Women's Conference
I started the month by spending a couple of days with my good friend, Marla Lundgren, attending classes at BYU's Women's Conference. It was a totally great experience except that we had terrible weather and had to walk from class to class in it – I guess it gave us a little sympathy for our college kids! The highlights for me were being able to stay down at the Provo Marriott (courtesy of Steve Lundgren) and participating that evening in the Women's Conference service projects. Marla and I helped to assemble 25,000 hygiene kits. They were also assembling newborn and school kits as well as running several other projects throughout the evening. It was an amazing experience to see so much service happening all at once!
It was a great day that started with my sweet husband and son bringing me breakfast in bed. After church Alan's parents came over for dinner and we had a nice relaxing afternoon. We did some fun gift giving (at least it was fun for me!), but the highlight of the day was being able to talk with our missionary son, Loren. Because of the time of day that he called, he was able to talk longer than we had thought. It was wonderful to hear all about his experiences – it was especially fun to hear about all the tie collecting that goes on down there. I guess that they can get really nice ties very inexpensively and so the missionaries all have their own "collections" that they show off to each other and trade around – reminds me of marbles!
In May the fourth grade had Medieval Day where the kids get to dress up and go have lunch at La Caille Restaurant. We bought Clark some juggling sticks and he practiced and was chosen to be a fool (carefully defined as anyone who did anything for entertainment!) As part of the celebration, each of the kids made a castle at home and brought it to school to display. Clark (with some help from Elliot) made his castle out of Legos. It turned out great – it had two levels and the top could be removed, enabling you to see the lower level.
Madeleine got to take her first AP exam this month -- European History. Go ahead and ask her anything! Depending on the day, she either felt like she knew everything there was to know, or she felt like she didn't know anything and was going to fail. Needless to say, it was an exhausting week for all of us! Now we get to wait forever to find out if she passed or not. Craziness.
Elliot got to play in another percussion recital. There are getting to be quite a few young percussionists in middle school and their teacher really works up some fun things for them to work on together. They also each played a solo and a duet. Elliot did great.
Madeleine and Elliot spent the last week of May taking class finals and finishing up all their projects and reports for school. Madeleine did some amazing artwork . We got to go hear Clark sing in the traditional year end Lower School concert which was fun. All in all, the kids were very happy to have this school year come to a close. They were counting down of course, and of course so was I.....sigh. I do look forward though, to a more relaxed routine.
This year, now that Madeleine is a history buff, she suggested that we repeat the trip we took 3 years ago and drive down to Sanpete County to visit the cemeteries down there and give us a chance to document things a bit better and get a few more photos that we need. So, we took a picnic and spent the day pretty much in the car and in four different cemeteries. It sounds pretty boring, but it was fun to find some headstones we hadn't located the first time and to explain and share with the kids how these ancestors fit together. Madeleine wanted to have her picture taken by Emma Sanders' headstone now that she knows a bit more about her and "trekked" for her last summer.
This time we managed to find the cemetery in Freedom, Utah, where William Draper is buried. It was the most peaceful endearing remote little cemetery. After we got home I pulled a book off the shelf about the Drapers that I had acquired a while back, but hadn't really looked at. It is very fascinating to read all about William Draper Jr. and his many wives. This book has the story of how my great-great-great-grandmother Fanny Newton came to be a member of the church and one of his wives – a wonderful story that we hadn't known before. It really makes me grateful and appreciative to all those who have gone before and lived out their lives so valiantly.
Again this year Phillip asked Tess to celebrate her birthday with him as he is missing Loren. She was happy to do that, and so we celebrated on Memorial Day, which was actually Phillip's real birthday. In the afternoon we went to see the latest "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie which was rather swashbuckling to say the least. Later we had dinner and gifts. Tess's friend Laurel came up from BYU to spend the evening with us and we had a great time. The exciting part came when we were trying to light all the candles before they could melt down to the pies! All of our birthdays fall within a four month period, so I'm glad to have 8 months off until the next one comes round again!
Miscellaneous
Thanks to our friend and neighbor Vaughn Alvey, who happens to be one of the coaches for BYU's Women's Softball team, we were given tickets to go down to Provo and watch their final game. We had never been to a college softball game before and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. Since the crowd is quite small, we got to interact with Cosmo several times - woohoo! Our friend, the coach got ejected from the game and BYU went on to win the game – how much more excitement could you expect to find on a lovely Saturday afternoon in Provo?
Everyone should do something crazy once in awhile and my "crazy" for this month was deciding to go with my sister Melanie to the grand opening of a new store here called IKEA. Originally, I had no idea how crazy this was, until I heard on the news that people were camping out in order to be one of the first few into the store. Melanie said she had heard a report that people had been injured before at these openings. But what the heck, we decided to go see for ourselves what it was all about. Actually it was very organized and even though there were tons of people, we had a fun time looking around and having Swedish meatballs for lunch!