Last night was McCall's 4th grade program. They sang, talked and square danced. It was all about Utah history. In my opinion it went about 30 minutes too long, cause there's just so much square dancing you can watch from a bad seat, but I think most of the kids enjoyed performing. Zane had a hard time seeing them because of all the heads in front of us, and I told him to go and sit on the floor up front, but he didn't want to go by himself. Finally I saw my friend Elise, and she was on the front row, so I told him to go sit with her. After it was all done, she told us that when the square dancing song said 'grab your honey' he asked her why he kept saying 'grab your hiney'. LOL!:) Funny boy:)

I love this picture of him! He is so photogenic:)

Today is Norway's Independence Day - Gratulerer med Dagen! Hipp Hurra for 17.mai! I love living here in the US and I can't imagine living anywhere else, but there are days like today that I wish I had the power of Superman and I could just take off and spend some time in Norway. It's a lot of fun to be there for this celebration. There are kids parades and certain school's get to go in a parade in downtown Oslo to go in front of the palace and wave to the king and queen and their families, and you can eat as much hot dogs and ice cream and Popsicles as you want and there are games and fun in different places. The school bands walk in their own neighborhoods at 6 am to wake everyone up to get ready for the day, and as a teenager I always thought they could skip that part. As an adult however, I kind of miss that. No, that doesn't mean that I want anyone to come and do that outside my window now, but it does have a certain charm to it. Yes, being in Norway for this occasion is fun. They try to do something similar to celebrate here in Utah the first Saturday after the 17th, but let's face it - It falls short in comparison to the real thing, way, waaaaaaay short!

While I have been on here writing, my brother Michael in Norway called on skype, so I was able to talk with him and my sister in-law, Helene and their kids. My mom was there with them, and that was a nice surprise to see and talk with her as well:) It seems like they have all had a great day, but I know, even without them saying anything that it would have been a PERFECT day if I was there! LOL!;-} Oh dear, anyway - I wish all my family and friends a spectacular day and night and maybe sometime soon we can be there again for this fun day:)

This last Saturday we went down to Sandy to help celebrate Derick's grandma's 90th birthday. It's his only living grandparent, and it's nice to be able to see her when we can. It was fun to see all the aunts, uncles and cousins we usually only get to see whenever there's a wedding or a funeral. It's a shame that those are the only occasions we get together. You know we don't see a lot of each other when one of Derick's cousins said that he had no idea that Derick's brother Cary has a 14 year old daughter! Lol:)

OK, I guess I need to write here about the thing I mentioned last time. It's nothing earth shattering, but it's a big deal to us. Derick has a new job! Well, he is still working for Marriott, but he gave his 2 weeks notice and he is exiting that job sometime next week. I believe it will be a good thing for him, and we are excited. I can't say that though, without saying how incredibly blessed we have felt for him being able to have had the job that he has had. He was able to take a whole month off with pay last year when we went through all that we went through with Jake, and they have been very nice in other ways as well, so it is a little sad, but it's something that has needed to be done for a while.

Yesterday a lady from American Monument came to our house, and we have finally ordered a head stone for Jake's grave. It is just a simple head stone without any fuss, and we are happy with it. She said that it would be delivered sometime between now and July 31st, and they would let us know when so that we can be there when they put it up. A lot of people have asked me where his grave is, cause they have gone there and not been able to find it, but in not so long you will:) I miss him.

I forgot to write about this: Last week McCall ran into (and I mean it literally) a friend of his and got a black eye and a concussion! They ran into each other, but McCall got the worst of it. I didn't really think anything of it, cause he came home and said that he had gotten a goose egg, it was above his right eye. Well, as anyone with kids know, this happens, so like I said I didn't think anything of it, until later that evening. We had my brother and sister in-law over and I told McCall to come and eat some dinner. Well, he took one look at it and decided to throw up, but not like when you have a bug, it was just a little. After a while he was able to eat something. He threw up again later on and then that was it. We weren't sure if we should take him in and get him checked out or not, but we decided against it, cause what would they really tell us? Yeah, he has a concussion, wake him up every so often and that's it. I did wake him up every hour from 10:30 until 3:30 and he only made us worried once when he couldn't remember his birthday. He could tell us his name and how old he was and Zane's birthday, but he had to say all the months of the year before he could tell us his own birthday. He was fine the day after, but I kept him home from school just in case. The next day you could really tell he had a black eye, and the day after that it looked even worse. It doesn't bother him, though, which is good.

I am done writing for now. I had a lot to write this time, which just goes to show that some days and weeks are dull and other days and weeks can be very eventful:) I hope you all have a wonderful and uneventful day;-}

I am home alone. I look out my kitchen window and it's very dark over the mountains toward the north, and when I look out my living room window it looks more like just an overcast day. There's even a patch of blue showing, and that makes me optimistic that it just might win over the darker clouds. A girl can only hope for nicer days with no rain for a while and the sun to shine for longer than a day at a time. I guess it will come soon enough, and I will enjoy every minute of it:)

Derick came home a week ago yesterday and we were all excited for that! He had a good time, but he is glad he doesn't have to make that trip on a regular basis. The school must have gotten really cheap tickets, cause they flew from here to Denver, from there to Dulles in Washington DC, then onto Senegal and then to arrive in Johannesburg. From Dulles to Senegal is 9 hours and from there to Johannesburg is another 8 hours! That's a looooooong time! They also went to Cape Town, which is another 2 hours flight from Johannesburg. CRAZY! Maybe they should have spent a couple hundred dollars more on each ticket so that they didn't have to travel like that, but then I guess tuition would have been more, since that's where they got the money from. Anyway, it's behind us now, and I for one am SO happy to have him home!:)

We celebrated Mother's Day here on Sunday - Happy belated Mother's Day to all you wonderful women! It really shouldn't be called just mother's day, cause there are plenty of incredible women everywhere that don't have that opportunity. We went and saw Derick's mother's on Saturday, so that we could just stay home and enjoy on Sunday, which we did:) Derick knows that I have wanted a nativity set for a while and they have an annual Creche exhibit here in Midway every December, with nativity scenes from all around the world. My favorite are always the ones from Africa and Asia, so what he got me for Mother's day was a nativity scene from Africa made out of banana leafs! It is awesome and I love it! The kids made me cards and they are so cute:)

Our car has decided to give us more grief. Lucky us, right? Hopefully one of these days it will be fixed and I can do what I need to do during the day and not have to wait for Derick to come home from work;-} I am thankful that we even have a car, it's just such an inconvenience when it stops working, like every other mechanical or electrical thing...

I came across this while I was reading the Ensign from April today, and I want to share it:
A prominent American judge was asked what we as citizens of the countries of the world could do to reduce crime and disobedience to law and to bring peace and contentment into our lives and into our nations. He carefully replied, 'I would suggest a return to the old-fashioned practice of family prayer.'

Looking out the window again, it looks like the blue sky is all gone, but it isn't raining, and I am glad!

I hope that the next time I write here I can have some good news about something that I can't write about yet, if I don't I probably won't mention it. How's that for suspense??? The kids are gonna be home soon, so maybe I should make it look like I actually did something today;-}