Tiana's Wedding

The bridemaids dresses were somewhat of challenge considering I had to sew a wide variety of sizes and 2 pregnant women (7 months)
Preston's sisters and Tiana's sisters supporting Preston. The view of the mountains at the Pointe was spectacular.
My sister Leslie the chocolate lover. The Van Dykes put on a catered dinner at their church building.
It's fun having a wedding in Utah when you live in CO. I got to see my cousin Jeff. His house was next to ours where I grew up and we all hung out in a gang of cousins and rode dirt bikes.
Tiana's strategy was to wear old sweats and no makeup for three days so she'd look really amazing to Preston at the wedding. She was going for the big contrast effect. Here she's just done my hair.
Aussie sees Celeste for the first time in 2 years and says "Dang Celeste, you've been busy"
There were some pretty good views at the reception center, both inside and out.
Hmmm. Isn't a chocolate fountain supposed to flow cascades of chocolate? This looks like ????

Oh my goodness! Austin is Home!

He's here. He's really here. Minus a few teeth---but taller and better. We picked him up from the airport on Friday the 6th. So confident and mature. Where did that little boy we sent out go? He couldn't get over the mountains on the way home from the airport.....how beautiful they are......He's still a big goofball.....but now he's a spiritual man with goals and agendas. At one point I was making dinner in the kitchen HE CAME IN TO HELP ME and when were done, he said, "What should I do now.?" It's like he's trying to schedule every moment and make it count. It was amazing. And he finishes a lot of sentences with "aye"

Celeste's Month Long Visit.

Brad and Celeste have been here for a month. I think it's different when you know you only have a month with a grown child and then they go away for years to far away Maryland.......
almost every day she and I and Danica get together and do something.
First, as you know, we all went to Costa Rica without the grand babies.
Then we had a baby shower and wedding shower for her and Tiana combined
We went swimming a few times at the rec center
Then Brad finished up his first draft of his Thesis and flew to Illinois to visit with the Professor in charge and then drive their car to Maryland.
Then we went to the aquarium
And the stock show
Sledding at Lonesome Pine Park in Acres green

We have been shopping for her new baby boy due April 7
Then we went to the Children s Museum

Wow, Children under 3 are very messy, demanding, noisy, and really, really cute and fun. I have decided it's good you have them when you are young because I feel really, really thankful to have had this time with them and really, really tired.

Costa Rica II

We were so relieved to actually get our boarding passes to Costa Rica, since we missed the flight last year by 24 hours and couldn't go.
Our first stop was Irazu, an inactive volcano. Here's the crater at the bottom and all our bottoms at the top.

The Manuel Antonio National Park has a gorgeous coastline and acres and acres of preserved jungle. Our guide pointed out lots of sloths. Tiana was particularly excited about the leaf cutter ants.
So, these faces are awake and happy, but most of the 7 hour trip in the Nissan Van from Manuel Antonio to our rented house near Domical were spent trying to find a comfortable position to sleep.
Large foreign animals and plants in the jungle spooked Tiana somewhat. This coati is a relative to the racoon and would join us when we bought at fruit stands to get hand outs. The pineapple, bananas, mango, papya, grapes and blackberries were extraordinary. We gave him our passionfruit because that was like slimey Worf-food.Then we did the zip line where you wear this gear and race accross a cable high up above the Jungle canopy.This is the nice new air conditioned house Mark rented for us. It had it's own private pool and was right on the beach. At night you could hear the waves. It was like a little bit of heaven. No...a whole lot of heaven.

Tiana and Preston made good use of the beach at sunset time.The rest of us made good use of the beach during high tide. The boogey boarding was really great, except for the flesh eating rocks.

Our Last Great Family Px

Hmm, thinking back on 2008. I've had a full year of teaching 8 sections of on ground college psychology and human growth and development and 16 sections of Psych, Art History and Ethics for the online school. I worked at LDS Family services and did counseling most the year, then Dec. 1 I started a private practice. Counseling there was great although they paid poorly and it restored my confidence in my ability to do therapy. Now Mark and I are empty nesters I sit around sad and languishing and missing my kids...unable to get motivated NOT! This year I did 3 new things and I'm truly happiest when I get to see Danica's 2 kids. She only lives 10 minutes away. They come over at least 1x a week, but they have to make an appointment.... he he he.
This star was px might be our best and our last.

Tiana's Bridal Photo's

Tiana had her bridal photo's done. Wow. Does she look happy or what? She got some good gene's from Mark. I'm so proud of her. She's beautiful inside and out. You can see the other photo's shot at sunset at the old mental health hospital in Provo on the photographer's web page
http://eltonfilmandimages.blogspot.com/
And it's a 2fer1: I get another great-son-law from a wonderful family in the deal.

Classes are over for the semester. What a wonderful bunch of students I had this time. I enjoyed them immensely. This week, I had 3 clients in my new counseling practice. I was only locked out of the office 1x. Now, I'm helping Mark put up lights for Christmas and cleaning the Ford and the Lexus to sell them this week (hopefully). We got Mark a new AWD Murano (well it has 40K miles on it) for the snowy Colorado mountains. Speaking of snow and mountains, we were stranded near Breckenridge on I-70 on Sunday night last week. Luckily, Grand Timer had a 2 bedroom unit for the night an we got to sit in the hot tub with the McDonald's instead of sitting on the freeway for an additional 8 hours. There was no way Lily and JJ could have done another 8 hours with their mom and dad in their van.

A Week in Provo

I got to play with Sammy and Lucas in Utah. Sammy went wild with the 2 light sabers and his Yoda costume. I put on Darth Vader and we choreographed a few light saber battles. He is really a fun 4.5 year old. We took the family picture of all star wars in Bryce's neighbor's house. He had converted his garage into a photo studio with a big piece of black paper. He took one family at a time and then photo shopped us all together. That way he got better little kid faces and we only needed two light sabers and 1 Han Solo blaster gun.
Andrew got his eagle and the Hogan family showed up for the celebration. Also his mom and Jo. We saw most all my family the Hogan's last week in Utah. There were 60 people at my Sister's house. My dad has cancer and all the men gave him a blessing. I'm really worried about my mom if he goes.
Got the sincere and extreme pleasure of going shopping with my last lovely daughter to pick out her wedding dress. Tiana knew she wanted this one and only this one when she saw it on the mannequin. It's a french style dress, with sleeves she can move her arms in! We met Preston's mom and dad and they are lovely, active, wonderful people. They insisted on having her reception at the Pointe which overlooks the whole Salt Lake Valley. We are quite excited about this.
I also helped Tiana pick out bridesmaids dresses. I say that loosely. Tiana really knows what she wants and I just witness the tornado. She really loves Elder VanDyke. They are kissey, huggy smothery touchy all the time. It’s fun to see how happy they are and absolutely smitten.

Horse Riding Lessons

I graduated up to the paint quarter horse Shadow yesterday. He's a beaut. He loves to run and we did our trail ride through the cottonwoods just before sunset. The muted yellows and ochres of late fall were extraordinary. Here's a photo of a similar looking horse, except Shadow had his winter coat coming in and was really soft and shaggy. Someday, I hope to have a horse for every day of the week- A white Arabian for Sunday, A Palomino for Monday, etc. And I'll have a paint quarter horse for Tuesday and call him Hildalgo. That would be heaven. Maybe I'll have to wait for heaven :)

Mt. Bike to the top of the world

It was one of the last warm sunny Sundays. We found a trail that took us to the top of the world. Well, the top of Highlands Ranch anyway. It was the only time this week I haven't felt worried and conflicted about starting a private counseling practice. Am on day 20 of sobriety from sugar (special occasions exempted) Got to speak to most the Bishops, RS Presidents and YW presidents in the Denver Area this last Tuesday on Depression through LDS family services.

I Love FALL!

This was taken on Monday. Oh my goodness! It's so beautiful outside. Look at this tree! I planted this Autumn Blaze Maple 13 years ago when we first moved into the house.
This was Friday the 17th.
And this last one is 5 days later. For the beauty of the earth! And here's a px of our bike ride up to the top of the bluff. You can see the beautiful mountains and Highlands Ranch. Notice that a few other people have these red maples in their yards too! It was a perfect fall day.

Weekend with Celeste & Tiana

Celeste brought Brooklyn and Tiana brought Preston Van Dyke over on the plane to visit us this weekend. Dad took Preston to play racquetball. And strangely enough Preston wants to play again at Thanksgiving when we go to Utah. We took all the grand babies to the Natural History Museum. The foam blocks in the the discovery room were a big hit with wild Jensen.


Lily was sleepy during our swim at the rec center. Bryce and Marcia, Sam and Lucas couldn't come because Bryce is trying to make up lost time at his job after his surgery. We missed them!
Tiana felt compelled to cut and color our hair and then clean cobwebs off the light fixtures. Celeste organized all my pantry. I love having these girls visit. They make things beautiful!

We had macaroni grill style italian food and played scattergories (Dad and I won) and apples to apples (Preston won) Preston also scored points by doing lots of dishes and holding lots of babies.

Brooklyn loved sitting on Danica, Tiana and Preston's laps.
Even though Celeste is pregnant and tired she is still fun. Brooklyn likes constant mommy attention. Only 3 weeks and Brooklyn gets to go into the nursery at church. Brooklyn has her own little language which doesn't comprise many actual words but is very effective and sometimes rather shrill.
Brooklyn and JJ are fearless in the water. They don't seem to mind if water gets in their faces, they just keep exploring and going, going, going.

The cousins at the rec center.
JJ still loves his Thomas trains at Gwamma and Gwammpa's house.