Friday the 13th

It's Friday the 13th.  Our 17th wedding anniversary, and yes, the day we were married, it was also a Friday the 13th.  One of the luckiest days of my life.  17 years.  I was 17 when I started dating Troy!  Wow.  Alana's almost 16.  Almost old enough to start dating.  Oh my!  What if she starts dating her future husband in the next year or so like I did?  I want to stop the clock!  Can't we rewind and do it all over again?  Not that I'd change it all.  Yes, I'd like to change the things I did poorly, but what I really mean is that I'd love to repeat all the wonderful things we've done together as a family, before moving on!  In another 17 years, we will likely be well into our grandparent-chapter of life.  People say this all the time, including myself, but time really does seem to speed up faster and faster all the time.  We've been through a lot in 17 years.  3 college degrees between the 2 of us, 3 different jobs, 7 moves, 6 children (7 this year), going through the trenches learning about autism (thankfully we don't feel like we're in the trenches with that anymore--we've got a grip on it for the time being), a small farm/ranch, and all the day to day stuff.  Troy's currently in the last phase of trying to earn his tenure with Washington State University (a permanent job), which he'll turn in this summer.

So to make today a little bit special, Troy took the afternoon off work.  We went to Applebees for lunch with Molly.  She enjoyed peeking over the booth at the people in the next booth.  We stopped by the Scout office and bought Seth a Scout Book, now that he's officially 11 yrs old and in scouts.  I returned a pair of shoes, and we bought 3 big bags of dog food at Costco, which was nice to stock up on, since my cart is always too full to get dog food when I'm there.  I've tried pulling 2 carts through that store before, but they get heavy, and things fall off the cart and spill in the parking lot (like big bottles of hair conditioner), so I prefer to keep my Costco trips to 1 cart (even though that cart often is a mountain, much higher than the sides of the cart.)  Then we came home to meet the school bus in time for the younger kids to get home.  An audio book was being downloaded onto the iPod, and something unexpected happened, and EVERYTHING got erased off of it.  Totally obliterated.  I guess we were bound to have something happen on Friday the 13th.  Then Troy and Seth headed to the Father Sons campout with friends from church, Aspen Bridger Molly and I raked grass clippings, Alana and Hanna moved irrigation handlines, Hanna went to dance, and Alana and Aspen went to babysit.  (Yeon was sleeping all afternoon.)  I straightened the sprinkler heads that weren't standing upright, and then chased 2 of the neighbors calves out of our pasture, back with their own mamas, and tried to fix the fence where they jumped over it, and the other hole they walked right through.  Yeon and I loaded the dishwasher, I went to pick up Hanna and Aspen, and then the kids watched Princess Diaries.  Now I'm on here as I hear the movie ending.

By the way, I think I've said this before, but it was amazing to me on the day we were married in the Salt Lake Temple, that there were only about 34 weddings there that day.  A Friday in May.  When my sister was married in June, there were over 130 weddings on that day!  Even though it's the temple, people still tend to avoid getting married on that day.  Which meant we had more time to take pictures on the temple steps!  (Often, they pump families through there so fast, each family only gets 20 minutes for photos on the stairs, before they need to let the next wedding party have their turn.  And this is using all 4 grand staircases outside the temple.)