Photo of the Week!

Photo of the week!

August 2013:by Becky

We have spent the summer trying to keep up with the kids, but we have tried to have some time to relax and enjoy our time too.   All summer long, Isaac and Auriana have had to be out the door before 7am and I have been very impressed at how well they have done that on their own.   Auriana works everyday cleaning the elementary school, and Isaac goes to football or basketball or both and then comes home and almost immediately goes out to mow several lawns in the neighborhood.   We don’t see either one of them much until noon. 

We have followed Enoch and Natalie around to several soccer tournaments and have enjoyed turning those into family time.  We spent a weekend in Park City and stayed at Bjorn’s family’s cabin for a night.  It was fun to build forts together, play some games, and enjoy the quiet of the mountains.  Natalie has had a badly bruised knee for the past few weeks, but has been a trooper and has played anyway.  She plays last defender and it was so exciting to watch her dribble all the way down the field and score.  She has done it before, but not when I was watching. 

Most of the free time in our house is spent reading.  I think we have made more trips to the library this summer than the grocery store.   We are trying to enjoy the slower, longer days before school starts in 11 days.  School, soccer games, and football games all start at the same time and will hit us pretty hard.  I figured we could have as many as 10 games per week to try to attend, which makes it pretty hard to have dinner together.  I told Bjorn I wanted to have a big breakfast every morning and spend more time together then, so that we could have cold cereal or something easy for dinners when it’s hard to get together as a family.  At least Monday nights are usually very unscheduled around this area.

Bjorn and I will celebrate 18 years of marriage on August 16. It’s hard to believe Auriana will turn 17 in just over a month. She is excited for her senior year of high school and for her choir retreat this week. She’s also excited to have Isaac in the same school as her. It’s nice that they can drive to school together now. Isaac has been invited to play on the varsity football team, which is cool for a sophomore, but he says he would rather have one more year of being able to be in the stands with his friends while watching the games on Friday nights.  So we are all quite content if he plays on the sophomore and JV teams only.  (Actually I’m content if he doesn’t play at all.)  We’ll see how things turn out. 

We had a wonderful visit last week from Adam and Rachel. They joined us for our family home evening where each person asked Rachel one question about her mission. The experiences and feelings she shared were wonderful. She has such a wonderful spirit about her, and the storytelling ability and sense of humor have only improved over the last 18 months. Later that evening Bjorn told me that FHE was definitely in the Top 10 of family home evenings we’ve ever had. We’re excited to once again have her close by. We love having Teresa visit our home often, and now feel doubly blessed to have another amazing returned missionary cousin interacting with our children and bringing their wonderful spirit into our home.