It takes a village

We were sad to see the Wright family move on to greener pastures in Utah this week.  Both Nathan and Rebecca served as youth leaders for our kids--and they were amazing!  I'm thankful for good people, like the Wrights, who love our kids and set powerful, righteous examples for them.  Looking back over the years, we have been greatly blessed by many, many neighbors, teachers, friends, and church family here in Ridgecrest who have taken an interest in Rhiannon and Wade and encouraged them.  

Here's another recent example, from our bishop, Ephraim Washburn, who is also one of Wade's cross country coaches:

He is a busy man, with a busy family, job, and calling, and it meant a lot that he'd take a moment to reach out to Wade, who really needed that pick-me-up.  Cross country has not been easy for him, but we're proud of him for sticking with it!

A few days after that, Rhiannon got a little envelope in the mail from a sweet lady in our ward, Connie Roberts, who wrote about how much she'd appreciated Rhiannon's impromptu testimony at a special stake conference last Sunday.  Rhiannon immediately called her on the phone to express her gratitude for the thoughtful note, and said they both got a little teary-eyed and that the ensuing conversation with Sister Roberts made her feel like a million bucks.

There are more--Sister Decker, Rhiannon's new seminary teacher, who spoiled the class with pancakes on Friday morning, to neighbors giving jobs to Wade and paying him very generously, to everyone's interest in Rhiannon's college plans, for Scout leaders who compliment Wade openly and express their gratitude to him for his example.

And on and on.  We are very grateful for our kids and so happy to have the help and encouragement of good people as these two grow up!

Just like that

We are starting to experience the full-blown teenage years, where our kids start to spend LOTS more time with friends.

It happened out of nowhere, just like that.

Last night I dropped Rhiannon off, by herself, in this sea of teenagers, so she could watch her high school's homecoming football game with friends.  She had a TOTAL blast and kept texting me highlights from the game.  The funniest one said something like, "I think I'm getting into football!"  Almost every weekend she's been gone to a birthday party or a movie night or "kick-the-can" fun at the park.

Then today Wade went to an out-of-town birthday party with a couple friends to an indoor trampoline park called Skyzone in Riverside.  Gone from 9AM to later tonight, and he is having the TIME OF HIS LIFE.  I'll need to thank his friend's family profusely later for spoiling our son with this fun day!  (and not think about my own debilitating fear of trampolines, haha!)

So almost overnight, our weekends have changed a little bit, driving kids here,there, and everywhere.  Thankfully Jason and I have a few friends of our own--we're going to a game night with friends tonight.

And thankfully, we still have plenty of times when we are all home together, basking in a quiet evening of absolutely no commitments, appointments, games, or activities, haha! :)

Life is good!

A gift that keeps on giving

Early in the summer the nice, expensive, $600 waterfall pump in our front yard gave up the ghost, and so we've had the water features turned off for months.  A few fish died and the rest were hanging on for dear life, grateful for the water we added by hose every day to add oxygen to the ponds.

Jason had a friend look at the pump, and he didn't have any luck.  And we were enjoying the lower electric bill, too, so finally last week we made the decision to fill in the ponds.  We needed to find homes for the fish first, though.  Wade was devastated, saying he didn't want us to be "fish murderers," and he wasn't too impressed with my "whatever happens, happens" attitude.  The fish were cool, but we didn't have to feed them, we never interacted with them.  To me they were just ornaments in the pond.  Not so for Wade.

So I did what everyone does in Ridgecrest--I searched one of our local Facebook seeking/for sale pages and followed up with a person interested in fish for their pond.  

The response was immediate and after a few days this really nice couple, Matt and Julia, showed up and went fishing for about an hour, collecting as many fish as they possibly could from our ponds.

I have this suspicion that Matt and Julia may be superheroes, running around in broad daylight and saving the universe one fish pond at a time, like Bruce Wayne or Clark Kent.  They were classy, classy folks, came dressed like they were going on a safari, and were SO kind and GRATEFUL for the fish we were just giving away.  They were good at catching those fish, too!  They just had this aura of being super, super cool and I felt lucky to meet them and be around them.

That night Julia sent me a picture of the "fish release" party they had at their ranch.  They'd invited neighbors and friends over and were so excited!  I told them how happy they'd made our son by giving the fish a good home, and they said we could come over some time to say hello to them.  

Then tonight we got this in the mail, this teeny tiny envelope full of good stuff:

People like this make the world a happy place!