For Carinna

I gave Andrea a hard time the other day for not updating her blog and then Carinna called and gave me a hard time for not updating mine! Lots has happened since that last entry at the beginning of March.

March -
We celebrated Joe's birthday by driving to Vegas and spending the weekend with all our girls. Amanda flew in from Denver and Alex & Nick drove down from Rexburg. We had a four person birthday celebration as we helped Papa Joe turn 53, Andrea turn 28, Avery turn 3, and Kaeden turn 2. Riley was supposed to catch a ride back up to school with Alex & Nick but decided to stay and spend a few weeks with Britt & Derek before heading back to Idaho. We had loads of fun but had to come home way too soon! I would post pictures but we left the camera in Vegas by mistake and someone - I won't say who - has not mailed it back to me yet.

April -
Joe and I spent our 31st anniversary in Hawaii. We have the benefit of having great friends serving a mission at the Polynesian Cultural Center on Oahu so we had a place to stay and easy access to the best places to visit. We climbed to the top of Diamond Head, went snorkeling at Huanama Bay, took a glass bottom boat out to see the coral reef and the sea turtles, toured the Dole Pineapple Plantation (ate enough fresh pineapple during the week to make me sick of fresh pineapple!), toured several botanical gardens and a few museums. We toured the Arizona, the Bowfin and the Aviation Museum, bought souviniers at the famous "Aloha Swap Meet", and visited the PCC. Neither one of us are beach people so we spent very little time at the beach but we did take the time to sit and watch the sunset at Sunset Beach. We got to eat lots of fun food as we tried several very small local restaurants and while the temple was closed for renovations we got to tour the grounds and the visitors center. Charlene & Terry (our hosts) have a grandson named Parker who is reading Flat Stanley in school. He had sent a Flat Parker to them and asked them to take picture of Flat Parker wherever they went in Hawaii and then send them back to him for a class project. Flat Parker went with us everywhere we went and is in more pictures than either Joe or I but it was lots of fun to get shots for them. We had a really wonderful time. Not much relaxing but lots of different activities from our usual daily routine so it was a nice break. Again no pictures but this time I'm blaming Joe. We still don't have the camera back from Vegas but we had had so many problems with that one we went ahead a bought a new one for Hawaii. When we got home he downloaded all of our pictures onto his computer and cleared them off of the camera card. He copied them to an external drive for me but I haven't been able to get them to copy onto my computer so I can resize them and upload them on the blog. Hopefully I will figure it out soon!

May -
We found out that Kaitlin has enough credits to graduate at the end of first semester next year. She will be done with high school in December! That is a bit scary to me!
The end of seminary! Today was the last day of seminary for the year. What ever will I do next week when my alarm does not go off at 5:30am? The sad thing is I will probably end up waking up at 5:30 anyway for the next few weeks until I adjust to not having to be up. I have loved being there with the kids and the last few days have been very nice as things have wound down. One of the students baked me cookies as a thank you for being there every morning, another one stopped and gave me a hug and said thanks for being the principal - this particular student is one who I had had problems with last year when I had subbed for his class so it was especially nice to have him stop and say thanks for everything. This morning one of the classes gave me flowers and a thank you card which was very sweet. Four of our five teachers are not returning next year, I will miss them dearly! They have strengthened my testimony and it has been so nice to serve with them. All of them thanked me for always being there to help and said that I spoil them. One of them said he thinks that attendance has doubled since I took over as principal because the kids know that I care. That meant a lot to me as I always wonder if it matters whether or not I'm there everyday or if I stay the entire time, but I realized this week that the teachers and students do notice and it does matter to them.

We are going camping next week and I can't wait. I love being out in nature and really having a chance to enjoy all the beautiful things Heavenly Father has blessed us with on this earth. I'll try to take possession of the camera when we get back so I can post pictures. I make no promises but I will try to post more regularly over the summer!