Happy Everything to Me!

We've been empty nesters for 10 months now and there's been a bit of a learning curve but lately I've scored BIG with amazing purchases all within the same month!

I sold the Acura TL I'd been driving a few months ago and started driving Grayson's stick-shift sporty VW once the snow was gone. We finally sold it for him so I needed a car. After lots of test driving, I found this smooth-riding Lexus at Rand's Auto and couldn't be happier.

John has always enjoyed road biking but I've never had the time or interest. Now I have a bit of both and he wants someone to go riding with so he bought me a road bike. I love the color and it rides great!

Unfortunately, our computer died when we were in California so we had to get a new one. Thanks to Collin's employee discount at Apple we got a big screen and it is FAST. I'm praying that the company working on getting all my documents and 42,000 photos off my old computer can extract everything!!

Lastly, we got a pickleball net so we can practice at home :) I feel like it was Christmas, Mother's Day and my birthday all in one!!

Memorial Day Weekend Staycation

John & I were so happy to get a call Friday evening on Memorial Weekend from Hillary asking if we had any plans... With all of the kids out of state (Coffeys living in Vegas, Tebbs in Wisconsin for Garrett's summer internship and Hughes in Idaho with Riley's family) we were just going to do things around home alone. Hillary and Patrick drove up to Bountiful from Vegas and we spent Saturday biking (road bikes for the girls and dirt bikes for the guys), dinner at Bombay House and Crumbl cookies...

Sunday we visited Grammy before our church and Patrick and Hillary visited his grandparents in Kaysville after church. Apparently Hillary snapped a photo of us DURING church as we were enthralled with the speakers...

Spent time napping, doing puzzles and games and hanging with Cooper...

Steve played his bagpipes at Ashton's grave on Memorial Day and we played some Top Golf! Very fun weekend and we didn't have to leave home!!!

Mother's Day 2018!

Happy Mother's Day to my mom Renee Milne. She may not know exactly who I am but she knows we're related and that I care about her... It's so tricky trying to take a picture but I was happy to get a few decent shots out of the many we tried to take. I took her to church at the care center since dad has his church at the same time and mine is later in the day.

My favorite Mother's Day "gift" is talking to whatever missionary is serving at the time. Boy, do I miss this kid! We were able to Skype Hillary & Patrick and Garrett & Julia who were all in Las Vegas and Hailey & Riley were with us at home. So fun to see him, hear him, laugh with him, cry with him and listen to his amazing Portuguese when he bore his testimony to us. July 2019 can't come soon enough!!!

Capistrano Beach 2018

 Our annual beach trip was May 6-12 and the four BYU kids had finished Winter term, Patrick had tax season behind him and John could leave work for a week. It was the first time in a long time that we had everyone (except Elder Tebbs) all there at the same time. We had two condos this year so Papa, Hailey and Riley shared the smaller one and Garrett, Julia, Hillary, Patrick, John and I shared the larger one. 

We have four May birthdays we tried to celebrate every time we went out to dinner which was fun too! John's was May 1, Hailey and Julia share May 12 and Patrick's was May 16.

On Monday we took the crew to Disneyland and had a great time. It's a very different experience going with adults!

Papa and John left in the late afternoon to go back to the condo and a few of us went on Splash Mountain together where Hillary willingly took the front seat so I could be rider #5 behind Julia. We've never laughed as hard as we did listening to Hillary's piercing screams as she got soaking wet!

On Tuesday we went to one of our favorite restaurants--BJ's--and got lots of free birthday Pizookies.

Hillary had to fly home to Vegas Tuesday night to work at Challenger the rest of the week. The rest of the group headed to another one of our favorites--K-1 Racing where we had a new winner in the group since Grayson is on his mission and wasn't able to defend his title.

Wednesday was a beautiful beach day and we took advantage of the sun, the temperature, the bikes and the pool. Patrick left that afternoon so he could get back to work too. The newlyweds spent a bit of time creating a sandcastle...

Papa flew home Thursday morning to get back to Grammy so we were down to 6 of the 9 of us. We had a 2nd day at Disney where we split up as couples for most of the day and I realized John and I had never been to Disneyland alone before. We've always had tiny kids, teenagers or adult kids and grandparents in tow. We had a great day and then met up with the other couples for the Frozen show, a couple rides and the evening parade.

We lost Julia and Garrett Friday morning as Garrett had a bachelor party in Vegas for his good friend. The four remaining partiers went to the Newport Beach Temple and Sidecar donuts. It was rainy and cool the last day so we hung around in the condo before our flight left Saturday afternoon. It was such a fun week and we can't wait until next summer when we go back and Grayson will be home to join us!