Reasons

The 25th of this month was mine and Clay's 5-year anniversary. We celebrated a couple weeks early while we still had babysitters nearby. We were so grateful to have Clay's mom take care of Luke for us and my sister watch Cole. Clay thought of a lot of creative things we could do for our anniversary like renting a tandem bike or a wave runner at the beach, but we opted to just take it easy, eventhough the other ideas would have made for great blog pictures. Does that make us boring? Anyway, we went out to eat lots, and went to the movies, and rented movies and all that and it was quite wonderful.
The last five years have been such an adventure. Clay is so incredible. When we were dating I told everyone that he was perfect and being married has only proved this further. I made a book for him in our first year, of 100 reasons why I loved him. Thinking of reasons was easy. These are some of my favorites.

Love My Budgie

When Luke was born, Cole started calling him "Budgie". He love's his budgie very much and love's to pose with him and then have me run and get the camera to take a picture. The close up of Luke is from Clay's dad and I just really love it.

A Moving Experience

We are all moved in to our new place! With the help of our families everything got loaded and unloaded from the moving truck on Saturday. Cole and Luke and I stayed behind at my parents house so we wouldn't be in the way. We just got here today and Clay had everything unpacked and in its place. He is so amazing! It was so wonderful to get here and see that all the work had been done (hence I have time to blog). We like it here a lot and Cole and I have already had a couple little "getting lost" adventures. It is such a small town and really cute. The street we live on is lined with great big trees that form a canopy over the road, very similar to the streets in the Garden District in New Orleans. It's also similar to New Orleans in that everything has a sort of aged charm to it. You won't find any apartments around here with granite countertops or stainless steal appliances. We are so grateful though to have one of the only apartments with a dishwasher! As Annie sings in that broadway hit, "I think I'm gonna' like it here!"

Gospel Love, Shirley

Several years ago my family received a letter from an older lady in our ward which she signed, Gospel Love, Shirley. We have since joked about this and we've never been quite sure what she meant by "gospel love". I have, however, witnessed a few things in church that may fall under this category of love.

For example, Cole love's his primary teacher, Sis. Pew. Every week he sits next to her and lays his head on her lap. She is very sweet to him. The last two weeks have been hard for him because she has been out of town. In fact, on Sunday when Sis. Stebbing was doing an amazing job with a sharing time about temples, she asked the group a question and when she called on Cole (he had been raising his hand nearly the entire time) he responded, "Where is Sister Pew?" (Cole love's making comments in primary and we have had to institute a rule that he can only raise his hand three times during sharing and singing time.)

There is a lot of love in Cole's entire Sunbeam class. There are twin boys in his class who are sure to hug Cole before they leave and last week they all took turns kissing each other on the lips! Something that was so fun for me to watch was when Cole was sitting next to a little girl in his class, Jayne, and he looked over at her and made kind of an inquisitive look at her braid and then started playing with it. She just kept looking forward at the teacher and didn't seem to mind.

Maybe the most accurate example of "Gospel Love" happened this last Sunday when I was released as primary pianist. The primary chorister, Sis. Stebbing, said at the end of singing time that she had a special song for the kids to sing. She explained to the kids that it was my last Sunday in primary and that Cole and I would be moving in a couple weeks. She began to cry and I only mention this because of how much her crying meant to me. She is a lady I have admired for a long, long time and I was completely, I guess...shocked that she cared about me like that. The song she had the kids sing was "I Love to See the Temple" only the words were changed to "We love you Sister Larson, we love to hear you play..." etc. I felt so honored that she took time to do that for me. I really gospel love her!

Red, White, and "Blue Ribbons"

We had a fun and very exhausting fourth of July. We started celebrating at our ward's pancake breakfast. It was vital that we go to this so I could be sure to get a picture of Luke and cousin Connor in their matching outfits. Afterwards we went to the Del Mar Fair since Clay got free tickets from his school. Cole loved feeding the goats and sheep and especially enjoyed the monster truck show. He and I were really into the pig races too. He got to go on a couple rides and sample some classic "fair food". That evening we went to the park where my family was saving us a place to watch the fireworks. I love the firworks! I get chills every year as I watch them explode in the sky and hear them play "God Bless the U.S.A." in the background. I may be alone in this however, because Clay isn't a big fan of that song (I think it's because of the line "where at least I know I'm free" because freedom is a big thing), and Cole was scared that the fireworks would land on him. Well, overall it was a good fourth!