Celebrating chemistry!!!

Our girlie attends an Early College High School 

and takes college classes for High School credit. 

It's a fantastic program and the tuition is paid with scholarships. 

What an opportunity and blessing! 

She's been loving her college classes 

and had taken High School Chemistry 

so when she needed more science credits we all thought 

the College Chemistry class would be a good choice. 

Oh man were we wrong! 

It was a brutal class 

and had her studying every night till midnight. 

Thank heaven The Mr. is brilliant in all things scientific and mathematical. 

He was the best tutor a girl could have. 

Somehow, she pulled it off, 

comprehensive final, research paper and all. 

Won't sign up for a class like that again 

until she's a "regular" college student. 

She had a 3 day weekend after that class ended 

so it was time to CELEBRATE with skiing,

(The girls on the chairlift)

(Love these girls!)

CELEBRATE with racquetball,

(The dude can jump!)

(Ashley putting her tennis skills to work.)

(High fives!)

and CELEBRATE with ice skating. 

We like celebrating!  

Chemistry...not so much, but celebrating definitely yes!

<3

A unique UEA...

Historically, we like to get out of Dodge on UEA weekend and have some hiking fun

but we have big doings coming up so we're pinching pennies. 

That meant hotels were out. 

Instead, we did homework...

(Thanks Melody for the encouragement and insights into Frankenstein!)

...and picked apples...

...and raked leaves and pulled out and tidied the garden.

I LOVE freshly turned dirt!!   :)

We worked on repairing the deck too.

Sheila came for a little visit and is always up for fun so we grabbed the twigs friends 

and played some racquetball - my favorite thing!  :)

We also headed up the mountain for a evening hike to watch the sunset. 

By the time we got there it was a "night hike" but it was so much fun!!! 

Okay, the part where the teenagers ran ahead and hid in the bushes

then leapt out roaring like mountain lions 

so they could make the mom scream wasn't my favorite, 

but the teenagers totally loved it.   ;)

We visited Grandma...

...and the next morning the twigs went with the youth in the Stake 

to clean up flower beds and have a pizza party at temple square.

(Thanks for the cute pic, Leaders!)

Our unique UEA weekend was pretty great after all.   :)

Delighting in the joy...

Just coming up on 10 years ago, we were shocked and elated to hear 
we were expecting our fourth child. 
We knew full well that the likelihood of all going well with the pregnancy 
was tiny owing to our less than "spring chicken" ages 
and our decades long history of difficulty having twigs.

We decided to celebrate and delight in the joy while we could

 so we gathered the twigs together for ice cream sundaes 

and had them guess our exciting news. 

It took a while (cough, cough) but eventually with some hints 

they figured it out. 

It was actually more of a question than a guess 

"Are we going to have a baby???" 

There were cheers and tears all around!

We miscarried that baby a few weeks later 

but I still remember vividly the immense joy I felt and delighted in for a time. 

This last week, our girlie and I celebrated our birthdays. 

It was a biggie for our girlie, she turned 16!!

We've been delighting in the joy all month!   :)

There was so much delighting that there was little picture taking

 so all we have are the great memories

 and some silly selfies.

We started the celebrating with a great night of racquetball - my favorite thing!

Then there was a trip to the temple 

to do work for those who couldn't do it for themselves - my favorite thing!

My icing on the proverbial birthday cake was a night of theater and show-tunes

at the Assembly Hall on Temple Square...

 

 ...followed by

 yummy frites and waffles at Bruges - my favorite thing!

Our girlie's icing on the birthday cake 

 was getting to go on a real date! 

She's been watching her brothers have a blast for years on group dates. 

Sometimes it's hard being the youngest. 

She had so much fun on her first date playing blindfolded croquet. 

You may have noticed that this picture is not a silly selfie
but rather...a picture by stalker mom.   ;)

I could not help myself!

Thank you friends, for celebrating with us, 

for the happy birthday wishes and for the yummy treats. 

Thanks for giving us so much joy to delight in!  

xoxo