Braden entered the MTC

Wednesday was a day of miserable joy! We are so happy that Braden is serving the Lord and willing to be a missionary and we miss him so much!

After a beautiful father's blessing and a tearful prayer we left home about 7:15 a.m. The drive to Provo was pretty uneventful. We stopped for gas in Cedar City and at the Walmart in Payson. At Walmart we bought paper and envelopes and stamps so that Braden could send letters.

We arrived in Provo and met Daniel at a Wendy's. We ate lunch and surprisingly I think everyone was able to eat! Then we drove up by the Provo Temple to the same spot where we had taken some pictures with Daniel before we left him at the MTC.

We took some pictures, but it was so cold. I think it was only about 8 to 10 degrees (a real warm-up from Scipio which was -22 degrees when we drove through there.) Max told the boys that they better give Braden a hug so the little boys went first. They were very cute hugging him around the legs and waist. Then Jeremy hugged him and cried. Daniel hugged him next and then Nathan. Of course Nathan was pretty emotional. It was a beautiful thing to see my boys really hugging each other. Then I hugged him (a good long hug) and then Max gave him a hug. We were all pretty emotional at that point.

We drove slowly down to the MTC. There were missionaries lined up all along the sidewalk waiting for new missionaries to come. As we were driving along the boys saw Ryan Butler a missionary from Hurricane. He saw us too and came down the sidewalk to meet us. Max and I got out of the car and gave Braden one last hug. Elder Butler was Braden's host. Our last view of Braden was of him walking and pulling his luggage into the building with Elder Butler.

The drive home was pretty somber. I stopped crying about 25 times! Derek said, "Raise your hand if you miss Braden." I couple of times he just said, "I miss Braden!" I would look back and he had a tear running down his cheek. It was so sweet!

We really missed him the last few days! He was so cute and fun his last week at home and the little boys especially will have some good memories of that week.

I think we are all feeling better today!

Fall 2009

What an amazing time we've had the last few months. So many changes have happened and we had some fun and some stress!

The most important and fun change we've had is Daniel coming home from his mission on September 1st. We were so excited to finally see him again. He was home for a few weeks before he went to Utah County to find a job and start working before beginning school in January at BYU. He is working at the Brick Oven in Provo. His hours aren't great and they are not flexible with his schedule, but it's a job! He doesn't work on Sunday which he is especially happy about!

Braden opened his mission call on August 5th. He opened it up at about 11:15 p.m. He was working that day and Max wasn't home in the morning. He was so excited and we could hardly believe it when he read Brazil Recife. Now we have three weeks until he leaves. He is excited and anxious to leave and admittedly nervous. I am excited for him and so sad that I won't see him for two years.

The other big event and the stress that we "enjoyed" was having an exchange student from Brazil come and stay with us. We chose a girl named Izabella. We communicated with her through email and felt like we got to know her and her family before she came. We were excited to have her come and met her at the airport with a big sign and balloons. Nathan introduced her to all his friends and took her to all her classes for 3 days. She was here for about 8 weeks and she left and is now in Arizona. She could have really fit into our family well, but she wanted a maid and special treatment. Well more special than what we were giving her. She mostly didn't want to have any rules or anyone telling her what she had to do or not do! In fact, she wanted to tell us what to do! It is very good that she is not here anymore because things are much more relaxed and pleasant here now. But what an interesting experience!

Braden was ordained an Elder by his dad! 

Two Moms and Dads

Derek has been asking why he doesn't have two moms and two dads like some of his cousins.  He really didn't think it was fair!  I tried to explain how lucky he is that he only has one mom and one dad and he finally seemed to accept it - until yesterday.  We were sitting at church waiting for stake conference to start and he suddenly said, "I do have two dads!"  I said, "You do?".  He said, "Heavenly Father and Dad"!  Sure enough!  He was pretty excited to realize that he wasn't being left out of the two Dad club.

Water dripping from the ceiling

Last Tuesday in the middle of the night Braden came into my room and said, "Mom there is water dripping from my ceiling." Well I of course was hoping that it was some kind of joke, but when we got down to his room sure enough there was water dripping right down over his bed. We couldn't figure out where it was coming from at 2:00 a.m. and so we gave up, turned of the main water into the house and went back to bed. Once we got up for the day it took a couple of hours to figure out that the water going into the toilet upstairs was leaking. It was an easy fix at the toilet, but Braden's ceiling is half gone now and we are drying it out before we start the big repair. It could have been worse!

Christmas

I know it is February, but I just want to say: We had a wonderful Christmas! Because money has been very tight the last couple of years we have realized that the most important part of Christmas is not the gifts! Having our oldest son on a mission and far away at Christmas has also made us all realize that the most important things aren't things. We all really enjoyed our traditions: Christmas Eve dinner, egg nog, decorating the Christmas tree with the same old decorations, reading about the first Christmas in the Bible. We also thought more about our Savior and all that his birth and atonement means to us! Of course a huge highlight of the day was talking to Elder Barker on the phone. It was so great to hear his voice!