August 2015

We started the month of August with Megan undergoing her long awaited jaw surgery. She was so excited to get started with the whole process! Even though her surgeon tried to explain how awful the first couple of weeks of recovery would be, I’m not sure any of us had any idea what we were getting into, especially Megan. To say the first week was awful would be a gross understatement, but she survived and over the next few weeks, she has gotten progressively better. She hasn’t been in much pain at all since she is numb from her nose down (a condition that will last for 9 months to a year), but eating was a frustrating challenge at first, she couldn't hold anything down for nearly a week, the swelling was bad, and talking with her teeth banded shut was something she had to learn to do as well. She has been such a trooper! She does look different, which she is still getting used to. She is so happy with how much room she has in her mouth now!  Here’s a look at Megan right before the surgery, right after surgery (her ice pack machine became her best friend for the first several days), a few days after surgery when the swelling was the worst and one just a few days ago when we dropped her off at Utah State.









She has graduated from a strictly liquid diet to soft foods (pasta, rice, scrambled eggs, etc) and last night texted me that she had made poppy seed chicken and rice for her friends for dinner and had eaten a whole plate and was achingly full for the first time in 4 weeks and it felt awesome! :) She will get the thick bands holding her jaw shut off in 2 more weeks, and then she will be able to resume a normal diet. There is a chance she may have to have upper jaw surgery again over Christmas break to shorten her upper jaw a little because she can’t quite get her lips all the way closed with her new jaw configuration. We’ll keep you all posted.

Also in August: Autumn went to her first Girls Camp and had so much fun! She loved playing in the lake, hanging out with the other girls, rock climbing, surviving a torrential rainstorm that soaked all of her tent’s gear and forced them to squeeze 6 girls into a 4 man tent for one night, hiking (okay, so she more endured the hiking, but still), devotionals and being part of the “party tent”. Bryce went to help one day as priesthood and we both got to go up for testimony meeting, which I loved. To no one’s surprise, Autumn was awarded the “Sass master” award on the last day of Girls camp. :)







We enjoyed an evening and a delicious dinner in Deer Valley visiting Rob, Kim, Chayce and Brandon with the SoJo Riries. We’re glad it gets so hot in Phoenix in summer so they had to come here for a month to cool off. It was good to visit with them.  Oh, and I believe I ended up as the reigning beanbag toss champion, so if anyone wants to take me on...

Autumn had a month of choreography for dance where she learned 5 new dances for the upcoming competition season. Choreography is Autumn’s favorite part of dance and she had some great choreographers come in, so it was a fun month of dance for her. She loves all of her new dances!





Seth and Autumn started back to school on August 19. Seth is excited to be a Sophomore and move up to Lone Peak High, and Autumn is loving her first year of Jr. High. Seth took a really hard class load this year, but so far is doing a great job of staying on top of his homework without (too much) complaining. Autumn loves most of her classes, especially her dance, math and art classes.





Seth is running cross country and he did great at his first meet last Saturday. It was an invitational 2 mile grass run and 40 schools from all over the State plus some from Idaho and Wyoming showed up, so there were a lot of runners, which made for an exciting race. He has his first two school meet tonight and then his team heads to the BYU invitational this Saturday. It looks to be a fun season.


This is the start of the fresh/soph boys race. There were 275 boys - crazy!


Seth is in the gray top.

Megan spent the latter part of August finishing her mission quilt made out of the clothes she wore as a missionary with a Texas flag on the back and getting a good start on her mission scrapbook as well. Devin was busy finishing up work and spending as much time as possible with his friends. The two of them did manage to find time to pack up their rooms and get ready to move out.







Bryce and I took a short trip to Park City to celebrate 23 years of marriage. It was really nice to get away and give the kids a chance to take care of each other. :) We took a gorgeous hike, but the views were marred a little by all the smoke from the fires in Oregon and Washington.





We moved Devin to Heritage Halls in Provo on August 25 and he spent the next couple of days doing Freshman orientation and meeting tons of new friends. He gets along great with all 5 of his dorm mates, which is a relief since he didn’t know any of them going in. He started classes this past Monday and really loves all of his classes, especially his microbiology classes. He gets to be involved in a research project involoving honeybees and is super excited about that as well.  He’s loving BYU so far and has managed to survive for more than a week cooking for himself, so that’s a good sign. He did text me about 2 days after he moved out saying that he had discovered “the best app ever” that tells him all the places on campus offering free food on any given day. One day he discovered 5 places offering free brownies and visited them all. :)










































We helped Megan move her stuff to her new apartment in Logan, not far from the USU campus on August 28. She loves her roommates and was so excited at the prospect of going back to school.
She sent me this picture on her first morning back at classes with the message “On my way to school for the first time in over 2 years!!! So excited!” She has been loving her classes so far!! We’ll still be seeing quite a bit of her over this semester since she has to come our way for post op visits to her surgeon and to the orthodontist as well.



We were super shocked to find out that our yard was nominated and chosen as “Yard of the Month” in Highland. I was embarrassed when the master gardeners who make the choice came by to deliver our gift basket and put the sign in our yard because they wanted to know what my secret was for some of our plants and my secret is basically plant it, wish it well and walk away. :) It still makes me giggle a little that we have this sign in our yard for the next month.






































So that’s our August. We are back in the swing of school life. Still not sure how I feel about that.