"You've had an another birthday..."

L to R: Lael Ruffner, Jackie Coleman, Stefanie Cusick, me, and Cynthia Gaufin at CPK

For years now, the women in our dinner group get together to celebrate each other's birthdays at a restaurant of the birthday girl's choosing. This is such a great group of friends and it is surprising how our busy lives keep us from seeing each other very often. We are always glad for a chance to visit and catch up on what is happening in each others lives!

Mother of the Bride

Jane Anne recently got engaged and now I am "Mother of the Bride-to-be"!!! Imagine my delight at having a chance to go with a beloved daughter and shop for the wedding dress and discuss the plans for her special day. This is something that every mother of a daughter dreams of!!
When Janie and her boyfriend, Colby Neville, decided to get engaged, they only got to go ring shopping once. He goes to school in Logan at Utah State and she is here in Provo at BYU and week-ends are the only time they can see each other. (I think both sets of parents were so glad when these two decided to get married---this long distance relationship meant lots of driving for one or the other or both of them---and most of the commuting was done late at night during the winter months adding worry at least for me!) Anyway, as their schedules worked out, they were not able to see each other for two weeks after the initial trip to a jewelry store. So, Jane Anne asked me to come along and go ring shopping with her! We looked at the mall and didn't find the right one, so we decided to go to the store where Jared and Ryan both had found rings for their wives. Janie carefully looked at all the rings and found one she really liked! It has filligree work up the sides of the ring with a leaf design in tiny diamonds. A round diamond is in the center and it is bordered on either side with two plain silver bands. It is so pretty! Another surprising thing is that the design is similar to my own wedding ring! She officially got engaged Friday, April 17th!


We found the perfect wedding dress! Janie had been several places and tried on some dresses that she liked but we just weren't sure if we had found "the one". The wedding planner that she works for, Kimberly Roy, told her that she should feel like a princess in her wedding dress. So we were looking for that special dress. We were on our way to Salt Lake to check out all the bridal stores, when we decided to stop in Lehi at a shop recommended by some of our friends. It is called the "Bridal Center" and is in a little old building that Bob would describe as "a ruby in the rough". We were met by a wonderful woman, Julie, who asked Jane Anne some questions about what styles she liked, etc... and then Julie picked out four dresses for her to try. She picked her favorite and when she put it on, she knew it was "the dress"! It fit perfectly and is absolutely gorgeous!!! I have pictures of her in the dress but she requested that I not use those on this blog because Colby isn't supposed to see her in the dress until the big day. I feel so lucky and so relieved that we found the dress---what was anticipated as being a long day of shopping in Salt Lake turned out to be a short morning of success in Lehi!

The adventure begins after the week from "Outer Space and Beyond"

Jane Anne is off to London! This picture is taken outside of our garage just before we loaded the car with her luggage to head to the airport. We have had an amazing, hectic week trying to do all we could for her wedding, get her ready to go to London, move her out of her apartment and back home, and have her finish finals. We did find the wedding dress (details in an upcoming blog), she chose Bridesmaid dresses, visited with the wedding planner, went to lunch with the inlaws and got the engagement pictures taken. WHEW!!! Also this week, Josh had to go to school at 5:50 a.m. for Driver's Ed! and had lots of late nights trying to catch up on the assignments he missed for school. I had two major events with my church calling---speaking at Leadership meeting for TEN minutes and a Stake Relief Society/Young Women's open house at our house for 60 people on Sunday night. It's been quite a week!


At the airport, we met one of the girls who was also going to London and her family and there were two other girls from the program on her flight. It was a little teary when we said "Good-bye" and we will be so excited to see her in six weeks when we go with Josh to pick her up! When she boarded the flight from Chicago to London, Janie found the seat next her was vacant. She was able to sleep about 5 and 1/2 hours on the way there! What a blessing for a girl who is trying to take it a little easy after having mono!

Jackson Sibling dinner

Bob's brother, Steve, arranged for us all to meet at the Harvest Restaurant at Thanksgiving Point for dinner last Saturday. We were supposed to see their Tulip Festival before, but as luck would have it, a terrible storm came in and the rain poured. So, we just met for dinner and had a wonderful time visiting. Several jokes were shared and this is Grandma Jackson's:
A very optimistic woman came down with cancer. After chemo therapy, she woke up one morning and found that she had only three hairs left. "I've always wanted to try braiding my hair!" she said. The next day, she found she only had two hairs left. "Oh, I always wondered what I would look like with my hair parted down middle" she exclaimed. The next day, only one hair remained. "Oh, good", she said, "Now I can wear a pony tail!"

Hawaii Spring Break!

Imagine our surprise and good fortune when we called at almost the last minute and the Westin Maui Vacation Condos had a two bedroom unit free over Easter week-end! We had not planned on going to Hawaii this year, but since we had already paid the maintenance fees and they wouldn't let us trade the condo for points this year, we decided to see if Spring Break had any available condos! Janie decided that even though it was the reading days before finals, she could study at the pool in Maui as just as well as at the library on Campus. (Hmm---difficult choice, I think!) So we packed our bags and flew on Delta's direct flight to Maui on April 10th. The beauty, the warm, moist air, the usually gentle breezes, pineapple, guava drinks, NO SNOW OR FREEZING TEMPERATURES, sunsets and the laid-back pace, made it truly a relaxing paradise for us!

We have favorite things that we love to do while in Maui. Some of these include going out to dinner, relaxing at the pool for hours with a cooler of drinks, books, and Scrabble, going to Haagen Daz in Whaler's village for ice cream and going to see the Olivine Pools. Because of the weather this time, we didn't make the Olivine pool trek and we didn't go to the top of Haaleakala because the volcano was "socked-in" with clouds. We did, however, go on a whale watch which
we hadn't done for years because we are usually in Hawaii in June when the whales have gone.

Sunset in Paradise!

Haagen Daz!

This post is mostly for our married children that didn't get to come with us to Hawaii. Their favorite place for ice cream is Haggen Daz at Whaler's Village. Lots of times when we have been staying at the Marriott Condos, everyone would walk over at night and have an ice cream treat.
This trip, we discovered that they now make a sorbet, fat-free yogurt smoothie with fruit that is delicious. Taste with no guilt! As you can see from the picture, however, most choose the real thing! Who cares about fat when you can have Haagan Daz?