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!!

MARCH AND APRIL 2019

 I completely did not realize I had missed a month blogging...it has been a WHIRLWIND of building and moving the last couple of months!

March brought us into SELLING THE HOUSE mode and Jennifer was our amazing agent!

We sold the home within a week of putting it on the market and then of course it took another couple months to close but it is all done!

We spent lots of time at the new house with all sorts of fun projects including bailing out the window wells before gutters were put in...yes, those are Scott's mud covered shoes!

Early March our great YSA had a Home Evening where they came and helped us clean at the new house prior to final inspection and moving things over.  It was a HUGE help to us!

We met up with three great RMs in Salt Lake for dinner one night.
Kellie Carrigan, Michelle Summerhays Watts and Kaitlyn Tolley.

Mid March Breanna and Elliot arranged to meet up at Bryce after my Public Power meetings in St George.
Scott and I drove through ZIONS NATIONAL PARK to get there and it was a lovely drive.
We stopped and took the shuttle through the park to THE NARROWS.  We walked as far as we could until the river hike part started.

Saw lots of wildlife like these deer right by the trail.

Stunning clouds and rocks!

We stayed at charming cabins near Bryce and then had the entire day on Saturday to hike several parks.

We started at Bryce.

The snow on the rocks was so beautiful.

We went to a talk by a volunteer at one of the lookout points and it was really very interesting.  We learned how the formations happened and some of the history of the park.

Then we spent a long time hiking near the rim much of it in snow.

The sun came out and it was really bright.  But it was pretty cold all day.

We were glad we brought our hiking poles as they helped a lot with the ice and snow.

Pretty cute couple here!!

Next we left the actual park and stopped at MOSSY CAVE to hike in here.
We did not know what we would find at the end, but the waterfall was a beautiful ice formation!  It was a light blue color, so interesting.

And some really pretty views hiking in and out.

Next we stopped at RED CANYON nearby and really enjoyed our hike there.  We were one of very few people in this little park so it was  very private and really interesting rock formations.

Last we went to a State Park called KODACHROME.
This park was also very very private but spectacular and great hiking!  We were all over the place on the trail here and there were lots of these huge outcroppings that were like little fingers of stone way up high!

This shot gives some perspective of how high up we were on a narrow outcrop...a nightmare for someone with little children I think!

We were so glad we went here though!  It was just so beautiful and we had a full day of great hiking in 3 great locations!
It was just what we needed to get out into nature with Breanna and Elliot!

 Back home it was BACK TO WORK!
We had our great YSA help another night taking things over to the house once we were getting serious about moving things over.

They are really great kids and really helped out a ton in one night!


The IKEA building continued once we got moved over...this was the den bookcases.

Early April we hired movers to haul all the big stuff.
This crew looked a little scary but were the NICEST GUYS ever!  They all came up and introduced themselves to me right at the start and worked hard and fast!

We enjoyed being around them when we were not trying just to be out of their way, which we realized we needed to do more than anything else to help!

Once the big things were in, we got serious about little things like hanging valances.
Standing on the kitchen counter to see how high to put the valance.















Visitors to the new house like another RM Carlos Cecena from Mexico.

 Breanna came down and helped paint her new room just like her old room.  Honestly, it does not look that neon yellow in person, it is a lovely butter yellow!

Having our kids in the house makes it feel like a HOME!  Baking chocolate chip cookies also made it feel like HOME!














Scott and I got to watch Nathan and Daniel one day and we had a really fun scavenger hunt time at the Bean Museum...the kids found several things from the photos I gave them to try to find that were different, and that made it even more fun!

Then we grabbed a pizza and headed to a park to play.

OK...this is really random, but one night after a WalMart run, Scott chose these crazy flavor M&Ms for us to try out.

Jalapeno...really?
Coconut, well, yes, that was more likely, but still interesting.

OK...I put my degree to work again this spring.
I called "Whirleybird" to see if they truly do honor their "lifetime guarantee"
We had 3 on the roof where 2 were failing and the third was not far behind.

Well, a little over a week later and I had 3 FREE whirleybirds delivered to replace all of them.
They were as nice as could be on the phone when I called and the girl helped me find the stamped code inside the head I had brought into the house so they could verify where it was made...and this was no easy task.  She was so patient and kind.  If I EVER need roof turbines again, I will for sure buy this brand.

House progress was exponential this month.
This photo shows the FINALLY INSTALLED front porch rail.
we copycatted Jennifer's rail that we liked so much and had one made!

We had several groups of ANGELS who helped us out this month.
This crew were from our old Ward.  We asked them to come empty out our old garage and help us take everything in it to the new house.
I am pretty sure they were just relieved we were not asking them to move the contents of the house!

In 90 minutes they had brought all the boxes of furniture, all our contents of garage and the shelve units to the new garage!  It was just amazing and was a HUGE help to us!

Early April we completely passed inspection and moved over my preschool to the new house.

This is my Preschool room for seat work...pretty much just like my old one but smaller.

This is the new play area just by the downstairs kitchen.  It is WONDERFUL!

You can see the kids are CRAZY for my new sequin wall hanging that I made.

Scott entertained the kids a couple times when I had to work with someone at the house on something and he gets them so crazy and they love it!!!
I told them to hug him and they did not hesitate at all!

I am in love with this new space and the ability to leave it all behind and go upstairs.
It is really like having 2 new houses!

OK...I have made new friends already in the neighborhood.
This is Taylee and Riya, who live nearby.  They showed up one day to tell me they were my new neighbors.  I took them on a little tour and told them they could come help clean the dollhouses if they wanted to.

They have come back over twice already and I just put them to work and give them a treat when they are done playing/setting things up.

Scott and I got away to a sealing up in Bountiful in April.  Cute RM Katrina Woo and her new husband.








See this car...it is one of MANY trips we have made to IKEA.  Much of our home has IKEA elements including our kitchen chairs which Scott had to grab in time for us to host Braden's graduation lunch.

I have been busy busy with my school kids.  This was our bus trip up to BYU this spring.  Really a beautiful day and one that was not so cold.

Speaking of BYU, Braden graduated in April as well!
He got his BS in Communications Public Relations and has accepted a Fellowship type position at BYU helping with Sports teams.

Braden and McKenna, a year after her graduation from University of Utah.

The crew after graduation.  Elliot, Bre, Scott and I, Braden and McKenna and her folks Tracie and Mike Foster.



We got to put the new kitchen area to the test and it passed with flying colors!

It made our day to have FAMILY in our home.  We just had the best time visiting and celebrating together.

We had room for everyone and it felt like HOME!

The GRADUATION BOY and his cake!

We could not end there.  We also hosted a MISSION DINNER the Sunday after graduation!

This is our group in the MISSION ROOM, which does not have a bed yet, but does have the Mission Quilt.

We also had a wonderful time with this group and loved having them in our home.

Then we finished the month by taking McKenna and Braden up to TULIP FESTIVAL up at Thanksgiving Point.
It was really pretty and nice to get outside together!