Oh, Hello September

Life seems to never slow down around here, and it sure never stops changing. For instance, a few months ago, Olivia learned how to whistle. Now I hear her whistling at random times throughout the day, and it is such a happy, comforting sound to  me.  In 44 days, when Will leaves for two years, I will be even more glad that Olivia is a whistler.  See, Will is a whistler too, and most of the time, when I hear Olivia whistling in the background, I assume it is Will, until I realize that he is at work, or somewhere else, and that it is actually Olivia whistling.  It is one of those things that I'm sure I would never have thought about missing until he was gone and there was suddenly no whistling. With Liv around, we will still have whistling.  Although, I fear it is still going to seem all too quiet around here with only three offspring in the house.

Olivia started sixth grade at the end of July:

 She has already completed her first track, and is now off track til the end of September. We have talked her into sticking with piano lessons for a bit longer, but she really wants to swim. She is getting taller before our eyes.

Audrey started her junior year a few weeks ago:

She is going to have a busy year. On top of her various AP, concurrent enrollment and honors classes, she is on the FLY team (Falcons Leading Youth) has a lead in the school musical, and next week is going to be made president of her church group (shhh don't tell). She is currently a 4.0 student, AND has a date to Homecoming with her sixth grade ballroom partner.

Will is working. And working some more. Missions are expensive.  He also was set apart as an elder last week. Grandpa Dan and Grandma Linda came up to help out with that, and to celebrate Grandpa's birthday.

Then the very next day, we celebrated Mitch's 27th birthday, which seems so ridiculous that I have a 27 year old child.  I am only about 32 at the most. How did that happen?



I kind of like him though, even if he shows my age. He just started a new job, and he and Ria have a really nice apartment in Ogden that they are working on getting fixed up.  My baby is becoming domesticated.

Duncan will finish up his service mission at the end of the year.  He has been quite social with us lately, and is excited to get a job and make some money when he finishes being a missionary.  I have a friend at work who has cancer, and we went to her birthday party the other night. Duncan was very interested in her story, and her prognosis, and really wanted to come with me to the party, which is unusual for him. He wrote her a very sweet card and signed it "A young Church Service Missionary who is praying for you."  He has a big heart, that one.

Alisa and Erwann are making plans for yet another tour of  Europe next summer. Alisa graduates in December, and they are planning a move here in the spring so that I can tend my grandcats while they play all summer.  Ok, not really, they have more reasons to move than me babysitting, but hopefully, in a few years, I'll be babysitting something human.  And I'm glad they want to be close to us.

In between all of this, we celebrated an 80th birthday, sent Will and Audrey to California, and entertained family, all of which I will someday perhaps catch up on. Catch up blogging is not as much fun as day to day blogging. I need to repent.