Priscilla

Dear Family,

Well, following up from last entry…amazed that Jennifer’s house sold so quickly and she is in Boise now…

I cashed in my Delta miles I collected over 20+ years and Jim and I went to Sarah’s UMASS graduation. We were scheduled to arrive after Sarah from India at JFK. A connection was missed in London and she arrived after we did, but her luggage did not make it. (That arrived by FED Ex days after). So we picked her up and drove up to Massachusetts, met Daniel at the corner gas station with her cap and gown and drove to the parking lot at UMass where we all caught a shuttle to the football stadium and at 4:55 pm Sarah jumped out and fell in line with her graduating class entering the stadium. Jim, Daniel and I found good seats and enjoyed the graduation, great weather and keynote speaker, Cady Coleman – an astronaut and UMass alum spoke from the space station. The live music was very impressive. Sarah had a cum laude asterisk by her name in the program. There were probably about 5,000 graduates. It was huge. The following day was the graduation for the School of Behavioral Sciences, where they read her name. It was indoors in the events center. It started to rain that day and rained the rest of the time we were in the East. Really enjoyed the time with Sarah. She and Daniel fed us good food, played Settlers of Catan, and showed us around beautiful Central Mass. We also drove up to Vermont, New Hampshire, adding four new states to my States I’ve Been In List (CT, MA, VT, NH) on this trip.

I enjoyed hearing Bryan’s piano solo at his school talent show. The student body voted him 2nd place, a very charismatic hip hop dancer took 1st. His performance singing A Hundred Years went beautifully. I was a very proud mom. Unfortunately the school recording had overpowering wind in the microphone, that we as an audience we did not hear. So you would have had to have been there. His accompanist was a very talented Ashley Allen. Her mother died of cancer June 30th and I attended the funeral with Bryan. It was one of those very uplifting and spiritual funerals.

Hyrum attended Summer Seminar at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland and came back a changed man. He has decided to not graduate early after all. He is going to stay in school and graduate with his class of 2013, taking all the hard classes he can, improve his ACT score (he already has a 28), and try to stay involved in Soccer and Acadec as he prepares to apply for Academy class of 2017. Since he is driving and working at McDonald’s he is pretty well grown up and independent.

Our stake joined with 5 others for a youth dance festival that Bryan was involved in. It was held at the Round Valley dome June 4th…in a haze a few days before the town was evacuated for the Wallow Fire that turned out to be the largest fire ever in the state of Arizona . Also June 4th was our annual Webelos Day hike. I went with Isaiah and enjoyed going up to a working forest lookout tower. The attendant there is a school teacher, spends his summers there to report any sign of fire. We could see the fire to the Southeast and the San Francisco Peaks to the North. It was amazing. That Wallow Fire changed the location of the tri-ward Scout Camp that Jim was involved in planning. It all turned out good except they weren’t allowed to use firearms of any kind, so they had to nix the rifle and shot gun merit badges.

The stake primary has the responsibility of Snowflake’s 4th of July flag raising program and breakfast. The speaker, Mary Law, mentioned attending school in the 40s or 50s when J Rufus Crandall was the music teacher. (That’s the name of the music award Bryan received). Riley was trying to help the missionaries put away the chairs and his foot (with shoe on) was run over by a full cart of chairs. It took his whole toenail off. So that was traumatic. He feels better now and enjoys all the attention.

Very much looking forward to being with you at the reunion.

Love, Priscilla