January-June from Doug's Phone

Cool fort

The girls made a snowman and a snow fort with their dad.

Proof he was there

And our handsome Cason after church, most likely

We went to the Hogle Zoo as a family and I couldn't get over how close we were to the lions. This is a cool shot. Never mind the glass between Brook and the lions.

This gorilla stood like a monarch and proceeded to pee in front of us. Right after that, he came over the glass and smashed it. A little kid fell over because he was so shocked. Good reflexes!

Fun posing at the zoo

This was truly the best Blue and Gold I have ever been to or will ever attend. The leaders were all in Star Wars attire, the food was all themed (home made Yoda Soda, for example), the trashcans looked like R2D2, there were light sabers for all the boys and their siblings, there was Jedi training. It was phenomenal. Doug missed it because he needed to go to a leadership meeting for work.

Speaking of which. . . Doug found out that he was going to get the Copper Ridge building and he sent this picture to his group saying we were all excited to get to stay in Utah.

We celebrated getting to stay in Utah by buying a membership to the Aquarium. I'd say I want a refund from Ensign for pulling the rug out from under us, but the aquarium was amazing!!! We went weekly and absolutely got our money's worth.

Doug got to room with Jeremy at their leadership meeting. Both of them were stressed and unhappy (Doug found out he couldn't have the Copper Ridge building and Jeremy was trying to prove himself even though he'd had good results at his building.)

We saw deer all the time at my parents' house. It was awesome.

This was a fateful day. Doug went to the movies with Cason and Isaac, and then got a million text messages from me saying to please come rescue us from the Target parking lot in Orem, where we were stranded. Our alternator wasn't working.

Little did they know how short lived that experience would be. Cason still remembers it.

We sometimes went for bike rides to the church. Cason wasn't good enough at this bike to make it all the way to the church, but he sometimes liked riding it there.

Lucy's exciting gymnastics outfit for the bike ride.

Brooklyn learned how to ride a two-wheeler in March! She could have learned earlier, but it was just hard to get outside with all the kids and teach her. She caught on pretty quickly, and has improved a lot since she first started.

And it looks like Cason is Darth Vador here. By the way, potty training him has been annoyingly long. It hasn't ruined my life, but he still poops in his pull-ups during most afternoon naps. Something about solitude just inspires that. So gross. Right now, I clean him up, lecture him, spank his bum once, and stick him in a cold bath with a cold shower as garnish. It still hasn't eradicated the behavior. We're really hoping he grows out of this quickly.

This turkey sometimes walked by my parents' home. Not sure who he belongs to.

Brookie's graduation day. She was stunningly beautiful, and we were proud of her. She sang her heart out. Doug's Utah valley boss was there to see his grandson Andrew and Doug avoided him. The man could ave offered Doug several different buildings and just didn't.

The next day, we put our van on the market. It sold the day after that for $1600. We loved that van, but we got a great deal on our new one through the church.

Doug went to San Antonio, Texas, for a job interview. He stopped by the temple. We thought he'd love the San Antonio opportunity but he just didn't. The building had really high overhead, the layout of all the places he went wasn't very pretty, and Doug didn't feel like he belonged there. I'd been totally looking forward to moving there because of Pat and Erica's family, MaryAnn's family, the warm weather, and Sea World close by, but it just didn't feel as great as we thought it would.

Here's our little baby in May. He was pulling himself and cruising at that point. He learned to walk just before his first birthday in June.

Brookie wrote a book about moving. Doug and I flew to Olympia, Washingotn, to check out the facility there, and we decided to go for it!

We went to Grandma and Grandpa Sheide's cemetary for Memorial Day with the Buechners. I'm so thankful for their amazing lives and their love for me. I will cherish them forever.

We went for our very last trips to Thanksgiving Point before our membership expired. (That membership was also well loved and well used.)

Then we went to Lagoon!

And went up to th Island Park cabin for a week as a family. We went and saw Old Faithful. It was faithful, and we spent a lot of money on cafeteria food there. Yellowstone's not my favorite place on earth, but I was happy to go on the adventure with my kids.

We had already put a deposit down on a house in Lacey, WA, when the bishop's wife, Alicia Neeley, in the Olympia First ward let me know this house was available to rent.  We looked at pictures of it, prayed about it, found out it was right on the bike path and only five minutes away from Doug's work. . . .and decided to rent this home. It's beautiful, and I think we picked well.

On Father's Day, Doug wasn't with us, but he hosted a Father's Day banquet at his facility and said it was great.

He also checked out the beach.

And there was a chili cookoff a t his facility a few weeks later.

Whew! That's a lot for one day! If I can't recover any of my pictures from all these months, at least we have great scaffolding in this post. We lived.