29 more days

I had a lovely 3 hour lunch with these ladies to celebrate a late birthday for Sarah. It’s never convenient but always worth it. #eternaltruths

We got our piano tuned and Frankie went to tumbling and we had a good talk about our 72 hour kits over dinner. Adi volunteered to put together a family night lesson, so Thursday night will be the Ray family preppers. Not really, but I do have 4 large jugs for storing water that have sat empty for, oh I don’t know, 5 years? Here’s to hoping we can get those filled and feel a little better prepared. We’re pretty good, but there’s always room for improvement. 

I talked to Alexis and Christian about baby planning and scheduling and it’s hard when I can’t be there for everyone’s important thing. Praying Ruby will cool her jets until the girls get out of school. That will really make our lives on Pensive Street easier. 

Hematoma update. I’d like to say it’s looking better, but I don’t actually think so. I am enjoying grossing out the girls though. And it doesn’t hurt, so 🤷‍♀️

I love this - I could get in my head and stress about all the dumb things I said or did or thought, but why. 

You don’t get to where you are right now without being the person that you were back then. 

Lists and lists and lists

I have lots of projects. Home organization projects because it feels like every few months things pile up and closets and cupboards get messy. Calling projects. Summer projects. So. Much. Planning. It feels like I can’t cross them off faster than more show up. I know I’m not alone in this, it’s just pronounced right now. 

Anyways, it was a project kind of day and this is the one picture that got taken because Delaney and I were chatting with Lexi on our way home from ballet and Delaney was telling her how gross my bruise was. Rude. 

Back home

We were all so tired Wednesday morning but up we got for seminary and school. Because I’m dumb I scheduled for our new top cabinets to be installed Wednesday and Thursday so I cleared the counters and hung out downstairs while he worked. 

They ordered one cabinet the wrong size - again, but a different one this time, so now we wait for that but I’m okay with that because I need to figure out what color to paint them. 

I had one picked out but Lexi sowed the seeds of doubt in my mind and now I’m not sure. I hate choosing paint I haven’t seen in person! And grandpa got me a cute Orcas Island magnet during our visit. ❤️

On Thursday our big girl Adi had her tech center capstone project gala showcase, so I went to that while Matt stayed home with the cabinet guy and in meetings. 

This is the culminating project of her two year hospitality program. She compared 4 major airports and presented her findings. 

She interviewed flight attendants and researched all their amenities. 

And she looked very professional. 

She was right next to her friend Taylor so I grabbed a shot of them. Adi loved the hospitality program the first year but then they lost funding so they weren’t able to go on many field trips and the shine wore off her teacher. Overall it was a good experience for her and she’s glad she did it. 

I had tried to give blood that morning. I was nervous about it because last time I had a painful experience and a rough rest of the day, but it was my 8th donation so would have been my gallon and that’s exciting. Well, I don’t know if I freaked my girl out or it really was just chance, but after she got me hooked up she stayed with me and then went to get her supervisor, who when she came immediately said she had to get that out of my arm because I had a hematoma. I never look when I’m giving blood, but I looked down and had a ping pong ball size hematoma I guess? It was like a ball of blood had gathered and it was so so gross. The techs were both calm like no big deal so I pretended I was too. 🤣 And then, insult to injury, they couldn’t even use what blood they did collect. Boo. The upside was I felt fine and it didn’t hurt at all. But this was my arm Thursday night. 

And this was my arm Friday morning. 

And Saturday morning. 

We decided to have a chill weekend and Adi even drove Delaney to dance on Friday so she and Frankie could go shopping. 

Chill Saturday and busy Sunday. And my hematoma progress Sunday afternoon. 

Anyway, I had stake council and then went to white plains and had a second training with their president. I talked to Lex and Chris on my drive home and it was lovely. 

President Darrow stopped by on his way home and gave us our second temple recommend interview which was so kind of him, and Adi made cookies and we did some puzzles. This cute picture of Carter came up on our Frameo and Matt said “Carter could be a child star. He looks just like Chicken Little.”

And oh my gosh! He does! 🤣 Lexi said people tell her all the time he looks like the boy from Stuart Little. Too bad he’s so shy, he could make it big. 😉

I ordered a Survivor Puzzle Pack and I’m here to tell you those puzzles are harder than they look! We made it easy (ha!) for ourselves and laid it down, it would be even harder standing up. 

Adi drove she and Frankie to a youth conference kickoff fireside that night and the rest of us headed down to Valley Lee for Grace Utzinger’s end of mission celebration. I didn’t have my phone on me and asked Matt to take pictures which he of course forgot. And I did too. I did manage to grab a shot of this little cutie living her best 13 year old life. 

We ate delicious ice cream (blue moon mystery!) and brownies and had fun chatting. Grace has grown into such a lovely young woman and we’re just praying for her health as she goes forward in faith to her next big things. I finally remembered a picture as we were heading out, so grabbed Matt’s phone and got one picture. ❤️

When we got home we got to work on our Survival puzzles again. No one had any luck with getting this one past the 3rd hole though, #sohard

Also not figured out was this crazy slide puzzle. How does it work??? Bananas. 

I gave myself last week off from my labors but now I’ve got a mountain of things to do from being gone for almost 2 weeks and then taking almost a week off. Here’s to a productive week! 🤞🏼😩

Travel day

And then it was time to go home. 😢 

Grandpa picked us up at 3:45 for our 6:00 flight. We grabbed brekkie at the airport and then, along with 90 high school band members  on a full flight, traveled to Chicago Midway for a 4 hour layover. We headed straight to the USO for lunch and a nap on their recliners and we walked and geared up for our last flight home. Of note, Delaney ate 3 sausage dogs. 🤣

Some sights from my walk. I’ve never seen a tootsie roll truck. Nice Chicago. Nice. 

If there’s one thing my husband loves, it’s airplanes. 

And I thought this billboard was funny. In Texas where I came to adulthood every soda was coke. As in “what kind of coke do you want?” 

There was mad drama at BWI when we arrived. There had been fire, or suspected fire in one of the parts of the airport so we were all diverted to 3 baggage claim carousels and our luggage took forever. But the sunset once we finally got outside was amazing. 

We grabbed Chicfila for dinner to ride home and got to sleep in our own beds by 10:30. We were suh tired, but we had such a good trip. 

Our last day in Seattle

We packed and laundried and tried to clean our messes. Then we headed to West Seattle. 

The girls found sea glass and shells. 

And we walked to the Alki Lighthouse. 

They give tours on Sundays during the summer but unfortunately I’ve never made it to one. 

I took that picture 👆🏼 by holding my phone on top of the fence and zooming big time. I took that picture sadly outside the gate. 👇🏻 

Cold Seattle beach. 

We actually saw several people swimming and Delaney was ready to join the polar bear fun. 

We saw a sign for gelato and the girls were like “first gelato of the season!”

Delaney would climb anything. 

The other last to do was this park near Mike and Cami’s. We spotted it our first day and Delaney patiently waited. 

On Monday the wait was over and she wasted no time climbing to the summit. 

And then she switched to the other play structure and climbed where she wasn’t supposed to. 🤷‍♀️

Then she convinced me to climb with her, which I did little by little. 

Eventually 5 little Rays climbed the play place. It was so fun. 

I’d climb and hang out then climb and hang out to get comfortable with the height. 

And then once everyone climbed down, I worked up my big girl courage and climbed to the top and tapped the big yellow ball. 

Also on Easter Monday Pope Francis passed away. I’ve admired this good man for many years. We all lost a wonderful world leader and man of God with this one. One of my favorite of his quotes - 

Easter 2025

We went to Easter service with Mike and Cami and it was really lovely. We finally got pictures together after, I think the only ones we actually took together. 😩

Grandpa still wasn’t feeling well, so he stayed home and only came over for a few minutes before dinner. 

Matt and I took Scuba for a quick walk and sent this to Alli to make tenkor jealous. 

Everyone chose a dish to make. Delaney was in charge of the deviled eggs and they were so good. Frankie made a lovely fruit salad and Adi made rolls that were more biscuit than roll, but still good. We also had ham, funeral potatoes, veg platter, green beans, and my new favorite green salad that I’ve already made since we got back. 

Glenn and Joe came over and then we sent plates home for grandpa and Ken, who had also started feeling sick. 

Matt and Mike took the uncles back home and Cami and I let the girls loose on the eggs.

We got candy when we went shopping and filled up 60’ish eggs for them to find, and we hid them hard. 

Pretty sure they didn’t find them all, but they did a pretty good job. 

Delaneys over there searching, you can kind of see her behind the chair. 

Scuba loved the eggs and we also discovered that she loves bubbles. We all sat and watched her playing for a long time it was pretty funny.  

I’m so very grateful for Easter. For the gift of our Savior. For His great sacrifice and the knowledge and hope and peace and light that brings. He is risen.