Happy Birthday to Lincoln!  He is turning 24.  He and his little family just moved to Texas to start a new job on Tuesday.  We're sad he's going to be far away.  But we're happy with the person he's become.  He's done a lot of good things in his life and has many more in his future.  It was fun to remember lots of happy memories and remember how much we love Lincoln as I looked at these pictures. Age 5 months Age 1 Age 2 Age 3 Age 4 Age 5 Age 6 Age 7 Age 8 Age 9 Black Forest, Germany, age 9 Age 9, in Germany Age 10 Age 11 Age 12 Age 13 Age 13 Age 14 Age 15 Age 16 Age 17 Age 18 Age 18 Age 19 Age 20 Age 21 (almost) Age 22 Age 23 Age 24

This week our high school senior Talmage did his graduation walk.  In our current pandemic world, the normal graduation has been cancelled.  So instead, each senior scheduled a time (every three minutes) when they came to the school and walked through a giant inflated Tiger mouth (since our mascot is the Tigers) while their name was announced.  Then they got a diploma from the principal and we took pictures in front of the "O".  I actually really enjoyed it.  It felt really personal.  I think Talmage liked it too.  On May 28th every high school in the district will have a virtual graduation ceremony that we can watch at home and then they will set off a fireworks show at each high school.  We'll try to take Talmage out that night for dinner and make it a special day for him. Here's a picture of him right before he started kindergarten: Talmage, age 5

My husband is somewhat of an adventurer.  He wanted our youngest two girls to learn how to rappel so we went this last week.  The night before we went, he had them rappel from a big tree in our backyard.  Unfortunately I don't have a picture of that. The next day I took our youngest two plus their two cousins the same age and he met us at Rock Canyon (driving from work). My sister-in-law had responded to the invitation with, "They would love that." On the way, her girls had asked, What's rappelling?  We hiked up to "The Kitchen". It was a warm day and I was a little worried about it being too hot but fortunately we were able to sit in the shade while we waited.  While they were getting ready, a mountain goat came to see what we were doing. That was fun to see. First came my 12-year-old niece.  The hardest part was going over the edge: Unfortunately, when she finished, Camille had a bathroom problem and I had to take her home.  So we m

We celebrated our 31st anniversary recently.  We were pretty limited in what activities we could do because of the pandemic.  Travel is pretty limited and things are closed.  We decided to go on a nearby hike after the schoolwork got done in the morning and then have dinner out.  We went on the Squaw Peak Trail which is about 7.6 miles round trip.  We were on a time schedule, it's a steep trail and I was feeling a little out of shape so we turned around at 3 miles--about .8 miles from the top. On the way up and then again on the way back, we met these three guys.  It looked incredibly difficult to haul that wheelchair up the mountain but they were determined.  I'm still wondering if they made it to the top.  I was also wondering how it was coming down which was also challenging for us. Even if they didn't make it to the top, it was still an impressive accomplishment.