August 2014

I know it’s long overdue, but here’s our month of August -
Autumn had a crazy busy month at dance with her in-house dance convention, Pointe Break, which is a week long dance intensive with awesome guest teachers – Autumn loved it – and then she also had 2 weeks of choreography where she got to learn all of her new dances that will be competed this coming year of dance.  Good thing she never gets tired of dancing.:) She also had a fun day at Boondocks with her dance team, just to play and have fun.


We had what we decided to call our “Play-a-palooza weekend”.  We took the kids to see “Wicked” at the Capitol Theater in SLC on Friday night, which everyone loved, of course!  Devin had seen it on a trip to Denver when he was in 4th grade, but this was Seth and Autumn’s first time seeing “Wicked” and they both loved it! Autumn is so much like Glinda it’s honestly a little scary (she even does the hair “toss-toss” thing).  It was a super fun night.  The next day, on Saturday, we took them to see “Mary Poppins”, which was playing at Hale Center Theater in West Valley.  It was so awesome and we all had a hard time deciding which play we liked better.  “Wicked” is an amazing story with great music and a fun Broadway style production, while “Mary Poppins” has an amazing story and great music and it was fun to be close to the action in the theater in the round.  Plus the staging at Hale Center is always so cool.  It was a really fun weekend, for sure.

Megan is still loving her life as a missionary! I still think it was super cool that she got to serve with Alex for his last transfer before going home. Stay updated at sisterririe.blogspot.com.

We took a trip to the new Living Planet Aquarium, which is really super impressive, especially for an aquarium located in the middle of a desert.  You should check it out the next time you are in SLC.

Autumn finished her “Faith in God” award in Primary! She is so excited to move up to Young Women soon and to get started on Personal Progress.

My nephew Brandon and his wife, Nicole, welcomed their beautiful daughter, Raeleigh Nicole Buttars into the world on August 11. She is perfect and we love spending time with her.

Devin, Seth and Autumn all returned for another year of school.  Despite my best efforts, I can’t seem to slow down them growing up and we are now in our final year of elementary school with Autumn in 6th grade and Devin is now a Senior in high school and Seth is in 9th grade – what?!?  They are all doing well and have gotten used to being in school and the crazy schedule again.


After trying for several months to figure out what was causing headaches, roaring sounds and fatigue, my dad went in for brain surgery to drain some fluid and do a biopsy on the membranes surrounding his brain. He was recovering well until, 2 days after surgery, an MRI revealed large amounts of fluid building up again around his brain.  He was rushed in for another emergency surgery and drains were installed.  Several days later, the drains were removed and he was sent home from the hospital where he is recovering well.  The good news is his doctors think that the whole thing was caused by a fall he took back in May and he is now expected to make a full recovery. He thinks his Frankenstein style scar (from the second surgery when they had to get in quickly) is pretty cool.

I celebrated another birthday with a family trip to the Thanksgiving Point gardens on a gorgeous summer day.

Bryce and I celebrated 22 years of wedded bliss, but postponed our anniversary trip when my mom’s health took a major turn for the worse towards the end of the month.  After finding out that the brain tumor she has been fighting for more than 10 years was growing despite weeks of radiation that had caused her health to dramatically decline and that there was no hope that things were going to improve for her health-wise, my mom decided to stop taking the medications she had been taking and to go on hospice care.  The doctors thought that she would most likely have 1-6 months or more, so we moved her to a really nice care facility expecting to have several months with her.  She declined very rapidly and was gone within a week, which was actually such a tender mercy for her.  All of her children were able to come to town the weekend she was moved to the care facility while my mom was still alert and lucid and everyone had a chance to visit with her and share their love with her, which was another tender mercy.  She passed away on the afternoon of September 3 and her funeral was held on September 8. She was an amazing woman and I feel so blessed to call her mom.  So grateful for the plan of salvation and the knowledge that we will see her again and she will be healthy and whole, and as she said near the end of her life, “not fat”. :) Love and miss her!!

Bryce and the kids attended the Ririe family reunion over Labor Day weekend and really enjoyed all of the fun activities and getting reacquainted with family members we haven’t seen for a while now.  Because of the timing with my mom’s health decline, I wasn’t able to attend too much of it, and Bryce is not the best at taking pictures, so I don’t have any to share, but you will have to take my word for it that it was a good time. :) I did get this one super cute picture from Tami of four pretty cute girls:

See you all on our September update.