Graduation, Women's Conference, and Such

The last few weeks have been particularly jam packed and busy for us. All sorts of events, appointments, and other happenings seem to have been packed into the same short time period.

One such even was graduation for my brother Ben and my sister-in-law Katie from BYU on April 24th. Ben is going onto graduate school after doing an internship this summer, and Katie has found a teaching job. I am really happy for both of them!

We also were planning on going to a party for my grandma's eightieth birthday the next day. However, a sudden rain storm on our way there caused problems for us. We were in the HOV lane in an area where freeway just doesn't seem to drain well in general. We hydroplaned on a large puddle and fishtailed for awhile before our car turned and crashed into a small trailer. We spun around from there so that we faced oncoming traffic as our car went across the other four lanes before stopping on the right side of the freeway. We were very blessed because no one was hurt. At all! It was a miracle we made it all the way across the freeway without being hit by anyone else. I was just waiting for someone else to hit us or for us to hit someone else the whole time...but I am so grateful that didn't happen. God was really watching out for us, and we feel very blessed.

Unfortunately, our poor car was totaled, and we have had to spend a lot of time since then sorting out insurance, looking for a new car, buying the new car, registering the new car, and other such things. Our new car is a Subaru Outback, and the extra space it has compared to our little Ford Focus will be nice. Nate finally was able to go to the secured lot where our totaled car has been last week so he could get our personal things from it, but found that much of our stuff had disappeared. So, now we have to sort that out too...

The week following graduation, we celebrated Austin's birthday (as I will detail in another post) and I attended part of Women's Conference. The primary purpose I had of going to Women's Conference was to hear my wonderful friend Lori speak Friday afternoon. Seeing her and a number of my other good friends there was so much fun, and I really enjoyed hearing her talk!

While a number of us were going to be together, we also had a baby shower for my friend Heather since she and her husband are planning to adopt a baby boy soon. (Yay!)

I don't get to see my friends nearly as often as I would like, so it was really fun to spend some time together with them!

Friday after the conference, I met up with Nate and we spent the evening helping his brother move. Then we got up Saturday morning in time to attend the Payson Temple open house. The temple was really beautiful and I am so glad we got to see it!