The end of month is already here.....

And it continues to be busy with a variety of different things going on:

Jena--She is busy preparing for the final week of long practices for "Suessical the Musical" which opens tomorrow night.  She loves it all and always seems to have a happy smile on her face.  She is certainly sleeping well at nights.

Jena eating dinner at Wendy's in between
play practice and going skiing with the YW.

Last week, she was able to enjoy some other big firsts.  She went skiing with her Laurels and Priests from our ward.  At first we thought she couldn't make it because she had play practice, but one of the leaders had to go up later so she picked up Jena along with another Laurel and they headed up for a couple of hours of skiing.  This is the FIRST time she had skied without her instructors (the YW President is an excellent skier and had fun skiing with Jena), it was the FIRST time she skied at night, and the FIRST time she skied at a different ski resort.  She was happy and everyone said she did good, even though the snow was a bit icy.

I had a FIRST as well as I flew down to Mesa by using a new airline route from Ogden to the Gateway Airport in Mesa.  I went down to attend my nephew's "farewell" as he leaves for his LDS mission.  He flew out today to Argentina to go to the MTC and then to Uruguay for his service.  Jordan did a great job on his talk.  Lots of his friends came from high school so it was a fun group.  The flight was okay but the Ogden airport (which is about 15 minutes away) is not really designed for commercial flights.  They brought all of the luggage around to the front of the building (after about 15 minutes.  They must have had just one person unloading it from the airplane.) and then she put it out on the parking lot for us to claim.  It reminded me of the small airports in Asia.  Oh, well, the price of saving some time and $200 or so.

View in Mesa when I went on a walk-
orange and lemon trees are full of fruit.
They had actually had some cold weather with
some hail and some snow just before I came but
luckily it was clear skies and great weather in the 50s.
It is supposed to be 80 degrees there on Sunday.

And I came home to....
cold and snow on the ground.
This is our backyard bird feeder and a flag
to remind me I do love snow. (sometimes :(  )

Ben is back in his apartment after bouncing around between his new apartment and the CRU inpatient unit.  He walked over to a pet store and got himself a pet on Monday.  He sent this picture of the two of them hanging out last night.

This morning when I headed back from dropping Jena off at the bus stop, the moon was so full hanging in the morning sky.  How can life not seem good and worth it when just above us the skies are so beautiful and varied!  I love the sky.

The view to the west from our backyard this morning
It doesn't really show how huge the moon looked...but you get the point.

And, one more rain chain picture---you don't have to look at it if you don't want to, but a rain chain is amazing.  It seems as if it is either pouring water down or it is frozen---just depending on the weather.  We can't believe how much water pours down it all day long when the sun is shining.  We must have more snow than we thought on our roofs.