My Great Grandmother Great

My Grandmother Great passed away today. She lived a long, fully, happy life. I want to list some of my favorite memories of her.
One of my earliest memories of her is when I was very little I would get so excited when we went to see Grandmother Great and swim in her pool. She always made us saftey pin a key to our swim suit (I don't remeber what is was for, identifying us as belonging to her or something) but she loved to take us young great grandkids out to the pool.
When I was in my early teens she taught me piano lessons. She even gave me a nice brown bag to carry my books in. She always told me how wonderful I was doing but always let me know when I needed to work harder. She loved it most when I played Hymns. Sometimes I would stay after, and she would make cookies with me.
Whenever I would go over for a visit she would get so excited, telling everyone there how wonderful we were to come visit her. Then she would start pulling out geneology. She loved telling everyone about our ancestors and the interesting things they did. When she coudln't see very well she would ask us to read things to her. She has endless books and articles on all the incredible people in our family. She was always very proud of what those before her had done and always encouraged us to become something.
She was always very passionate about education and learning. She used to tell me about teaching children to read. I'm sure there are a lot of people today who have her to thank for their literacy.
About a year before I got married I was visiting her and she crossed her fingers and her arms and said very dramatically "please please please promise me you'll finish college before you get married". I told her "Grandmother, I can't promise something like that, I wouldn't want to break a promise to you". She kept insisting, but I knew Ryan was comming home soon and just couldn't promise her. Grandmother, I'm going to finish college in 2 months, I hope that works for you.
I love you Grandmother! Thank you for the wonderful example you have been!

Memorial Day Weekend

For memorial day we went camping with my family to Moab. The plan was to go on the river on Saturday, but it was really cold and windy so we hiked to delicate arch instead. It was still cold and windy, but at least we weren't wet and at least it wasn't hot and miserable, it was good hiking weather as far as Moab goes.

Jonathan got a little tired after the hike. Sunday afternoon we went to Dead Horse Point. It was a huge hole in the ground. My camera battery died before I could get any good pictures of the actual hole. This is a smaller one before we drove up there. Its like a preview.

Jonathan and Michelle were on the edge of a cliff. We all hung out around there and Jonathan almost gave everyone a heart attack with how close he got to the edge. I think he was doing it on purpose. I'm glad no one fell off. It is a really long way to the bottom.

Christine's Graduation!

May 2nd I graduated! It was actually a pretend graduation because I have to finish up classes this summer, but close enough. Since I had to be in Ogden at 7:30 that morning, I got up early, wanting to take the time to look cute. So I was in the shower around 6 in the morning and the power went out. Gr!!! I ended up doing my make-up in the car and having my hair in a french braid for the morning ceremony (there are no outlet plug thingies in the bathrooms at the Dee Events Center) then straightening my hair in a high-traffic area bathroom at Weber State later since the individual college graduation was at 2:30. It was a little embarrasing to be sitting there straightening my hair in front of everyone. Oh well, it looked cute when I finished it.

We had some time to kill before my ceremony so Ryan took advantage of it.

Then we took pictures (I wanted to be remember my cute, straight hair:)

I was letting out my inner Wildcat

Milling around, looking for Grandpa Cook. We agreed to meet up afterward, but although everyone looked for each other for at least half an hour, probably more, we never found him. I did see him while I was walking, which was nice.



We ate at TGI Fridays, minus Grandpa Cook

Ryan's 23rd Birthday!

Ryan's birthday is April 1st. He always tells people he was born a fool. I felt bad that day because we both didn't get home until around 9 that night. All we did to celebrate was him opening his presents. I did make him breakfast that morning.