Thanksgiving

We had Thanksgiving dinner at Matt and Raquel's new house. All the painting and floors are done! Matt still has the crown molding to finish, but the house looks so much better now that the turquoise, lime green and dark purple paint, and the horrid carpet are gone.

Ryan and Jason played Guitar hero while Tierra just laid around and watched, and Alisha stole the baby from me! Juliette is now 3 1/2 months and starting to really take notice of what is going on around her.

Conference memories

General Conference is always wonderful, but more so this time because Matt and Raquel brought my little granddaughter over! It's been 3 weeks since we'd seen her, and she doubled in size! She looks so much like Matt, (and toots just like him too!)

Sweet family

Matt and Raquel came over for a couple days the beginning of Sept., Juliette was only 2 1/2 weeks old. It was wonderful to see my beautiful granddaughter and get to spend some time with her mom and dad too! Matt and Raquel came over to look at a house, which they are in the process of buying. Other than needing new flooring and the walls painted it's in great shape, has a large back yard and is just 10-15 minutes away! We're thrilled they're going to be so close. Now if we could just convince Evan and Blaire to move out here!!

Happy aunties

Alisha and Tierra love their new niece! Raquel and Juliette came home this afternoon, and we won't be able to see them till later next week. It's amazing how much babies can change in just a week.

Fresh from Heaven

I'm a grandma! Juliette Lauren Paull made her debut into our family, and our hearts at 1:29 a.m. August 13. We raced over to Winnie Palmer Hospital (next to Arnold Palmer hospital) a little before midnight and were treated to a three-minute view of her after sitting in the waiting room for an hour. Matt brought her out for us to see and snap a couple of photos.

She weighed in at 5 lbx. 15 oz., was 18" long, and has a lot of black hair. In fact, she's pretty hairy all over!

After seeing her for a couple minutes we came home and got some sleep and then headed back over. We are all smitten by the cutest little baby we've ever seen, and grateful everything went well with the delivery (c-section). Juliette even managed to work her way into Jason's heart! He wasn't too enthused to begin with, especially when I "made" him hold her. But by the time we left he was telling Matt that he couldn't believe how attached he was to the little thing!

I've been told being a grandmother is even better than being a mom, so I'm looking forward to finding that out firsthand!

Four sons

We were thrilled to have newlyweds Jaret (my nephew) and Hillary spend a couple days with us before and after their honeymoon cruise from Port Canaveral. Just so happened Ryan was here also, as he was released from his mission to take care of some medical things going on with his knee and ankles. What great looking young men they are! Jaret and Hillary spent Sat. night with us, and spent Sunday morning playing "nerts" and after Sacrament meeting I took them out to the ship. Ryan came home Tuesday afternoon, and Jaret and Hillary came back Thursday morning. We are so impressed with both Jaret and Hillary. We don't often get to see family out this way so we were loving having them here. From left are Ryan, Jason, Matt (soon to be a daddy in August!) and Jaret.

Where in the world is Ryan?

It is traditional for missionaries in the Provo MTC to stand in front of this map and point to where they will serve their mission. I never got photos like this from Evan or Matt, so am triply pleased to have this one from Ryan. Ryan spent the first 3 weeks of his mission in Provo before flying to Sao Paulo.

First photos of Ryan

We finally received Ryan's memory stick from his camera so I'm posting some of the photos: Ryan enjoying making German Waffles, his house in Anapolis, his first area.

Pay it forward

A teaching moment happened today at, of all places, Wal-mart. The girls and I and a friend of theirs, Sala, had gone to the park for a picnic, and had to pick Jason up 1:00 at Wal-Mart. I thought I'd pick up a few things while I was there. I mean, can one actually go to Wal-Mart without emptying one's pockets?

At the point that I was supposed to swipe my debit card, (I was using the self check-out) my debit card was nowhere to be found. I don't carry credit cards as I may be too tempted to use them, and I also rarely carry my checkbook. My debit card is all I need! I searched frantically, but that debit card was just not in my purse. I called the Wal-Mart associate over to cancel the transaction and the lady behind me said "Oh no, you can't go home without your groceries, I'll pay for them." Of course I protested, thanked her profusely for even offering, and told the Wal-Mart associate to go ahead and cancel it.

That lady behind me again said to please let her do it, that she'd been in the same boat before and she simply could not let me go home without my groceries. It amounted to just under $20. She continued to say she'd be happy to pay for them and proceeded to just complete the transaction. I told her that to pay her back, I'd pay it forward.

As the girls and I were walking out, I told them that our assignment is to find a way to pay it forward this week. I'll post at the end of the week with how we were able to do that, and hopefully the girls will get that warm, fuzzy feeling by doing so.

Dogpile!

Aw, such love! It does this moms heart good to see my children want to be close to each other. Hmm, maybe they're just trying to smoosh Jason to smitherins?

This was taken Sunday, Jan 27 when Matt and Raquel came over after Stake conference for lunch, and to spend the afternoon.

Mission Accomplished - or at least started!

As of Jan 16, 2008 Ryan is a missionary! Actually, he was set apart the night before, but he entered the MTC on the 16th. And actually, it wasn't even the MTC he entered. Because of a seminar going on at the MTC we saw him off at a chapel west of the BYU football stadium. After the orientation they bussed the missionaries up to the MTC. That was a little strange. So we went by the MTC the night before and took a few photos. It was cold! Thank goodness Evan brought Ryan a sweater so he'll be a little warmer. We're looking forward to his first email and letter home. He's not much for letting me know what's going on in his life so I'm hoping he'll be a good letter writer on his mission. He should be shipping off to Brazil in a couple weeks as soon as his visa comes.

It was good to see Evan and Blaire and mom and dad and get to spend a little time with them. We were planning on going through a live session at the Salt Lake temple, but it was closed. Ryan will get to go through the Provo temple each week. I think they also go through the Sao Paulo temple every week they've in the CTM there.