May 2022

 I failed to write in our April blog post that Seth ended his second year at BYU in April.  He worked as a TA for one of his professors and as a research assistant for another one and is very involved in all sorts of programs that will help him as he works towards his career goals.  One very exciting thing that happened is that after working on a research paper for more than a year, he was published in the prestigious Ballard Brief. He also applied for the position of editor of the Ballard Brief and after an extensive interview process, was hired to be the editor.  We are very proud of his hard work and desire to learn.  If you want to read his brief, you can read it here:

Land Degradation in Rural Tanzania 

May began with Autumn finishing her Freshman year at UVU, Levi finishing his first year of his grad program at USU and Delaney finishing her second to last year at the U - phew!! All of the students in our family are working hard and we are proud of them all!

Autumn spent the month of May playing with her friends and working hard to get ready to begin her mission to Winnipeg, Canada. At the beginning of the month, she went to the Provo City Center temple with a couple of her best friends and took some fun mission pics - here are a few of our favorites:

Bryce and I went on a hike in Alpine where we enjoyed some beautiful scenery and time together.  We love where we live!

We also had a few fun date nights, including going to the U of U art museum to see an exhibit on quilts (thanks again for the tickets, Seth and Delaney!), making journals to write encouraging notes to each other, and attending a masquerade ball with our YSA ward.

Seth and Delaney took a road trip to Las Vegas and Southern California. They did lots of fun stuff including a day in Disneyland and visiting friends in Las Vegas, but Seth's favorite part was visiting art museums in LA and getting to see art he hadn't seen before. He loves art!  Here are a few of the pieces he liked:

Autumn traveled for a quick trip to Boise to be there with her roommates for their fellow roommate, Sydney's temple sealing to her now husband, Josh.  Autumn and her friends all stayed overnight with Megan and Mitch and then had a great day attending all of the fun wedding events. Autumn was blessed with amazing roommates for her Freshman year!! Forever friends!  She also took a quick trip to San Antonio, Texas to visit where her roommates Alicia and Lizzie were from.  

Megan and Mitch celebrated their second anniversary in May.  They also took a trip to Mexico with a group of Megan's forever friends.  These 4 girls have been friends since rooming together at Utah State and have stayed super close.  Now 3 of them are married, and luckily the husbands all get along great, too, so it's pretty fun.  They stopped in Utah on their drive down so Megan could spend one more day with Autumn.  We loved seeing them again and it looks like they had a fun anniversary and are having a great time in Mexico.

Megan sent this pic in the family group chat with this comment - "While dad writes cute messages like “Bryce+Michelle❤️” in the sand, my husband is over here writing about his one true love…" :)

Megan and her baby bump and a sunset in Mexico

Devin and Levi enjoyed the warming weather with some hiking and enjoying the outdoors.  They also spent time with friends (including throwing a Twilight/Taylor Swift's 22 themed birthday party for their friend Adalene), and Devin continued to work on his crocheting skills by crocheting an elephant, a hippo and a giraffe for Megan's safari themed nursery. 

Ready for the birthday party :)

Also, he and Levi went to the Hangar Hop at USU - I think they are looking pretty dapper. 

May ended with Autumn's farewell on May 29.  She did an amazing job with her talk on the love of God and we were overwhelmed with love and support from friends and family.  Such a wonderful, beautiful day.

Autumn was set apart as a full time missionary that evening and started home MTC the following morning.  Home MTC is pretty much the best thing to happen to missionary service! We love having Autumn at home going to class via zoom for much of the day, but we get to hear about what she is learning and the people in her district when she has breaks and it's so fun.  Plus we get to play games together when she's not in class or she can have her best friends come over for a walk when she just wants to talk about the day's events. She will be at home for 8 days total and then we will be dropping her off at the Provo MTC - more about that next month.

We have played some pretty epic games of telestrations over the weekend while everyone except Megan and Mitch were here - this pic pretty much needs no explanation. :)

Evening walk with besties to talk about her home MTC experiences

Autumn thought it was pretty epic when she got to be the Sheriff when we played Bang since she had just gotten her own badge.

Our missionary on her first day of home MTC

That's it for May!!