The Summer of 2013

It has been a while since I have even looked at this blog, let alone updated it. I see that it still exists. I think I stopped blogging when some of my friends added passwords to their blogs to make them so private. I can't remember half of the passwords that I use so how was I to remember theirs. Blogging, I think started before Facebook. There was Myspace but that seemed like a teenage thing. Facebook really took off as many of you know. Like everything Microsoft, we were sucked into Facebook. So now I am back. I don't really care who sees this blog. Maybe in some ways it's a diary.

I now have four grandchildren. Reagan, a girl is the oldest (don't ask me their ages, just that none are in school yet) and is the daughter of my oldest son Sean, then comes Bailey, a girl born a couple of years ago to my oldest daughter, then I think Sawyer, my only grandson born to my oldest boy, and roughly a few months apart, Avery, a girl born to my oldest daughter.

My youngest daughter lives in Utah. Graduating from cosmetology school during these very lean years did not pay for itself so she started a new life in Utah. Currently she works for Snowbird as a concierge. She also works for Real Soccer for their soccer games and other venues that they host that have nothing to do with soccer. Recently, Utah has reduced the number of hours required to get a cosmetology license there so my daughter is looking into that as another money making possibility.

My youngest son just graduated this past May from Lemoore Middle College High School with honors and was the salutatorian. He also graduated one day earlier from West Hills Community College Lemoore with a AA degree in Psychology also with honors. Currently, he is a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Virginia. His first assignment was to work in the city of Fredericksburg. He will be in Virginia for two years. Now for any non-members reading this, he receives no pay. He is provided lodging and food. He is supported by family and friends. He loves Jesus Christ and even though young people seem to be fleeing organized religion he is reaching out to them with his belief that God lives.

He was accepted to the University of Utah and has a two year deferment. He plans on continuing his study of psychology along with criminology. We will see where his mind is at after these next two years.  His goal is to get a doctorate in psychology and more specifically, depending on job opportunities in forensic psychology. He has also thought about writing and teaching at the university level. It was suggested by a psychologist that works at a local prison that he keep his doctorate more general but if he minors in criminology it should still put him in an area where he could help solve crimes.

So what did we do this summer. Well, after graduating at the end of May from a grueling 4 years of hard scholarly work that was year round, Seth spent time just relaxing with his family.  We had family portraits taken. We watched a lot of old "Criminal Minds." Then it was off to Utah but before we went to Utah, we stopped at his aunt's house in Las Vegas. It was a good time to visit with his aunt and uncle whom he has seldom ever met.  They live far away from the strip although his uncle works for the Bellagio on all the equipment used for air conditioning and heating. Going through Utah we stopped to see the temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Manti. After that Seth wanted to visit a cemetery in Mt. Pleasant, Utah where several ancestors are buried. We found quite a few tombstones and monument markers that he was looking to find. Then it was off to Salt Lake City, Utah where we could spend time with his sister.  We went to Snowbird and did a few fun things there.

Then, joy and tears as we left him at the LDS Mission Training Center in  Provo, Utah. He spent two weeks there. We received a few emails letting us know that he was doing well (although he didn't care much for the food, I think he prefers his momma's cooking). When he departed in the wee hours at the Salt Lake International Airport we received a call from him. He had been up since 2 o'clock in the morning and sounded tired but it was still good to hear from him. He traveled with a group of 30+ missionaries. We received a call from Richmond where the mission office is located saying he had arrived safely.

Now, the rest of the summer has left his mother and father as empty nesters. We are trying to adjust to at least not having one child in the house. Our son was our baby all grown up and now it is just the two of us. We fix dinners less. We still watch "Criminal Minds" and a few other shows we would watch with our son. We went to a late night movie. We had fish for dinner which our son would not tolerate but decided to eat fish once he was in the training center.  We still have our grandkids and a daughter that calls frequently on a daily basis from Utah. We email our missionary son. And a blog has now been resurrected. His parents are part-time missionaries at home. Summer is almost over.