Happy 18th Birthday Christian!

Christian turned 18 on Friday, May 8. We were gone to the funeral that day so we're celebrating tonight. I can't believe he's 18 already! EEK! These are some of my fave pictures of him:

After the funeral

The Tree of Life was lit on Dain's grandmother's honor on Friday evening. This tree is only lit on special occasions and a couple of doctors gave a generous donation to the hospital on her behalf and the tree was lit. It was beautiful and an incredible honor to Grandma Atkin and her life.

Dain's mom with her brothers Scott and Dale. Grandpa Atkin is in front.
All the Atkin cousins
Dain and his grandfather
Pall bearers during grave dedication

Ellen Lyman Atkin

Dain's grandma died Sunday morninng. She was a lovely lady! Her grandfather settled Blanding, Utah, and there is a Lyman visitors center which explains the history. Very cool to visit. She will be missed. Funny lady who loved to shoot cats. You can see her obituary here.
I took this picture of her during a family picnic in Green Valley.
Here she is with her son Scott to our left, her husband who is still alive, and her son Dale to the right. Her son Curtis died almost 10 years ago.

Sports and Music Saturday

Saturday, while Emi was gone with the YW, I went with Dain while he played charity softball to raise money for the Snowdrop Foundation. That evening, we went to Christian's guitar recital. He sang and played a song he wrote. SO amazing.

DMB

Friday night was our yearly DMB concert. It rocked, as usual. LeRoi was missed but they had a couple of stand-ins.

Seattle

On the way home from Hawaii, we got to spend some time in Seattle. We took a redeye from Oahu and got into Seattle at 6 a.m. We rented a car and went to Pike Market for breakfast and then drove to our favorite Seattle overlook to get a picture of the city. It was so clear that day we even got pictures of Mt. Rainier. The world's first Starbucks.
See Mt. Rainier to the right of the city???

Hawaii Part III

It was such a cool trip. We hiked a ton. One day, we did an 8 mile hike on the Na Pali coast to a waterfall (both pictured above). We kayaked into the ocean. We spent one day on Oahu visiting friends who made this guava cake for Dain. On the way home, our flight was delayed so we ended up spending half a day in Seattle. I'll do a separate Seattle post.

Hawaii Part II

Some random pix. This first one is the sunrise from our lanai.

Overlook to Na Pali from the Waimea Canyon. We actually hiked a couple of miles around the rim to the top of a cliff. Pretty cool.

Top of Waimea Canyon

Hanalei Taro fields

Aloha Birthday -- Part I

April 13 was Dain's birthday and we decided to celebrate it in Hawaii. He thinks he was meant to be born in a Polynesian family and ended up on the wrong continent. ha ha ha. We've been to Hawaii many times and this was our third trip to Kauai. We explored and explored and did some things we love there and found new places to enjoy.
On the lanai after a long flight ...

Land! I see land! Honolulu where we transferred to Lihue

Long flights have this effect on Dain.

Blue Bonnets

Our yearly pilgrimage to see the blue bonnets ...

Alyssa

Alyssa was asked to sit for pictures to be published in some Aggie publication. Isn't she beautiful?? As the mom, I'm biased and I think she looks very pretty!


Here she is with "the Erin", as we call her at home. Erin and Alyssa have been good friends since about 6th grade!

My mini trip to Utah

I decided on a quick trip to Utah to visit my office and to attend a family party. I got there Thursday so I went straight to the slopes! They got 12 inches of new snow the night before so I wanted to ski some fresh powder. I took this picture of myself on the lift.

I was happy to have Alyssa come down from Logan to spend time with me. It was fun to see her! Some mommy-daughter time.

This is my sister Lee (now she wants me to call her by her real name, Lina). It's hard to change after all these years!!! We had crazy time together. She and I met Thursday night for sushi. We also invited my best friend, D'Ann, and our former sister in law Mary. Lee and Mary both have March birthdays so this was a little celebration.

Friday night was the party! There was a ton of food and karaoke. My dad LOVES to sing (and has a beautiful voice too) so he spent quite a while singing Elvis (his hero) songs. I ate and ate and ate. So good. It was great to see family and friends, some of whom I hadn't seen in years.

My family. One of my brothers didn't make it (he lives in Calif).

Fighter Pilot for a Day

Dain gave me a gift certified to do dog fights and aerobatics and be a fighter pilot for a day. So I turned around and bought a certificate for him and took him along. We flew this past Saturday. It was SO cool! We pulled major G's as we looped and did wing overs and fought each other in the skies over Galveston Bay. We have a video but we need to transfer formats. So here are some pictures. Of all things we did, the hardest was flying formation! We each got to sit left seat and actually fly the plane. It was intimidating at first but once we got into it, I forgot myself and enjoyed the moment. My first attempt pulled 2 G's and worked my way up to 5 G's. Dain got closer to 6 G's. Wicked!

Spring Break

We've had a leisurely Spring Break this year. Rodeo gave us much to do. We went to concerts, made cookies, celebrated Emi's birthday (see previous post), visited my cousin Mike and his new baby Will, went shopping, ate out, just had a great time!
Rascal Flatts was actually the previous week.

HMMMM, this is my eye candy. Dain likes Nicole so we're even. :-)

Happy Birthday EMI!!!!

Emi is 14 today ... on St. Patrick's day. I call her my "green baby". 14!!!!! Oh, where does time go? She was a premie, 2 months early. Weighed 3 lbs 11 oz, 18" long. She was beautiful then and even more beautiful now.

Here she is with her friend Paige. I'm taking these two to see Keith Urban tonight!

With me, on Sunday, baking cookies.

She was SO excited to meet Jewel last year ...

Dain's Commercial Pilot Test

Dain passed his written commercial pilot's test!!!! Hooray!!!