Showers & Flowers

Last weekend, over Memorial Day, we did our traditional first camping trip of the season and went to Cherry Hill. It's a great first trip...easy to run to the store or back home for anything we inevitably forgot.

For the last five years or so, we've gone with some neighbors from West Bountiful. This year there were six other families besides us--in spite of the rain!! Yes, that's right, it rained off & on all weekend. When we arrived on Friday, the forecast was that Monday it would be warm & sunny. The kids had high hopes that the showers would clear off by Sunday and they could swim Monday before going home. Alas, that prediction changed drastically over the next 3 days, and Monday the downpour started about 3 am and didn't let up till that afternoon sometime. We put our trailers down wet, and then set them up at home in our driveways to dry out.

In spite of the rain, we had a great time. Being with people like that who know us and are good friends with us & our children is like being with family. We played games and more games, and the kids played outside when they could and watched movies inside when they couldn't.


Sabra & Tristan watching a movie


Sean is just chillin'


Sabra, Hannah, & Lea (friends of Sabra's)


Jamison helping me keep my balance on the rip stick--it's hard!

*****
Well, the second part of my post is the "flowers." For my birthday on Tuesday, Sean gave me 2 dozen beautiful multi-colored roses! He's a great guy & an awesome husband! I also got a new purse for summer, some new running shoes (I've taken up running, but so far on a limited basis), and a new personalized Tuckett family clock. We've both wanted one for a few years now, and I'm excited to have it! I guess that means I'll have to go get a couple of other decorating items to hang on the wall beside it--what a sacrifice. Sean took me to McGrath's, which was yummy as usual. It was a good day.

Sad

I can't say we weren't warned: for about the last 4 months we've known that some of the wards in our stake, most notably ours and our neighboring ward, were huge and would be split. The rumors have flown as to when it would happen, and what exactly would be the result.

Sunday night was finally the fateful meeting: four wards in our stake were called to a special meeting to find out where the two new wards would come from and how it would affect us.

I have to say, I'm so happy with the people in our ward, that I was thinking, naively as it turns out, that they would probably chop off a small part from the outside of our boundaries somewhere and that would be that. Unfortunately, I was completely wrong.

They cut our ward in half, right down the middle of our subdivision. Since the bishop is in our half of the ward, we are now the "old ward," with the other half having a new bishop and an entire new ward. As the stake president explained it on the overhead, and I realized what this would mean, taking so many wonderful people out of our Sunday meetings, I said over and over to Sean, "I'm so sad."

We got home from the meeting and told our kids about the changes, and I realized further how sad I am: Raleigh has no girls her age left in our ward, and Tristan has only one boy, who seems to be only somewhat active. My children and I cried and cried together.

As I puzzled over the reason my children seemed more affected by this ward split than they did by our move just a year ago, I realized the difference: although they mourned the loss of their friends in West Bountiful, they also knew that there was a whole realm of possibility opened up in the new friends they'd meet here in Layton. But as the ward splits and they didn't add any new homes or families, my kids mourn the loss of closeness to current friends, and they already know who exactly is their age and what they have to adjust to.

Me too. We'll all be adjusting as our ward goes from nearly 700 members to about 300. I'm sure in the future there will be some excitement as we see who gets what callings in the ward, but right now there is mostly sadness for the good people we'll miss seeing and working with.

Successful Surgery

Sabra had her eye surgery on May 8, and everything went well. We have a post-surgery checkup scheduled on Friday, the 23rd. She didn't dare open her eyes for about 24 hours after the surgery, but once she did they looked like this.


The redness has been slowly fading, and we've been putting in eye drops 3x/day, which seems to help a lot. Nothing hurts, and she's recovering well!

Happy Birthdays, Tristan & Raleigh!

Tristan's & Raleigh's birthdays were over the weekend, Saturday & Sunday, respectively. Saturday afternoon we had a combined friends' party for them at Classic Fun Center. It was indeed a fun place to go--the kids had a great time playing the arcade games, skating/roller blading/scooter-ing, & bouncing on the huge bouncy toys. It was a little crazy for me keeping track of 18 kids, but luckily at 9 and 11 yrs. old, they were pretty self-sufficient.

Sunday we had Sean's family over for cake & ice cream. Raleigh's favorite present was a new bike (she'd been riding Jamison's old one, which is too big for her), and Tristan's was the new Wii game, Mario Kart.

I took the pictures at Classic on the disposable camera I bought in Vegas, to try to use up all the shots, so I don't have those developed yet. Here are photos of Raleigh on her bike and the kids with cousins Aitanna & Baden & the cake.