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.

Photos of the week!

Photo of the week!

Ellie & Bjorn

Photo of the week!

Auriana & Natalie

June 2013

This is a letter we received from Isaac, while he was gone to the boys ranch in Victor, ID for two weeks. 

Dear Family,

I am having an absolute blast here!  Everybody is super cool and I’m friends with everyone!  That’s so cool that Matt and Brenda are engaged, they’ve been dating for like twenty years and then they pick right now, when I’m gone, so I don’t get any glow sticks!   And to answer Dad’s question, yes, I’m surviving, and they know I’m allergic to peanuts so I don’t really have to worry. 

It’s super fun here!  Something I’ve really gotten into here is blacksmithing. I made something for all the kids in the family!   I made Enoch something out of wood, but I made all of the girl’s cool pendants out of metal. 

Ok, so funny thing, there is six groups right?  And I know five people who came here, and there’s three cabins, right?  And so two groups share a cabin.  I didn’t get Jacob or Daniel (cousins) in my group or in my cabin!  All three of us are in different cabins.  What are the chances!?  Luckly Brandon (2^nd cousin) is in my cabin so that’s cool, but I guess I don’t really mind, because this way I get to meet new people and stuff.  All the people in my group are way cool!  Brandon is in my activity group and when we went kayaking we went around flipping over everybody else!  No one could catch us because we were so fast. 

And yeah, we have to do chores and stuff, but I don’t really care because it’s mostly way fun.  Even when we move pipe we race so it takes the grumpiness out of it.  We have a ton of free time, so me and my friends do some really fun stuff.  We set traps for rabbits and skunks (good thing we didn’t catch a skunk), but we didn’t catch a rabbit either, we caught this kid named Glen instead.  It was pretty funny! 

We’re leaving on the backpacking trip tomorrow, and table rock isn’t one of the options, because it’s too easy.  We do three-day backpacking trips. I’m doing the hike called Green Lakes, it’s not the hardest, but it’s one of the funnest ones.   Remember how I read the book “Holes” right before I came here?  Well that’s the book that Dick (Bjorn’s uncle who owns the ranch) is reading aloud to us this year.  Weird coincidence, huh?  And it’s so funny that I’m going on the hike called “Green Lakes.” 

We’ve done some pretty cool stuff this year!  Like the counselors build a little waterwheel on the little stream in front of the main house, then someone had the idea to build a clock that ran off the power of the water wheel.  And believe it or not, it actually worked!  We’re building an ampitheater, it’s pretty cool!

I’ve only had bad allergies one time and that was because I was army crawling through waist high grass when we were playing capture the flag, but it only lasted till I went to bed and I was fine the next day.   We went to a bike track in Victor yesterday with six other people and it was super fun, the best part was going to the Emporium for shakes.  I’ll tell you all the other stuff when I get back. 

Love,  Isaac

Photo of the Week

Nicole & Berry in chalk: by Miriam

Happy 4th of July!

Brenda's Engagement Story

Brenda and Matt’s Engagement

Memories from the Pendletons

Becky

I was excited when Bjorn pulled me aside and said, “Matt called and he is going to ask Brenda to marry him tomorrow!”  We followed his sister’s instructions to meet at a lake in Pleasant Grove to help with the big event.  We enjoyed meeting Matt’s siblings and hearing of their great love for Brenda while we taped “glow stick letters” on our shirts!  We rushed to be prepared and then at the last minute before Matt and Brenda arrived, we laid down on the opposite side of the lake to hide the “glow-i-ness” until it was time to display our message!  We were relieved to hear a “YES” shouted across the lake in response to our displayed question, “Will you marry me?”   Brenda and Matt walked around to our side of the lake to receive all 50 or so of our congratulations!   They both seemed so happy!  And we are so happy for them!  We have been hoping for this to happen for a long while! 

Bjorn

From a letter he wrote to Isaac: “I guess the big news here is that Matt proposed to Brenda last night (Wednesday the 26^th). Auriana probably told you about it in her letter, so I’ll just touch on the main points. Matt called me on Tuesday evening while the Shumways were here and told me he was going to ask her the next day and wondered if we could help out. I told him we’d love to and so he said his sister would call with the plan. Finally around 6pm the next day we found out the plan and only told the kids about an hour before it was time to go help. They were VERY excited. So we went up to a park in Pleasant Grove and met many of Matt’s family and they had a bunch of glow sticks and we stuck them on our chests and spelled out the words, “WILL YOU MARRY ME?” We were on the other side of the pond from where Matt took Brenda. It was 10:00 at night as we were all lying on the ground covered in blankets. As soon as Matt flashed his cell phone as “the signal” we all stood up so Brenda could see the lettering. Then we shouted “WILL YOU MARRY ME?” We heard a little squeal and finally a “Yes!” They walked around to the side of the pond where we were and there were plenty of hugs and tears and smiles and congratulations to go around. It was pretty cool. I’m so happy for Brenda. Matt had a picnic basket and some other stuff there and so they had a little snack together. I’ll show you the pictures when you get home. I talked to Brenda today and she said she still can’t believe its real. She’s very excited. I think they’re aiming for August 31.”

Auriana
                  I was downstairs in my room reading a book and my mom called all of us upstairs.  I didn’t really think anything of it, but then my dad said we all had to put on dark clothes cause we were going to help with a special assignment.  For some reason, I knew right then that we were going to help Matt propose to Brenda, but I was still shocked when my dad told us where we were going.  We went and got ice cream cones to celebrate amongst ourselves, and then sat around at the pond for a little while before everyone else showed up.  I got to be the letter U in the “you.” We had to lie on the ground for a really long time while we waited for Matt and Brenda to come, so that our glow sticks wouldn’t shine at all.  It was pitch black outside, and I was kind of scared that a policeman or someone would come and reveal us right before it was time to do our plan.  It was like a really intense moment when they finally got there and we were all waiting anxiously for Matt to flash the light on his phone.  We were all so excited when we finally got to jump up and reveal our glow sticks, and Matt and Brenda were both so happy when they walked around the pond to say hi to us.  It was really fun to help!

Isaac

            Isaac missed the event because he was at a camp in Idaho, but he found out later in a letter from Auriana.  He wrote back:  “That’s so cool that Matt and Brenda are engaged, they’ve been dating for like twenty years and then they pick right now, when I’m gone, so I don’t get any glow sticks! 

Natalie

                  My favorite part of Brenda’s engagement was the glow sticks. We all got a few glow sticks and taped them onto our shirts to form letters that spelled out “Will you marry me?” I was the Y for the “you”. It was really fun… we made the letters and got in the right order then we all had to lie down on the ground across the pond from where Matt and Brenda would be, and get covered with blankets and wait for the signal to stand up, which was Matt flashing his phone across the pond. When we got the signal we started with the W for “will” and stood up one by one to spell out the message. It was really cool and really fun… I am super excited for Brenda and Matt!!

Enoch

            First of all…every time Matt has come to our house in the last few months I have told him to ask Brenda to marry him.  I would say, “Brenda really wants you to ask her!”  I would even find him some kind of a ring to use, but he never would.  I was glad when I found out he was really going to do it.  My friend Kavin was over when my dad told us, so he came with us.  It was like 8:00 when we left. We went to Macey’s for ice cream first, and then we went to the lake.  When we got there we were the first ones there, so me and my friend Kavin were skipping rocks on the lake.  Then people started showing up and we cracked the glow sticks and taped them to our chest in letters.  The letter on my chest was the first “L” in Will.  Then we all laid down on the grass and then when Matt flashed the light we jumped up and yelled “Will you marry me?”  And Brenda yelled back “Yes” and then Matt and Brenda came around the lake and we congratulated them.  Brenda didn’t have her ring on yet, so I told Matt to get down on one knee and give it to her!   We went home and I went over to Kavin’s house and told his parents all about it.  Then I slept there.

Miriam

It was about 9:30 at night, some of Matt’s family was there and my family was there.  We were all taping glow sticks on are chests and Matts sister was texting Matt. Brenda was cutting watermelon, while Matt was lying on the floor pretending he had a stomach ache, but he was really texting his sister, asking her if it was dark enough to go.  Then said we should go on a walk.  Matt asked which car they should take and so Brenda said hers.  So Matt started driving toward Utah Lake, but then Brenda said to go to her lake and we were all there.  When Matt flashed his flashlight on his phone, we would go up one at a time starting from “Will” and then we went all the way down to the end of the stars, and Ellie and I were both a star.  Brenda said “YES!”

Ellie

            My favorite part of the engagement was when we all stood up and it went one person at a time.  I was a star, I had a glow stick star on my shirt and I stood on the end with Miriam and I really liked it when they did the fireworks too.  Because we did it by the pond and Matt didn’t even do anything, Brenda said to go to her pond.

Photo of the week

Way Out West - Miriam and Ellie as Indians