Reunited

I found out recently that my good friend Dan Stoddard has been living in Logan within a couple miles of me for about a year now and neither of us knew of our proximity! In fact, his house is across the street and a set of train tracks from my school! I've known for quite some time that his dad Tom has been living in the valley for quite a few years but didn't have any contact information for him. I have run into him at Lowe's a couple times but never exchanged numbers or anything.

Last time I heard, Dan was living in Roy, UT down by Ogden. I knew that he would come up here every so often to visit his dad, but again we never connected. Then last Wednesday I ran into Tom at Lowe's again and asked about Dan. This time he said Dan was living right here in Logan! I got Dan's number and called him up later. We arranged to have his family come over Sunday afternoon so we could catch up. Also since we still had Callie here, she got to meet Dan's 3 1/2 year old daughter. It was fun; all the kids got to play together and  we got to sit down and tell some old stories, catch up on the past few years and gorge ourselves no-bake cookies.

August 2011

August will be here before we know it, which is fine with me because there are SO many things to look forward to:

August is one of the hottest months of the year, which sounds really good in the cold month of March.

August is when we will be enjoying the Seversike reunion (I really hope that Tom & his fam will be there so I can finally meet them in person). This will be a super opportunity for all of us to spend dedicated time together without the distractions of so many normal stressers - the week of the reunion is actually Simplify Your Life Week too!

August is orange and papaya and mushroom and onion month!

In August Zach and I will petition for custody of Callie; for some time now Jani has played a somewhat insignificant role in Callie's life, so we feel getting custody is not only best for us, but is especially in Callie's best interest.

Finally, and unfortunately, this August will not be the month that Zach and I get sealed. We are becoming stronger as a couple and happier as a family, and we plan to get sealed, but not this year. We will definitely let you know when the time comes.

I really look forward to all of these, and many more, wonderful things that August 2011 will bring.

Happy August everyone!

school

One of my elective classes that I've been working on lately is an Adobe Photoshop class. Here is a personal project that I've been working on aside from the regular classwork. Its a photo from Uncle Dave's birthday party back in 2009. All of the siblings were able to be there except for Tom , so we said, "Let's get everybody we can right now and later we can add Tom in with Photoshop." Well, here is the 'Pièce de résistance' . I'll show the original and then the new version. By the way, this is my very first real photoshopshop job besides the bookwork so  when the photo is enlarged, a scrupulous eye will be able to tell fairly easily that Tom's image doesn't quite match with everyone else. I think I did a pretty good job for a first-timer though!