Education Week 2015

In August, while visiting Andy, KayLynn, and Emmett, we enjoyed our 2nd year of Education Week. We loved being BYU "students".

We loved attending classes all day.

Brad Wilcox was one of the many great lecturers.

Michael Ballam's classes were a delightful combination of inspiration stories and music. This very talented man was my mother-in-law's favorite BYU Education Week speaker when she attended many years ago.

One of the highlights of Education Week, is the Tuesday devotional, featuring a General Authority. Apostle Neal Anderson gave a powerful talk.

It was fun running into folks we knew, like Janice Seely, whom we sat next to for Richard Holzapfel's classes.

It is fun when folks like President Uchtdorf and his wife are spotted at Education Week. Sister Uchtdorf was in two of the classes we attended. Here we are with Rchard Holzapfell.

We saw President Uchtdorf when he was picking up his wife after Susan Easton Black's class.

A fun part of the day, was eating at the Cannon Center for supper. I enjoyed the little break from cooking.

Evenings were filled with fun concerts. One night, an amazing youth orchestra performed, and another evening  the singing trio "Gentry" (pictured here) gave a great concert.

We also saw President Uchtdorf and his wife at the George Gershwin musical we attended.

Classes ran all evening, so the night we didn't attend a concert, we went to Chef Brad's cooking class. He puts on quite a show, and even has his own show on BYU T.V.

We're already looking forward to Education Week 2016. 

Education Week and Emmett

In August, Carl and I flew out to Utah, where we attended BYU Education Week and enjoyed being with 19 month old grandson Emmett (and his mom and dad).

Here we are visiting the BYU Art Museum.

After the Art Museum, we enjoyed some BYU Creamery ice cream.

Andy and KayLynn are such good parents. While there, we learned they are expecting a baby sister for Emmett in early February. (Lower right: Andy at work.)

We had fun with Emmett at the Children's Natural Curiosity Museum at 

Thanksgiving Point. His favorite activity was water play.

On another day, we toured the first class Dinosaur Museum , also at Thanksgiving Point.

When Andy was home on Saturday, we took a stroll through the scenic gardens at Thanksgiving Point. 

The second Saturday we were there,we took a drive on the Alpine Loop to Wolf Creek Reservoir. Emmett's favorite activity was splashing in the ice cold water.

Another fun water place for Emmett was Utah Lake.

How we enjoyed being with this little family during the times we weren't on the BYU campus.just watching Emmett play was so fun. 

On Sunday, we peeked in on Emmett in the church nursery and our son Andy, giving one-on-one attention to a special needs young boy in Primary.

Our yearly tradition, when we come out to Education Week, is to buy Emmett a BYU Cougar shirt. (When Philip 

picked us up to drive us to the airport, Emmett wanted to drive the car.)

Here we are, spending our last few minutes with Emmett, 

Other folks we got to see during our trip to Utah were KayLynn's parents and grandparents, our grandoggie Indie, and Carl's sister Beverly, our nephew Paul and his wife, and our son Philip, who is attending college and working in Utah.

We also had a mini reunion with one of the sister missionaries from our N.Y. Rochester Mission, Katelyn Johnson.

And we unexpectedly ran into one of our Elders from the mission, Tyler Robertson.

It was a special treat to have a reunion and dinner with our N.Y. Rochester Mission President,Jack Christianson, his wife Melanie, and several of the wonderful senior missionary couples who served with us on the office staff.

(A few photos from Education Week itself will be on the next "catch-up" blog post.)

A few Summer 2015 events

I'm still playing "catch up" with this blog. So, here's our hot Houston summer!

We started off with "Zoobillee", an evening event put on by the Houston Zoo for its members. We took the school age  grand-kids.

It was an adventure riding the shuttle bus from the downtown parking lot to the zoo.

The kids participated in a scavenger hunt, finding different species of animals.

For our annual summer "theater date", I took the local grand-kids to Alvin Community College's production of "Snow White". 

They loved going out to lunch after the show.

In June, we all  together at Lauren and Dan's home to celebrate "Father's Day.

A few of the great fathers in our family who were there, besides Grandpa,were our son Jeremy

and son-in-law Dan. (We missed our other great dads-- Brian, Mark, and Andy.)

I always enjoy watching the littlest grandchildren play with each other at these family gatherings.

In July, we  braved taking the shuttle, from the high school to Centennial Park, for the 4th of July firework show with this group.

But it was well worth it.

Fourth of July wouldn't be complete without my annual "Sweet Baby Rae" photo shoot. (and isn't she the sweetest!)

Still busy with our home remodeling project, we squeezed in only one beach trip. With shark sittings and high bacteria counts in some parts of Galveston beaches, that was O.K.!

Philip flew into town, for a two day visit, just in time to celebrate his 27th birthday with family.