Quick re-cap of the final months of 2015

Some fall events were:

an Astros game at Minute Maid Park with Jeremy, Nicole, and baby Rae

Rae loved clapping for the home team.

We celebrated grandkids' September and October birthdays.

Dahlia  turned 4 and had her party in the Ochoa family's new rec center.

Kyla turned 12 and is now in Young Women's.

And Lorelei also celebrated her 4th birthday. Lorelei and Dahlia are so close in age, and are great pals. It fills my heart with joy to see them playing together, something I prayed and hoped for during those dark days when Dahlia was awaiting a heart transplant.

On Halloween, all 16 grandkids were together, when Mark and  Courtney drove down from Minnesota, and Andy and Kay flew in from Utah. It was wild and crazy and grand.

Only Dahlia is missing here. I think she was having a wardrobe malfunction.

During the week, we hit the Houston Zoo and the beach. 

Saige was so sweet to her cousin Emmett.

Mark, Courtney and their sweet children enjoyed the warm weather.

The zoo train was a hit. Even the adults enjoyed it (Andy & Kay, Mark& Courtney in background)

Sweet Saige told me she likes the beach better than Snow.

The grandkids enjoyed covering Uncle Philip with beach sand.

The family then headed up to Austin for Jessica's big event. That night, we ate at a popular barbecue place .

It was fun all being together in this very nice vacation rental in Dripping Springs

 

The weather was chilly and a bit rainy, but we luckily escaped the bad flooding that the area experienced just a week prior. But that didn't dampen the fun of all being together.

Here we are with all 16 grandchildren.

Dad is here with all five of his sons.

What a tine we had! Unfortunately a bad tummy bug hit most of the grandkids at various times. But we all survived!

Another Christmas came around too quickly. We had a peaceful Christmas Eve   at Lauren and Dan's home and we were excited to wake up Christmas morning to see Rae open her presents. Emily and Brian's family came in from Vidor to join us later Christmas Day.

We made gingerbread houses for home evening the week of Christmas.

Our traditional candlelight Christmas Eve special soup and bread dinner at Lauren and Dan's.

The kids did the traditional Nativity play.

Rae loves unwrapping presents from Santa, even though it can be a bit challenging getting the tape off!

Sweet Dahlia loves baby Jesus!

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.)