Skyridge Prom

Melanie was very exited to attend Skyridge Prom with her friend, Cole. They doubled with Aubrey and Gavin. On Friday evening they had their warm up date: go cart racing, games, and watching the movie, "The Princess Bride". 

Saturday afternoon we began the pampering. I gave Melanie a manicure and pedicure. She did her makeup while her hair finished drying. Then came the teasing, braiding and curling.

Thank you to the Atkisson's for letting her borrow the beautiful dress. It was a chilly evening and so she paired the dress with this light pink wrap.

On Friday, we went to the flower shop and picked out some small roses to use for Cole's boutonniere. He had to wait a few minutes while she hurried and finished putting together the boutoniere. She wanted the leftover roses in her hair. It was a nice touch.

She didn't need any help pinning on the boutonniere.

Aubrey's dress momentarily took my breath away. It was fabulous. They were two handsome couples. As they were getting in the car, Cole turned to Warren and said, "Thank you for letting me take your daughter to prom." Warren told him, "you are on the good list".

The agenda for the night:

Dinner at Applebees where they were the talk of the restaurant because of how dressed up they were.

Pictures at Gavin's house.

A long drive because of some bad accidents on the freeway.

Dance at the State Capitol

Card games and pool at Cole's house.

Home a little after 1am.

Celebrating Chelsea's graduation from WSU

Back: Bryan, Kyle, Warren, Doran, Wendell

Front: Deborah and Brenda

On Friday, Warren's niece, Chesea (Bryan), graduated from WSU. Her whole family came to town to help celebrate and she threw a party at Doran and Nancy's house. 

Turns out, all the Henrie siblings were able to attend. It has been 10 years since they have all been together. 

Tulip Festival

My good friend, Kim invited Melanie Clawson and I to attend the Tulip Festival with her after work. It is so beautiful. The sunshine, the good company, the scent of flowers in the air was just what I needed after a stressful week.

I loved the paper cranes anchored between the ground and a tree branch. It was such a cool effect with the blue flowers and reminded me of all of our Japanese exchange students. My friend also suggested it would make a cool decoration for a wedding. I wanted to remember and so I took a picture.

Easter Weekend

It was great to have Tyler home for Easter weekend. Jessica and Clayton came over to help color Easter Eggs. I decided we needed a new way to dye the eggs and so I took to the internet. Our favorite was to tie-dye the egg. Another method we tried was to shake the egg in a container with some colored rice.

Sunday morning, we had our traditional Easter Sunrise service. We read the Easter story from the scripture as the sun rose over the mountain. We ate Eggs a-la-Golden Rod on top of Resurrection Rolls. This once a year breakfast helped motivate everyone to get up for sunrise.

A few Easter gifts - mostly food.

An Easter Party to celebrate doTERRA's 9th year in business

Food truck vouchers for everyone. Melanie choose to get sushi while Marie, Warren and I got burritos.

There was an egg hunt category for age 9-18 and so Melanie and Marie got to participate. There were thousands of eggs to gather up and took less than 10 minutes to be over.  

Ready, go!

They both filled their baskets to overflowing. The eggs were filled with a nice mix of candy and small toys.

Easter Week begins - Palm Sunday

I love that our family celebrates Easter for a whole week. We began with a fancy dinner on Sunday with most of our kids home. We decided to eat on the china, something we usually only do on Valentines Day.  I thought, somewhere, my Grandma was smiling about that.

Jessica and Clayton gave us a FHE lesson on Palm Sunday, we talked about the #PrinceofPeace campaign on Mormon.org, and watched a couple of the videos. We took a group picture and posted it on social media with the hashtag #heishere. We believe in Christ. 

After FHE, we had Strawberry shortcake for dessert. 

Graig's girlfriend, Andrea, came over and brought a fun fantasy game these cute kids played the rest of the night.

There was also a Rumikub game going on in the Living Room

I love my family.

Prom Invitations

"Popular" was the word Melanie used to describe how she felt after a week of attention from cute boys. On Friday evening she opened the door to find this cute boy, Cole, on the doorstep with an invitation to the Skyridge Prom.

The last dance she went to with Cole, she had everyone call her "Popcorn" instead of "Melanie". (It added to her mystery and made her sound fun.) She decided to answer Cole with a play on her nickname.

At school on Wednesday, Melanie's friend Dawson, dressed as a knight in shining armor, asked her to prom in front of the UCAS lunchroom crowd.  She has a good time with Dawson at the last girl's choice dance and so she answered him with this poster and some Skor candy bars.

We went to Kohlers to purchase supplies for the Prom answers and our bagger told Melanie he thought she was really cute and asked for her number as he loaded the back of our car with groceries. She gave him her number but he hasn't called yet. I keep trying to remind her how fun it is to have the attention of several boys at once instead of limiting herself to just one boyfriend at a time.

Terrance Hirsch used a Great Gatsby theme to ask Marie to the UCAS prom this week.

She also answered with a Great Gatsby theme.

Now let the dress finding begin.

The Game of Life

It was a wonderful general conference weekend. Jessica and Clayton came to watch the 2nd session of conference with us.

Graigry brought Andrea over for a bbq dinner. After, they played the board game Life. Years ago, the kids personalized the game with cards to their liking. For example, Jessica added a career card for a journalist. They also added spouses and pets.

I read once that children speak in a language the author called "future possible". I love the creative minds each of my children have been blessed with and they use that to imagine wonderful futures for themselves. It is fun to see those futures become realities. Makes me want to think in "future possible" tense more often.

It was fun to watch them figure out that if they invested some money at the beginning of the game, they were much better off at the end of the game (retirement).

We ended the evening with a discussion on how to strengthen our family.

A rainy day turned sunny and beautiful. I loved that Elder Holland said, the sun never goes away - we may not be able to see it but it is still there.