Spring Break College Campus Tour!

Last week we took off for three days and visited some college campuses for our family Spring Break trip.  We piled in the lovely, speedy Infiniti Q50S, with Jason driving, and checked out Fresno State, UC Davis, and University of Nevada at Reno.

We had a blast!  Enjoy the photo tour!

Fresno State:  We enjoyed this campus a lot more than we thought we would!
We also had a FANTASTIC lunch across the street from the campus at the Dog House Grill. 

Fresno State

Fresno State.  We also stopped by the LDS institute building there--
the institute director, Brother Russell, took some time with us, and we really appreciated it!

Jason drove to the LDS temple and Institute building in every city we stopped at--fun!
This is the Fresno LDS Temple.

UC Davis was a drive north from Fresno.  We stayed the night in Vacaville and then joined a morning tour at UC Davis.  The campus was stunningly beautiful!  Our tour guide was an energetic 2nd-year student who had already spent a few months studying abroad in Italy.  One interesting thing about UC Davis is its quarter system, as opposed as to semesters, meaning you cover a semester-long class in 10 weeks!  Whew!  There are definitely pros and cons to that!

After the tour we walked through campus to "downtown Davis" and had lunch at The Habit.
The walk was amazing--we were strolling past redwood trees!

UC Davis was the most expensive school we visited, but it's amazing!

UC Davis

We had good luck at the UC Davis LDS institute building, too, and talked to the director Brother Edmonds there.
He said the institute building was a converted frat house--so funny!!!

Sacramento LDS temple--the grounds were beautiful, too!

I80 to Reno--LOTS of snow!!

Beautiful drive

I80

We were spoiled with some really good eating on this trip!  

We stayed the night in Reno, Nevada and Jason took us up to the Reno LDS temple after dinner.  

We love these kids!

Reno sunset

The next morning we drove to the Nevada campus (Ridgecrest friends warned us that you say "NEVADA," never UNR or Reno, ha-ha!  Rhiannon and I had incorrectly assumed that there weren't tours available since it was Spring Break for their campus, too.  We got REALLY lucky and joined a large group for a 10 am tour.  Michelle was our lovely tour guide--a California native with a good perspective on what it's like for an out-of-state student.  She also mailed Rhiannon a postcard this week with a handwritten note on it--awesome!

One thing I really liked about this tour was its slower pace.  Not only did we get to see the state-of-the-art knowledge center (library), the brand-new rec building, and other obviously cool sites on campus, but Michelle also showed us quirky, campus-tradition things, like this statue.  During finals students pay "homage" to this statue and lay pencils, scantrons, and other goodies at the feet of it.  So funny!

The graffiti staircase--set aside for that purpose

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Graffiti staircase

Rhiannon liked the campus a whole bunch!!

We weren't able to go inside because it was closed and there was a painting project going on, but, like the other two campuses, it was really neat to see how close it was to campus.
This one was RIGHT across the street from the newest dorms

It was a wonderful trip!  We enjoyed being together, eating well, seeing beautiful parts of California and Nevada that we'd never seen before, and taking it easy.

Rhiannon was very happy to SEE these campuses in person.  She has some exciting decisions to make in the next few months!

night sky with the boy.

Jason and Rhiannon were off tonight--he to a fun retirement party for a friend, and she to a long drum line practice.  So Wade and I pigged out on junk food and watched a few Office shows (yes, re-runs of re-runs), and then he started playing a video game and I read a couple posts from a new blog I like called Hands Free Mama.

After reading her most recent post, about her family's final goodbye to her husband's grandfather, something snapped inside me.  The author also posted a line from a new Ed Sheeran song--"a life with love is a life that's been lived."   I almost threw my phone across the room and ran outside.  The sun had just set.  I moved some chairs around and invited Wade to come join me.

And for a few minutes, it was just me and the boy, and the lovely night sky changing to darker shades of blue and then black, talking about Drake the rap star and clean song versions and a favorite date that Jason and I did doing a similar activity (watching the night sky) and how our stake president had taken a photo of the Milky Way the other evening, visible in our desert sky.  Oh, and how the first album I ever bought was Whitney Houston's debut album, on cassette tape, and I listened to it over and over and over again and memorized the whole thing.  In my dorky-mom way, I tried to let that boy of ours know that I understood how important music was to him, too.

It was just a moment.  But it made my heart sing with love for Wade and the gratitude I feel being his mom.

Blue Angels at the China Lake Air Show!!!

Yesterday we went to the China Lake Air Show here in town.  It was a BIG DEAL for our little desert community, especially since it had been over 20 years since the Blue Angels had last come to Ridgecrest.  We got on base early Saturday morning and were impressed at all the efforts made to accommodate big crowds--there were many, many volunteers, desert areas cleared for parking lots, incredible publicity for the event, food booths everywhere, and on and on.

Security was pretty tight, as expected, but we were surprised that we couldn't even bring the bags for our camping chairs.  We carried the chairs around all morning, but were sure glad we brought them when we ended up sitting for 4 hours for the air show display!

The flying expertise of the performers was insane, watching them cross over and loop and scream past us flying low.  We loved it!!!

Family prayer blessings

At church today we had a lesson about prayer during our women's meeting.  The teacher was very sweet and mentioned our family as she taught about family prayer, saying that she could tell we made that a priority, that our teenagers were really good kids.  I "kept it real" and laughed about kicking both Rhiannon and Wade out of the house one afternoon this week because they were being annoying and crabby to each other, but I appreciated the teacher's comment so much.

We're not perfect, but I'm grateful for those habits that we've attached importance to, such as family prayer morning and night.  Just this morning Wade offered the prayer and asked Heavenly Father to "please bless Rhiannon not to freak out about playing the organ today."  It was a short, sweet prayer that meant a LOT to Rhiannon (who ended up doing a FANTASTIC job playing all four hymns during sacrament meeting.)

Wade rocks it at a math competition

Back in February Wade participated in a HUGE math competition in Bakersfield called Math Counts.  He'd attended a math club at his middle school nearly every Monday afternoon for months to prepare for it.  I drove him and a friend, Ben, to the campus of CSUB, where he met up with other kids from his school and his math club sponsors and did some hard math for a few hours.  His hard work paid off!  Wade's team got 5th place out of 12, and he found out a few weeks after that about his individual achievement--he tied for 22nd place out of over 120 students.  We were pretty excited about this!!!!

I was especially grateful because I'd not been excited about traveling to Bakersfield that day because of the crazy weather, covering a large area of the state.  This was the map I woke up to very early that morning:

And the weather on the way home was some of the scariest I've driven through in my entire life.  But it was WORTH it for Wade!!!

Proud of our mathlete! WAY TO GO, WADE!!! 

Love that smile on his face!!

A new driver in the house!

Monday was a wonderful day for Rhiannon.  I went with her to the DMV here in Ridgecrest and waited while she signed papers and got her driving test done.  After about 10-15 minutes she walked back in the building with a smile on her face and a thumbs up--hurray!  She said she'd missed three small things and felt confident through the whole thing.

Two days after that Dad got her put on our auto insurance, and she was ready to drive on her own!  She got a parking space at the high school and has driven herself to seminary and school and home again for two days now.  

Yesterday I asked her how she was feeling about it all, and I felt similar feelings when she said, "It still feels a little unreal."  After 6+ months of driving with her a few times a day, it's an odd feeling to realize that she doesn't need us for that now.  She also feels the weight of the privilege and expectations for being able to drive Dad's car (no, it's not hers.)  We are excited to watch her growing independence and appreciate the good choices she's made so far!

Here in California teenagers have two big restrictions for a year after they get their license--they can't drive with anyone younger than 20 (alone) and have a driving curfew--they can't drive from 11 pm to 5 am.  Hopefully those months will fly by!

WAY TO GO, Rhiannon!!!  What a big accomplishment and rite of passage!!!

Success!!

We saw her driving instructor, Steve, on the way out of the DMV that day.  We appreciated his efforts with Rhiannon!

Here we go!!!!