MOTHER'S DAY AND GRADUATIONS BOOKEND THIS MONTH

As always, in the month of May, Mother's Day is celebrated. We had Jon and Mindi and their family, as well and Todd and Kailee and their girls, up for dinner. I decided to do Cordon Bleu with all the trimmings. It was a bit of work on a busy weekend but I did most of the work on Saturday so Mother's Day Sunday was rather relaxing. It was good to have Jon and MIndi in our home again. It's been months. They gave me a beautiful vase with flowers in it. Aria presented me with a huge card to wish me a Happy Mother's Day. It was a great day. We even had time to look at some possible places to have our reunion in 2020. 

The huge card from Aria

The ice cream cake was frozen so hard
it took all of Jon's strength to cut into it.

The vase and flower from Jon and Mindi

Just checking out the resort possibilities for our next reunion

The week prior to Mother's Day, Paul hit his finger with a sludge hammer....well kind of. The sludge hammer really was the blunt end of an axe and he hurt his finger when it got caught between the handle of the axe and the pole he was trying to drive into the ground. It was a real bad injury. Paul even got a little light headed once he made it to the garage and called me out to come help him. Of course, on Mother's Day, everyone wanted to know how it happened. Paul went out and got the axe to try and demonstrate how he did it. He was quite dramatic and had everyone in stitches. This whole month, during the healing process, he has mentioned his finger at least 10 times a day. I'm glad it is healing, though he will lose his nail, for sure.

As for the graduations.....We attended two. On the 22nd of the month, we attended Aria's preschool graduation where she performed in a special program. Todd and Kailee were concerned if she would even go up on stage and take part but as soon as she saw her preschool teacher, Aria joined right in. She even sang the songs and did the hand motions, a little timidly, but she at least did them. It was fun to be a part of this special day for her. Afterwards, we toured her school. It's an amazing facility with different themed rooms of learning and a huge gym upstairs. We then enjoyed lunch at Olive Garden together. 

Aria's group were the monkeys

The second graduation was Jaron's high school graduation ceremony. It was held May 30th in the UVU events center. Jaron was one of over 700 seniors from Bingham High that graduated that day. We were glad to have been in attendance to watch him get his diploma. We were supposed to take him to dinner the Tuesday before to celebrate his big day but both Paul and I came down with a flu bug and had to cancel. Because of that flu bug,we declined to go to the party that Jen held for him in her South Jordan home. Instead, we grabbed a bite of lunch, made a quick stopat Costco, and headed home.

Jaron's senior picture

With the month of May, comes lots green leaves and colorful blossoms on the trees. It's such a beautiful time of the year, especially with all the rain we've had this Spring. The lawns have never been so green. Of course, with all this comes lots of yard work - cleaning up the winter leaves especially in the water feature, weeding, and planting annuals. It was all accomplished this month in between rainstorms. We love, now, to sit out in the backyard, with the water feature running, and enjoy the blessing of all the hard work.

The water feature, free of the great accumulation of leaves that had
happened this fall and winter.  Notice the beautiful pink blossoms of the
crab apple tree. We love Spring.

On the first Sunday of the month we officially celebrated Avery's first birthday. After dinner we opened presents and had homemade hostess cupcakes. Of course, Avery was a mess and Aria had to join in the fun, too.

Avery's new toy to add to the toys at Grandma and Grandpa's home

Each year at this time, we put flowers on Paul's parent's graves in the Pleasant Grove City cemetery. We did this on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend, after our day working in the Provo temple.  We're glad we live close enough to make this an annual tradition.

In Greg's studio with his bigger than
life size painting of the Savior,
in progress.

A couple of other things happened this month. The first being an Elder's Quorum activity held at the home of Greg Olson, the artist. He and his wife built a home in our neighborhood and moved in about a year ago. He opened up his home for this activity. We enjoyed visiting for a while and then going back into his studio where he showed us his current project for the Jerusalem center. We were able to ask questions of him and see all the beautiful pieces of his art hung in his studio. He is an amazing artist but both him and his wife are so very humble and gracious. Before we all left, we enjoyed some refreshments that I had put together - a fruit pizza, a vegetable pizza, and a couple of cookie pizzas. Everyone seemed to enjoy them.

The screen on my phone while
I was Facetiming Dad.

This month, I tried to Facetime my mom for Mother's Day with no success. Finally, on Monday, I just called to talk to her and dad. We had a great visit but Dad was concerned because he could no longer Facetime with anyone. It seems that Dana gave him a new phone but it doesn't have the capability to Facetime. Deon remembered that he had an Ipad that could Facetime so she called him and helped him set it up so he could call and see his family when we talked to him. For the first few days, he was Facetiming everyone several times. I talked with him three days in a row. He was so excited to be able to do this again.








This month I also attended a lunch with some of my old BYU Curtain Time USA performers from way back in college. We had spent 5 month together, performing in 25 different countries in the Middle East and Europe. We were part of a good will mission sent out from the state department. We met for lunch at a buffet in Provo as Roger Call was in town from Texas and wanted to get together. Ten of the 25 original were able to make it. (Two of the 25 have passed away and most of the others are on missions or live out of state.) It was good to visit with everyone and to catch up on what was going on in their lives. We all look so old, though. It's times like this when we realize that age is catching up with us. I was the youngest there as I think Tanya Hale and I were the youngest on tour back in 1965.  

That wraps up the month except for Aria and Avery.......

Avery is now pulling herself up on the furniture. She's been a little hesitant to do this so it's a big deal for her

Aria is into riding her trike (actually, what we used to call a big wheel) They brought it up one Sunday so she could ride it down to the pond. She did good on the way down but Todd had to pull her up coming home....it was too much of an incline for her to peddle on her own.

Aria is such  good big sister. She loves playing with and helping Avery.