November 2016

November was pretty chill around here. Here's an update:

We were sad to hear that Uncle Ron passed away, but were happy for the chance his funeral gave us to get together with family. We had a Ririe family dinner on Sunday of that weekend - here's a picture of all the cousins that were there:



Megan was busy as usual with classes and such at USU. She also has had the opportunity this year to participate in a small leadership group for women that she has been loving.  She was matched to a mentor and together they are working on leadership skills.  Here's a picture of all of the students and mentors involved:



Megan has also been working all semester on a huge research paper for her English class on awareness of mental health resources available to students at Utah State. Her English professor has been so impressed with her writing that Megan was invited to present her paper at the Citizen Scholar Conference in an oral presentation.  If her presentation is one of the ones selected, her paper will be published in a textbook required for all English students at USU!  Her professor also recommended Megan for a job at the USU writing lab, so she's pretty excited about that.

Devin continues to work hard in his classes at BYU and is doing well in all of his classes this semester.  In the best news of the month, Devin's mission call finally came and he is so excited to be leaving January 11 to serve in the Scottsdale, Arizona mission, Spanish speaking.  He was so excited to open his call (Seth and I drove it down to BYU, Devin came running out of his dorm, jumped in the car and gave us just enough time to get Bryce and Megan on FaceTime before ripping it open) that I didn't get a video or picture of the moment, but it was pretty sweet.  He was excited from the moment he read where he will be going and feels like it's pretty perfect. We're all excited he doesn't have to wait long before leaving. :)

Seth is busy with homework and friends.  He needed a CTE credit, so he decided to take a floral design class with some of his girl friends, and has discovered that he does not enjoy arranging flowers and especially hates tying bows. :) He continues to love studying art and history and currently has the highest grade in the class AP Art History, mostly because he considers studying art to be a break from the rest of his homework - he loves it!  Here's a picture of a wreath he made in floral design:



Autumn is still busy with school and dance. She had her first dance performance of the year with her dance studio's annual benefit concert, and her team is pretty amazing. I love watching Autumn dance - she loves it so much and that joy is easy to see when she is on stage.  The benefit concert is Autumn's favorite performance of the year because the dancers get to use their talents to help raise money for either a cause or a person in need.  She loves the annual tradition.



We braved the snowy Sierra Nevadas to travel to my brother's house in Manteca, California for Thanksgiving.  It was a wonderful, though short, trip and we loved spending time with family and going to San Francisco for a day.  We love our family!