Richardson Report

What makes a mama's heart happy? Seeing their kids love the Gospel. Seeing their kids do hard things. Seeing their kids enjoy amazing friendships. These trek photographs made my heart happy for all those reasons.

I haven't posted since graduation - summer has been busy! Our Edward Jones summer regional was in Sunriver this year - we played it cool and spent a lot of time at the pool every day. However, we dressed up for the two dinners.... Perhaps you recognize us better  by our aliases...but here is the latest family photo...minus a couple of big kids. Josh somehow thought 80s Prom theme = 80s kegger...but whatevs.  We drove home late Saturday night after summer regional in order to be at church the day Josh released me as Relief Society president...  that was a super emotional day.  I thought after six weeks of working through those emotions I would have them all under control. And I was okay until about 5 minutes before RS when someone came up to talk to me and I just burst into tears.  And cried all through the opening exercises, which I had to conduct because BOTH my counselors had family emergencies that day and had to be gone.  So I wa...

Baby #2 has graduated!  I got a little emotional when she started walking out onto the field...can't believe our 18 years with this girl has flown by so quickly.  I'm excited for her next life adventure at BYU-Idaho but I hate that my kids have to grow up so quickly!  walking with her two besties the graduate!

We are fast approaching the end of the school year!  Brynne graduates on June 8!!  She's pretty excited and so ready to be done with school for the summer.  The rest of the kids have four days after her but they are full of variety shows, BBQs, and a field trip - no learning will be taking place.  Of course. We have had the busiest two weeks - I think I made dinner just a handful of times because it was chaotic.  All the end-of-school high stuff has to wrap up before graduation.  Just this past week we had orchestra banquet, track banquet, violin recital, and strings play-in, not to mention a youth temple trip for Josh and Brynne and then our own temple date on Friday.  Last night I was seriously so exhausted...but silly me I said, "why don't we have your Bishopric and their families over for waffles after church".  So we spent the evening cooking bacon and going to the store for vital waffle toppings such as Nutella.  We're feeding 25 peop...

Prom came at the end of April. Brynne went with her good friend and now boyfriend, Parker.  They looked amazing and had such a good time with their group of friends. Man these kids grow up fast.  I still remember the first time I figured out who Parker was.  We went to a Christmas Mother-Daughter Tea held by someone in our ward.  We'd only lived here a month.  The house was over-flowing with moms and daughters...and one 14 year old boy in a suit.  He was surrounded by every teenage girl in the room and I thought, "that right there is a very smart boy".  He'd apparently asked his mom if he could go with her and she didn't see why not! Anyway, photos of my lovely Brynne and her date...

I recently heard about a podcast called "Leading LDS" and was intrigued by the title and started listening to it.  It is seriously super good.  I'm not big into podcasts.  They are like non-fiction books to me - I like to be able to skim through and pick up the good parts and jump ahead if I'm feeling bogged down.  That's harder to do with  an audio anything.  But this podcast - it's gold.  I've listened to probably 8 episodes.  My favorites so far are the interviews with Whitney Johnson (SO GOOD!), Dave Crenshaw, and Brad Wilcox.  I also like Brett McKay (founder of the Art of Manliness website - if you're familiar with that).  I've listened to several interviews with Relief Society Presidents that are pretty good - I've gotten some good ideas from listening to those as well.  And there was one more - I can't remember the name of the guy who was interviewed but the title was about bearing the counseling burden - that one surprised ...

Girl's Choice Dance... So grateful for Luke's parents who took pictures for us.  I was at a meeting when Brynne left to go pick up Luke and didn't get to see how lovely she looked.  Luke is a stellar kid from our ward.  He and Brynne have become good friends the past year.  So fun!