Our life without school

 

 

 

 

 

A new family photo by Alysha Sladek (collaboration with Heidi Allred)

Well - now that we graduated, we are on to real life...

The day of our graduation, Luke finally got the offer we had been waiting for from Crescent Point (talk about last minute - forget the fact that we had to pack up all our stuff and leave the next day to a destination that was undecided) and for us it was worth the wait.  We decided to take an offer that would land us in Vernal, Utah for the next couple of years.  Neither of us had previously been there, and neither of us ever wanted to live in Utah, but when it's right, it's right. 

We actually took off the day after graduation to California (but those pictures are on our hard drive in storage) with stuff to last us a couple of weeks, and left the rest of our stuff at our friends in Rexburg (they are the best).  

Our couple of weeks, have turned into a few months, and what we brought with us is becoming less useful as the summer disappears.  Luke is already down in Utah working (he started the beginning of September) and Tracen and I are enjoying Calgary until the first week or so in October, when we will make the move. 

Graduation

Well - It was a long time in the making, but Luke and I finally graduated in July.  It was a huge accomplishment for us and we were happy to have both our parents and Candice and Chris there to celebrate with us.  

Luke graduated with a Business degree with an emphasis in Supply Chain Management, and I graduated with a Communcation degree with an emphasis in advertising (and cluster in PR and business).

I remember when I was about to transfer to BYU-Idaho and not knowing how in the world we would be able to both graduate.  I was fully willing to sacrifice my education to make things easier.  I am happy now that I didn't actually make that sacrifice and I'm so grateful for the many blessings that made things possible.  Luke and I even both ended up being awarded Newell K. Whitney Awards in our respective departments for our hard work. 

It was harder than we anticipated to leave Rexburg, our good friends and great memories.  It was good to us.

Lila and Stori's Birthday

Way back in July we celebrated Tracen's best friends birthdays.  They are born on the same day, one year apart and both have the middle name "Rose".  We sure love them!

They threw a great party... balloons, great food, presents and Tracen's favourite, cake! 

To celebrate the girls birthday we also took a short trip to Idaho Falls to go horseback riding. 

The girls were a little more excited than Tracen about it, but apparently that is normal, and they had a collection of tractors and cars for little boys to play with. 

Although it looks like he went for a ride, don't be fooled, he sat on the horse (well pony) and then was done. 

Mesa Falls

On our (unofficial) list of things to do before leaving Rexburg was to visit Mesa Falls.  We took advantage of a Sunday evening and went with the Radfords and Foresters.  We should have spent all our Sunday's exploring.

We had a picnic dinner, and the kids loved exploring and playing on picnic tables and chasing squirrels.  Melanie got some great pictures of that.  We were also happy to finally get a group shot.

Rexburg : Porter Park

There is so much to catch up on: the rest of our time in Rexburg, our trip to California and then to the cabin, and our time spent in Calgary. 

It is hard to look at these pictures and think about living in Rexburg without my heart hurting.  We made such great friends and enjoyed our days full of walks to the park and late nights walking to each others houses.  

Tracen loved that Stori lived in the next building over, and each time we went outside he would try to go up to her door to see her.

We sure miss all his red-headed friends and baby Nora.