MAY 2019

May has been a most beautiful and RAINY month!
We got lucky to get a lovely day to go to Thanksgiving Point again before Tulip Festival ended.  We took our friend Jessica.

We love some of the charming details in the garden.

Our YSA Ward had a Lip Sync Activity in which the Bishopric did a dance lip sync to "My Girl"

Scott had a fun time as the band member with the sunglasses.

The Bishopric wives did a dance lip sync to the song "This Girl is on Fire" that was pretty hilarious as we all used walkers and wore Life Alert necklaces.

It was a fun activity and the kids loved it!

For FHE one Monday we went to an ESCAPE ROOM place with Jenny and Jon and boys and Braden and McKenna and did a room called "Hoarders Attic" which was super fun!

We had to find a series of clues which led us to find yet more clues...here Jon is using a periscope that we found locked in one cabinet to read letters above the ceiling that helped us open yet another box with more clues.

Here Braden is using levers that wind wires tighter up in the ceiling to move things across the room.

McKenna opening up one of the combination locks.

And in the end, we found the door to get out of the attic where Grandpa was found surrounded by rats.

We got out in time!




We definitely want to go back again and try more of the rooms!

In May I held an OPEN HOUSE for my new school.
I invited old and new students to come check it out.


Here is Ben Romero, one of my students like 13 years ago.

The Millward family who I taught all but one of the kids (since we were on our mission for one) and Mollie is coming next fall.

This is Josh, the oldest, that we found his photo on this quilt from one of my classes.  Pretty cute kid!  When I started teaching him, his Mom told me he only had 3 heart ventricles and that he was not expected to ever live...in other words, he could go at any time.  I got over it...and so has every teacher since!  He just graduated as Class President in his High School.

Another of my HS graduates this year is Anthony Morales with little sister Bella, another former student.
It was really great having so many old and new friends come see our great new space!

We have missed our old yard so much, and are excited for any living thing in our yard.
We love the cute quail we found near our yard and hope to woo them into our yard when it is completed.

Speaking of birds, we had a month of "owling"
as we tracked a couple of owl nests along the Provo River trail.
We had been told of one and found it and kept checking on the growth of the 3 baby owls in this one...they are still babies here, but pretty large!

We took Dad and Carolyn back a couple days later to try to find them and thought we had lost them, but a woman found them in another tree downriver.  This time the babies were even closer to view and Dad is photographing one right on that big branch above his head.

Here we all are looking at 2 of the babies in this tree.  The third was across a swampy area up higher in another tree, but visible.  We figured he was the older one of the three and flying further from the nest.

The owlet closest to the trail.
We also found another nest out by the airport dike road and it was in the nest with the mother great horned owl.
Really a fun activity this month!

For my birthday this month we had a wonderful STREET TACO DINNER with three kinds of meats to build with.  It was so tasty!!

After school was out I had a luncheon for two preschool families.  The woman on the left is Mom to one of my preschoolers about 15 years ago.  He is on a mission in Washington.

The family on the right is Oliver's family (on the far right) from this year.
Their cute baby has one hand.  Christian, my student on a mission also has one hand.
I wanted to get these parents together to talk and ask questions and it was wonderful!

So here is Jodie holding the Ashford's little baby Lois so she can send a photo to Christian on his mission.






MEMORIAL DAY is always special and it was special in many ways this year.  Great to have Lizzie back with us and great to have Carolyn share memories from a history about Mom!

Progress at my house in the backyard consists of our cement FINALLY being poured.  Our weather has been RAIN RAIN RAIN every day almost all month that has slowed down or stopped all outside related work so it may be a long time yet before our yard and fence can actually be started.

We were very proud of Cody graduating from High School this year as well...he is another one from the graduating class of my preschoolers!!

Saturday I went up to help Breanna with her schools team for GIRLS ON THE RUN program.
When I went to sign up to run with the girls one of our great returned missionaries, Juan Castanos was the one to sign me in and it was so fun to see him there!

Me with Breanna and a couple of girls from her team.

This is Mi and Priscilla that I ran with in the 5K.
I had to do a LOT of encouraging and walk more than I would have preferred, but all in all, we did really well!  I was honestly glad that I could keep up, let alone be the one to be encouraging them to keep going!
These girls had never done this before and did a great job! It is a great program.
If you could see, we all had glitter in our hair and it was made into a really special day for the girls!

This has been my project the past week.
Breanna and Braden had been saving old BYU tee shirts for me to make Braden a quilt.  I finally cut all the fronts out, stabilized them with iron on stabilizer and then created a pattern and Scott helped me choose a coordinating fabric that I really like a lot to go in-between the blocks.
I just need to make binding and sew that on and it is complete!
I will post next month the really complete project.
Looking forward to the addition of a new Taylor baby in Duvall Washington later June and 2 trips to WA in July.  Have a nice June!!