A Time to Celebrate

I went up to Utah this past weekend for my nephew's baptism. My siblings were all together for the first time in about a year. It was a fun weekend and a nice break from "normal" life. I left Thursday morning and drove up with my parents. I left Damon in charge of the kids.

> My little sister threw a party for all the September birthdays in the family on Friday night. There are a lot of them. We had a great dinner and as always a yummy dessert.

Saturday morning my older sister and I decided to hike Y Mountain. I haven't done that since 1997 when I hike it with Damon. We had so much fun doing it. It was such a beautiful fall morning. It wasn't cool, but a crisp fall day. You could smell fall in the air. This is a picture of campus from the parking lot. After our hike we walked around campus and the bookstore and got all our favorite treats. Good memories.

My nephew was born September 11, 2002. We were driving around the neighborhood and it took me a minute to realize why all the houses in this one neighborhood had their flags out. It was blocks of them. It almost brought tears to my eyes as I remembered the events of Sept. 11, 2001. It was nice to see so many flags up. It was nice that my nephew was baptized this day to create more good memories.

Damon survived without me, as I knew he would, but the kids were all very happy to see me when I walked in the door. It's nice to get away, but even nicer to get home.