grandma Wall's house. It is very convenient to have your dads mom and moms dad live only a couple minutes a part. My grandma fed us well, as always, and we played games and hung out together.

The next morning my grandma fixed us a nice breakfast and we headed to the Dinosaur National Monument. Grandma wanted to show us around Vernal. She is 93 and still pretty vibrant. She cooks and keeps up with a lot. Her walking for long periods of time is a struggle though so we helped her along.

 There were several fossils to look at and it was a beautiful day.

We drove up around the mountains and stopped at the caves and the water.

It was a beautiful drive, despite the smoke in the air from all the wildfires.

After lunch and several games, we headed to my Grandpa Haws' house and visited with him.

I love the creek in his backyard and we always used to play and race boats in it. 

Ragnar and I had to do it again for old times sake! My boat sneaked past and won at the end ;)

There are lots of boats and lots of grandkids and great grandkids to race them!

My Aunt Charm and Aunt Laurie still live in Vernal, so we were lucky enough to meet them and catch up. It was great to see them. They are great women! 

We had dinner together and then I went through some of grandpas scrapbooks and then he showed us some more of his art work. He is a fantastic artist. He had a flip chart of the first discussion he made to teach as a missionary and it was amazing. 

He has a lot of talent! It was so great to see him. He looks good for almost 89 years young!

He's been in the same house for longer than I've been alive, and I have a lot of memories there. 

I'm glad I had a chance to go visit it again. 

We went to church with my grandma the next morning and it was hard to say goodbye. At 93 years of age, you never know when each goodbye is your last. It was great to visit with her.

After Vernal we headed towards Morgan, Utah to visit with our old friend Kristen Arzani Toone. She is a talented woman who is a saint and raises her 5 kids in a cabin up there. It was fun to visit with her and see how she's doing.

Our next stop was Perry, Utah. My cousin Ryan Jackson lives there and he was kind enough to host a big dinner for us so we could see all my cousins on the Jackson side and their families (Tricia, Mike, Jenny, Steph, and Ryan) and my other cousins Jannika and Deidre. I also was able to see Aunt Becky and Kevin and Uncle Randy and Jana. It was wonderful to see them all! I wish I had taken a picture! He has a beautiful home and it was so fun to see them after several years!

Monday we spent the day in Logan visited USU. We loved going to school there and it was so fun to go back. It has changed so much! 

We took a picture of the apartment where we met! We love Old Farm! 

We got to have lunch with Ragnar's old co worker and friend Ryan and Amie Leonhardt. 

Then we drove by our old house. It still looks pretty good. It was a great first home for us and we loved it. The townhomes are maintained pretty well and we miss them! 

Then we went to see our old friend Camille and Jeff Ferrin. They were a blast to talk to and had us laughing and picking up just like old times.

That evening we stayed the night with my Uncle Randy and Aunt Jana who moved to Logan a couple years ago. They were fun to converse with and very hospitable. They even let me join them on a morning 7 mile run which was beautiful and they live close enough to campus, that the end of the route was right through campus. I loved it and was so glad we got to stay with them.

Tuesday morning was August 7th, our 14th anniversary. After our run, we went to the Logan temple and did sealings together. We try to do this most every year to remember the promises and covenants we made together.

Right afterward, Ragnar took me back to the bench where he proposed. It is right down the street from the temple and while we were friends/dating we used to walk to this bench most Sunday's to talk. 

We were glad to see it was still there.

After that we went to campus to see where my Aunt and Uncle worked and then to see Ragnar's old roommate Fran Hopkin. Then we drove down to see our last stop and family member Aunt Sheri and Dale. We had a nice lunch and caught up with what was going on in our lives. 

Finally, we made it to Park City! Wednesday we went water rafting on the Weber river. The water was mostly calm, but since it was so pretty outside, it was nice to just watch the scenery.

We went to dinner and relaxed and played games, watched a movie. We really just enjoyed our time.

Thursday morning we went out for a hike. We had stayed at the Wyndham, so we were able to just hike from our condo right to Rob's Trail. It was about 7 miles but lots of uphill :) 

It was a gorgeous site! 

I'm glad we went, but I don't love hiking as I have a hard time walking and not running. So, we compromised and ran the last mile home ;)

Since our legs were pretty sore, we opted to get a pedicure and relax afterward.

Then, we went to Olympic Park and watched some amazing athletes train.

Friday morning before we headed to the airport we went to temple square and visited the beautiful grounds and the Christus. 

We really had a wonderful trip together. It was so nice to see family, and then also have a few days to relax. We have had a wonderful 14 years together and I am so grateful for the person I get to have by my side. He is wonderful to me, and for me. My incredible parents were great enough to watch the kids and they had a fun time with their grandparents. Happy 14 years to us!