Found: Long Time Friends

First, to clarify in case you don’t know me: I am pretty inconsistent at staying in contact with friends, no matter how close we once were, or how much I still need their friendship.

Second, I am 1300 miles away from my hometown. The place I was born, raised, and still call home sometimes.

Third, I am between 20 & 80 miles away from some of those friends I grew up with and do not see them on a regular basis. Or even any basis at all.Example, one of these women I saw last when she had no children and now she has 3.

Fourth, I am now in my 30th year of life on this earth and miss some of the people who helped my youth be fantastic. So I finally did something about it and got to see them on Saturday.

It wasn’t very long but it was just what I needed. I was able to meet significant others, reminisce, and reconnect. I’m so glad they came to me. Long time friends can be considered forever friends based on my experience last night. We hugged and bonded and we missed those who couldn’t come or are too far from us. 

Photo Highlights:

A long time ago, we made lemon shake-ups. I found some equipment to make them again. They were just as good as they once were.

Karen brought me a birthday cake! It had flowers on it. Our significant others were trying to decide whether the flowers were supposed to be edible or not. They didn’t recommend eating them.

Before leaving, we played the Minute to Win It game called Face the Cookie. It’s humorous as evidenced by the following photos.

And my personal favorite sequence:

We never got ours in our mouths…

The Winner Is...

...Lessa!
You are one lucky lady!
I used random.org and thought it was a fluke because 1 was first and 11 was last. Everything else was mixed up though.
Anyway.
Congratulations!
Oliver was partly right in that I would want to give something to everyone. Its so true! And when I get such awesome compliments, it makes me want to give away happy mailboxes to all of you!
Lessa, will you please email your address to me so that we can make your mailbox happy as soon as possible? (byuris at gmail dot com) Please include your choice of painting.
For Lena: the artist, J. Kirk Richards can be found at his website http://www.jkirkrichards.com/ and you'll find a lot more of his beautiful images.
Marci, Kristen & Jacque: please email me your new addresses since you are moving.
Anna-Lisa, I've never had your address and would like it if you'd email me too.
Thank you for the birthday wishes and maybe I'll do this again someday to make some other mailboxes (and amazing people) happy.
Yay for July!

Birthday Giveaway!

In honor of my birthday this week, I decided to give away some cool things. This does two things; (1) Brings joy to someone's mailbox! & (2) will forever remind you of how cool I am.

As I was trying to think of whether I have favorite things in this world (besides the people in my life), I realized that I love art, of all kinds. And I decided that I like this artist who happens to be from Provo. I narrowed his available prints down to a few that I liked the most and you can choose from the following:

Every Knee Shall Bow by J. Kirk Richards 4 x 12.3 inches

Leaning Against the Wind by J. Kirk Richards 5 x 5 inches

Mother and Child(bronze) by J. Kirk Richards 5 x 7 inches

In this lovely giveaway you'll also find:

the best Kool-Aid, or blue juice for those who know me well;

our new favorite popcorn,

& my favorite chocolate fix.

If you want a happy package in your mailbox instead of just bills, then please leave a comment with one reason why you should win. I'll let you leave a comment until Friday, July 29th, at 10pm Utah time.

Everybody deserves to love my birthday! So on Tuesday, have yourself a fudgecicle and think of me.

July 11th

1. Starting at 6:30am. I was wearing this shirt, hanging out at this place.

photo courtesy housing.byu.edu

2. 9:30am finds Oliver, Evan and Ryan enjoying these on the couch.

3. 11am. I leave again to go here for another 2 hours.

photo courtesy byu.edu

4. 1:30pm. Back home to relax.

5. 4pm. To a meeting!

6. 4:55pm. Oliver drives away to go here.

photo courtesy content.lib.utah.edu

7. 5pm. Evan, Ryan and I go on an almost 3 mile walk letting Ryan choose the entire route. We walk all the way around this

photo courtesy byu.edu

and find some “mountains” to climb. We see the cafeteria which we haven’t seen in several weeks so decide to get some food.

8. 7pm. Back home and the camera battery is finally charged and ready to work. So we play.

9. 9pm. Daddy comes home to relax.

10. Before bed Ryan serenades us with the Smile song:

If you chance to meet a frown, do not let it stay.

Quickly turn it upside and smile that frown away.

Legacy & Tradition

July is a good month. Starts out with talking about freedom for the nation and then, for Latter-day Saints, ends with talking about freedom for our religion.

For our family, this year it has also provided a time to talk about where we come from. First, a reunion for all of the descendants of Oliver’s father’s parents. Second, a reunion for all of the descendants of Oliver’s mother’s mother’s parents. We have seen a lot of wonderful family members. Faithful, loving, kind family members. Two are heroes in my mind this year. Thank you Deanna and Randy for keeping our Evan safe.

We have learned more about those we’re related to. We’ve had fun with them. We took the boat out on the reservoir. We sang “Grandma, We Love You”.

We also sang Happy Birthday for the same Grandma’s 90th birthday. We played hard with newfound friends.

We built a dam across the creek.

We got burnt.

 

We were given a book documenting stories from Grandma & Grandpa’s life.

We played games.

We talked a lot. We listened to family members perform. We heard stories about ancestors. We played Spite & Malice.

We were glad to see each other.

We also got to see my family a little bit during the week. Thank you Nat for watching the boys and for taking us to the Car Show. We love you!

Between all of the family gatherings, we also had some sadness. A wonderful man, husband, and father passed away on Monday after battling cancer for 5 years. He was Oliver’s age. His second child is just a few months younger than Ryan. He and his wife have been wonderful examples of faith, love and friendship. Through his death, I learned one thing. He has always been a good friend, a kind soul and a faithful man. Wes Truman, you will be missed, and I hope that your legacy will continue to inspire others through the examples of the family now missing you.

I know that families are an eternal entity. I know that we can leave a positive legacy for our own family by being true to our beliefs and by starting positive traditions for them. The Family: A Proclamation to the World states “Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities.” We have had our fair share of love and wholesome recreational activities these last two weeks. I’m blessed to be married to my Oliver and to now be a part of his extended family as much as he’s blessed to be part of mine. Now we’ve just got to work on building legacy and tradition for our boys.