Goodbye Morgan!

It's official! My parents are completely packed and moved out of their lovely home in Morgan, UT. This has been a wonderful place for them to live for the past 20 years and I am filled with gratitude for the safe and good space this was for them and for my family. We've always known that the plan was for them to retire to Wyoming and honestly - the last year or two has been really hard for them. First my dad was spending a lot of time in Wyoming with my Grandpa Walker while my mom was here in Morgan with my Grandma Knowles. Then after Grandpa Walker passed away, my dad was still spending about half of the week in Lyman caring for the ranch and all of the things that entails then coming home and caring for this home, too. It was a lot. They handled it and I'm so glad that they will be living in the same house full time again. There is a lot of work to do in Wyoming, but it's exciting to have this new phase of our family's life ahead of us. 


I have been spending a lot of time here over the past month or so, as soon as my parents decided that it was time to list the house on the market. We've been cleaning out rooms, packing up the storage room, taking down pictures, patching walls, etc.. It's SO much work to move! The kids have been a great help and it's been nice to spend so much time here. This weekend I came up by myself to help with the last of the packing and in preparation for the big move on Saturday.

I woke up early Saturday morning and hiked the M one last time. (I mean, we will probably come back sometime/someday, right? My kids love this hike. But my last hike with my family living here.) I started out about 5:30 am in the dark with a tiny flashlight and made it to the top for the sunrise. I had some good quality thinking time and really enjoyed the solo hike. 

Here are some things that I thought about: 1) How starting a night hike is kind of like having faith - one step in front of the other, depending on your tiny flashlight to guide your way. But with every step your confidence grows and the light around you steadily increases until you can barely remember when it was dark at all. The warmth and goodness that comes with the rising sun felt like a beautiful symbol of having faith while climbing the mountains and hills of my own life. 

2) I didn't love Morgan when I moved here. In fact, it may have taken me the full 20 years to truly appreciate Morgan City. However, looking back I am filled with gratitude for the blessings that came to me through the decision my family made to move here. It feels so good to be leaving this place with gratitude and love, even though my life here was not always easy. 

Goodbye, Morgan! Thank you for everything that you have given to my family - and especially for being such a wonderful place for my children to come and visit their grandparents. I love you in part because of how much they have loved you. 

Morgan Days

I almost put these pictures in our homeschool wrap-up because when you homeschool anything is learning and every experience adds together to build a well-rounded human (which is ultimately the goal of our homeschool). But also, sometimes you just have awesome grandparents that love you and do neat things with you and that's amazing in it's own right. 

We spend a couple of days in Morgan and it was filled with book reading with grandma and projects with grandpa. My dad got a set of leatherworking tools and he and Austin spent a good deal of time working on some simple leather projects. 

The kids begged him to pull out his old rockets, so they went to the park and shot off rockets - which was thrilling for them all. 

And here's the best story. Lydia got it into her head that she wanted to go fishing. She asked grandpa if he would take her in the morning, knowing that he had a busy day the following day. He said teasingingly "If you get up at 3:00 in the morning and come wake me up, I'll take you fishing." We all laughed and saw his statement for what it was - an impossible scenario that prevented him from having to say "no" while still saying "no". Which is what it was until 2:45 in the morning when Lydia woke me up in the basement saying that she was going to go and wake grandpa up to take her fishing. I was so tired, but tried to explain to her that she couldn't actually go wake grandpa up. I ended up trying to soothe her while she cried while staying firm that she couldn't go wake grandpa up. After an hour, she realized she was past her window and she finally fell asleep. When I told my dad the next morning, he immediately pulled out his fishing gear and took that sweet girl fishing in the little river by the park in Morgan. They didn't catch anything, but Lydia had the time of her life. And my dad got a gold star for holding up his end of the bargain. 

I haven't written much about this, but my grandma is now living with my parents. After Grandpa Knowles passed away, they sold Grandma's house and now she's in Morgan full-time. Its been an adjustment for all of them but we LOVE having Grandma Knowles there whenever we go visit. I love that I get to spend more time with her and I love that my kids know her and love her. 

Yay for days in Morgan! 

Walker Pumpkin Carving Party

It's that time of year again - the annual Walker/Oliver Pumpkin carving party. 

Unfortunately this year the party lacked the energetic Oliver spirit. We missed them very much but thought of them often. We said "We should skype with them" like ten times at least - but we didn't make it happen. I wish that we would have. It would have been the perfect way to complete the day. However, we carried on the tradition and had a great time. 

Earlier in the day we decided that we wanted to play some games so we went to the game closet to get some cards. Somehow (I think that I probably initiated this, but I don't remember) we decided that instead of playing card games like we usually do that we would play some of the old board games that my parents had in the closet. Seriously, these games haven't been played in at least ten years and probably even longer than that. None of us kids have ever played them because they were adult games and then were super outdated when we were finally old enough to understand them. First game up was What-zit. It was actually really fun! Want a taste of what the game was like? 

They are word puzzles. Can you figure them out? Okay - I'll give you the answers. 

I got the SOS. one and was almost crying with laughter/frustration as David tried to help me. To him it was so obvious: Emergency Stop. But to me it was not happening. Everyone ended up trying to help and we all were yelling out things like "Help! Help period! Lost at sea! Help, I'm lost at sea!" Apparently those are all super common phrases (not). We also played "Can you Beat Ken?", which is a Jeopardy game and was really really hard and extremely boring. We ended up changing the rules to meet our needs until the game that we were played was nothing like the game we started with. We enjoyed it so much more when we knocked Ken over and made him watch from the sidelines.  

I love my family and love playing games with them. Our plan is to go through all of the old games and toss the ones we don't like and keep the ones that actually turn out to be really fun. 

We ended up carving pumpkins after Lydia went to bed (again) but I wanted to get a picture of her by the pile of pumpkins. I had it all set up in my head and knew that it was going to be the cutest picture. Lydia did not cooperate. She cried and cried and all of the pictures looked like this. *sigh* Oh well. 

When I handed her the little baby pumpkin she cheered up... and decided to see what it tasted like. 

After Lydia went to bed we got to work. Anything was fair game, power tools included.

We had a fun time carving and just spending time together. I love my family and feel very blessed to have each one of them in my life. 

Happy Pumpkin Carving everyone!

While David's away.... (in Kemmerer,WY)

I mentioned that David was gone the week before his birthday. He was in Kemmerer, Wyoming - and although I seriously considered going with David and just playing with Lydia in the hotel pool all day, we decided to save that "vacation" for somewhere a little more... exotic. 

Oh, and I was frantically trying to finish David's Aggie Quilt. It was a good thing that we were in Morgan because there was a whole lot of THIS going on during the week: 

It was so nice to be able to spend time with my parents. Plus, Lydia loved every second of playing with Dante. She's learned that I won't take her out to see the dog - but as soon as my mom or dad get home she immediately runs to them and points to the door. "Please take me out to see Dante grandma/grandpa! I've been waiting patiently all day." 

She also has developed a new love of jumping off of things into your arms. She loves to jump off chairs or boxes or really anything. It's really so fun to watch her - she loves it so much. 

We also were able to go to the Fall Choir Concert and watch my little brother Jacob perform. He did a great job and we really enjoyed it. I still sometimes burst out into a rendition of "Johnny Said No" because I liked it so much. 

The moral of the story is that we had a fabulous time and loved being able to hang out with these awesome people all week. We don't love when David travels (we meaning Lydia and I... my parents love it) but it is nice to have somewhere to go where you can be with family and feel loved.