Wonderful Weekend

This weekend we took a quick trip up to Oregon for my cousin, Jesse, and his beautiful wife, Amanda's, wedding celebration. This is a picture of my GQ cousin Jesse shortly before the ceremony began. I'm so mad at myself that I didn't get any pictures of Amanda because she looked stunning! This is a picture of Ashilene in her SnugRider CarSeat/Stroller during the lovely outdoor ceremony. She loved looking up at the trees. I am so grateful that she was so quiet and content during the beautiful ceremony. Sadly, she was extremely fussy during the reception, especially when it was time for Rojohn and I to sing "I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing." My dear mother and Aunt Kim had to take Ashilene far away during our song because she was crying so loud. I think being in her car seat for the six hour drive really got to her.

This picture of Ashilene and Rojohn with my sister, GayLynn, and her son, Jonah, cracks me up. As you can see, Ashilene is still rather cranky. In the picture it looks like she is about to hit Jonah and Jonah appears to be thinking, "Hey, what did I do?" Too funny! Can you believe that Ashilene is 3 months younger than Jonah?! They are practically the same size already! My baby girl is growing up too fast!



We were so grateful to be able to stay with our good friends, Steve and Julie, on this trip. We knew them in the Bay Area when Steve was the Temple Pageant President and Julie was one of the Artistic Directors that mentored me before I had the opportunity to direct Temple Pageant. They moved to Oregon a few years ago and we've really missed them. We loved staying in their beautiful home. They were excellent hosts. We also had the opportunity to sing a couple songs from Pageant for their sacrament meeting. Steve, Julie, Rojohn and I sang "Who am I?" and Rojohn sang "I Would Exhort You." It was SO wonderful to sing Pageant music again. I am SO very grateful for all the incredible memories and testimony building experiences I have from my time in Temple Pageant and sincerely hope that it comes back in time for Ashilene to have some testimony building experiences of her own through Pageant. Our trip ended much too quickly and Ashilene had to endure another 6 hour drive home in her dreaded car seat. She was SO relieved when she got to get out of the car for our gas stop!