Happenings

Wyatt had his boys verses girls battle.

He did awesome as usual!

He did a routine with Eddie and then his own thing a few times. 

I love how they are all competitive during the round, but then they high five each other and hug after.  Jules, in the purple hat, just started at their studio, she is so fun to watch.  She is on Wyatt's battle crew and he really likes her.  It was fun to see them do their own handshake/high five after the battle. 

They gave out awards at the end of the battle. There were five awards where they picked one boy and one girl. Tarzan picked the winners for these awards.

Wyatt was so excited to win "best footwork."  This is the first time he has won an individual award at a battle.  

He does have great footwork and we love watching him!

We have been enjoying the Spring weather.  One evening Keith and I walked over to the school with Hallee.  She loved the one-on-one attention and talked nonstop.

She showed us all of the fun things she does at recess. 

Julie sent me these pictures of pickleball.  Tiff and mom played with them too. We sure miss having them here!

Jackson gets so excited when Caitlyn gets home from school every day.

We enjoyed conference this weekend.  I love conference, the talks were so good! On Saturday we invited Tiff's kids over to play during the second session. They were so good about playing on their own so Keith and I could watch.  Tessa and Hallee are so cute, they kept going for rides around the block with their packed purses and stuffed animals. 

I love how Hallee dressed up her stuffed animals to play school.  I asked if I could play and I was one of her students.  I kept interrupting her to say crazy things (like kids do) and she did not think it was funny. She liked it better when I was a quiet student, Ha!

Yesterday was the 9th anniversary of Jen's death.  Each year brings different emotions.  This year I thought about it a lot leading up to April 4th.  I always think back to that year around Easter time.  That year Easter was on March 31st and Jen died five days later.  I will always remember having a special witness when I taught my kids the Easter lesson that year that what I was teaching was true and that Jesus Christ really was resurrected and really did atone for all of our sins and sorrows.  I count that as a sacred blessing from a loving Heavenly Father who knew what was coming when I had no idea.

I decided I wanted to go visit her grave last night. I needed some alone time so driving out there and just thinking was nice.  Her grave was really dirty so I got some wipes and cleaned it off.  It felt good to do something productive.  At Christopher's funeral Dawn said, "grief is just love with nowhere to go." I've thought about that a lot since then.  It is hard to have all of this love for someone who is not here anymore.  When I cleaned the grave it brought me some peace, like I could serve Jen again, I think I miss serving her because that is how I expressed my love to her.  It brought more understanding and truth to "grief is just love with nowhere to go."

After the cemetery I drove over to Jen's old house.  They have painted the house a yucky brown color and the yard looked terrible, that was more depressing than the cemetery.  I don't know why it bothered me so much, I think I just wanted it to look the same, to look like Jen's house.  Jen took a lot of pride in her house and yard and it always looked great.  I know dad helped her a lot with the yard because he knew it was important to her. After that I drove by our old house.  I wanted to see our Jen tree.  It is so tall!  Someone gave that to Tiff when Jen died and they couldn't plant it in Eagle Mountain so she gave it to us. I'm so sad we had to leave it.  It's hard to believe it's been 9 years since she died and 4 years since grandma died.  I've been missing grandma a lot lately. I loved going to visit her and talking to her on the phone and I have really wanted to talk to her lately.  It was good for me to take some time to be alone and think and reminisce.  I listened to Bryan Mcknight, Toni Braxton and Whitney Houston while I drove around.  There are so many songs and types of music that make me think of Jen, she loved music and had a beautiful voice.  I wish grief was a linear thing that just kept improving with time, but it doesn't work like that.  Grief has no formula or time table, it comes and goes and surprises you often.