Escapades of the Empty Nesters

I know it has been forever since I posted, so most of you probably don't even check me anymore, but I will try to be better. As you can see from the title, we are officially empty nesters. August through September has been a jumble of activity and moving. Mostly moving. Not me, just ALL my kids. Jayme and Virginia started the trend by moving home in June and out in July just before we left on vacation. Thank you Jayme and Virginia for doing it before. Because after ( like 5 days) returning home from vacation we packed up Josh and dropped him off at BYU. Returning home from that we packed Jackie up again and moved them into a house they are renting. Then came Jessica who moved to start her masters program. Wow!! In the midst of all this we jointly canned about 180 lbs. of peaches, betweeen 65-70 quarts of tomatoes and today I just picked up the tuna to can. It feels good to have all this done and to see the pantry filling up with full jars. The kids are thrilled and we all loved the new kitchen when it came time for canning.

But the real reason for the post is that when that was all done, Reed and I decided to play!!!!! Reed's sister and her husband visited us from the east coast, so we showed them the sites. We picked them up at the airport with the camper and tents and sleeping bags and headed for our coast. We started around Seaside and went the whole length of Oregon. We started in fog and ended in beautiful sunshine. We saw PODS of whales. Up close. You could even see the barnacles on their backs. I have never seen so many spouts and so many whales! We ended up in Northern CA at the redwoods, then headed inland to Crater Lake. We nearly froze out toushes off when the temp dropped to 26 the night we camped at Crater Lake, but the next morning was clear and fantastic. After returning home we sent Jill and Buz on their way up north to see Mt. St. Helen's and to end up in Vancouver BC with another sister. We had so much fun together we are planning future trips. We miss them, but we had such a good time.

We were only home about a week, when we decided to take off again. We made a trip to St. George Utah via Reno and Provo. We visited some old friends in Reno, then saw Josh in Provo before heading down to St. George. There we watched Zach and his siblings compete in the marathon. I am always really moved to watch marathon runners. That is such a grueling, hard thing. I know that I only see the very tip top of the iceberg as they have trained for months to be able to run for 26 miles. All did very well despite the pouring rain. From there we headed back up to Idaho Falls to spend a couple of days with Zach's family. I know, it is really weird, but we get along so well with Zach's parents, that we are also planning a trip with them. This is just way too much fun!!

For right now we are staying close to home. Jayme and Virginia could be having the baby a little sooner than planned - but that is another post. We also plan to work - someday. We are waiting for samples to show up. But for now we have had a ton of fun and the kids think we are crazy!!!