The Randalls

Dieci.  Dix.  Diez.  Zese.  Tien.  Zehn.  Ten.  Ten is a great number.  It’s always the number you use to give something the highest score.  Like when you are doing a survey and its says rate your experience on a scale from 1 to 10.  10 being the highest (unless you are Spinal Tap, and then ‘it goes to 11’).

Ten is the most important number because it is the base of our counting system.  Our counting system is based on 10 because we have 10 fingers.

Top 10 lists are very popular.  The hands on a watch displaying the time in advertisements is usually 10:10.  It’s more pleasing to the eye, supposedly and it frames the logo of the watch maker.   You’ve got the 10 commandments.  I could go on but that would be boring, right?

My kids can’t wait to turn ten years old so they can get their ears pierced.  My washer and dryer are ten years old.  A lot of my furniture like book shelves and end tables are ten years old.  My silverware, dishes, glasses, cake pans, cooling racks and most of my Pampered Chef kitchen stuff is ten years old now.  I’ve had the same comforter on my bed for ten years (even though it really needs to be replaced, maybe even burned, thanks to a bottle of red nail polish).  My vacuum cleaner was just weeks away from being ten years old.  It decided a decade was too long to live.  It bit the dust the day before Téa’s baptism. 

My wedding band is ten years old today as well.  Which means that ten years ago today I married Mark.  I’ve had the privilege of living with my very best friend for the last decade.  How lucky am I to have found my companion, my other half, my partner, significant other, man, hubby, mate.  And how much more lucky that I’ve loved every minute of the past ten years and that we are like aged cheese.  We just get better and better with time. 

Maybe we don’t look like this anymore…

Young, a few less hairs, a few more gray hairs, a couple extra pounds.  But I wouldn’t change any of it.  This is what ten years of being married to an awesome man has brought me…

Complete happiness.  It’s been a great adventure and I can’t wait for another ten.  If you want to know how we celebrated our 10 year anniversary scroll over to the archives and look under November of 2010.  You might recall a little ten day trip we took to a place called Italy.  Love you, Mark.  On a scale of 1 to 10, you are an 11.

I think I’m finally recovered from the first week in June.  It was crazy with preparations for Téa’s baptism and Calista’s dance recital.  Friday, June 3 was the last day of school.  It was also the day family flew in to town for the weekend for the baptism. 

Téa and I drove to the airport to pick up my brother, Darron and his son, Isaac.  Since his flight was later than expected we decided to just hang out in Salt Lake until my mom’s flight came in a few hours later rather than driving to the airport twice.  We headed to Temple Square and decided to have a guided tour through the Conference Center.  It was fun to see it but even more fun just to hang out with my brother.  For a while the tour guide assumed we were married, even after we told her Téa and I lived in Lehi and Darron and Isaac in Washington.  Hello?  Darron and I look alike.  I just happen to have long hair.  Anyway.  It was funny.

After the Conference Center and dinner we picked up my mom and headed back home.  Bright and early Saturday morning was the baptism.  There were two sessions for our stake.  Luckily we had the early one.  I don’t know how many kids were being baptized in the second sessions but we had 9 in ours.  And since our ward was in charge of conducting our ward was last to go to the font. 

I think we prepared Téa enough that she wasn’t nervous.  I had a lot of emotions going on that day.  I was so proud of Téa for making the choice to be baptized.  I was also so proud to have Mark be able to baptize her.  What a great example he is and what a great father and husband. 

I didn’t get many pictures of the day even though I kept telling myself not to forget.  At least we have one family picture all together.

We had so many friends and family come.  Some who I haven’t seen in years.  It means so much to have that support and I know Téa was so happy to have everyone there.  We did miss a few people who couldn’t make it but we know they were thinking of her.

After the baptism was lunch at our house and some time to relax and visit with everyone.  I was able to breathe easier after lunch started and enjoy being with everyone.  I was stressed out about getting everything just perfect for the baptism and the luncheon.  I think everything turned out great thanks to family helping out. 

After lunch it was time to focus on Calista and make the rest of the day her special day.  I was so focused on Téa for weeks on getting things ready for the baptism that when I found out Calista’s recital was going to be the same day I just wanted to cry.  But Mark helped me realize it was doable and there was no need to stress (right…me not stress?).

Calista had specific instructions from the dance studio on how she should look for her recital.  We had the costume which was the easy part.  What stressed me out was this: she had to have full costume make up which includes eye shadow, mascara, blush, RED lipstick and curly, curly, curly hair with half put up in a ponytail.  Just for the record I don’t even own three-fourths of that makeup.  Anyway, Mark had the brilliant idea to hand all that over to my nieces. 

So, here they are working their magic with a curling iron and lots and lots and lots of hairspray.

She was so patient.  I think she felt really special having all the attention from her cousins.  The finished product…

Calista said she wants her hair to be curly like this every day.  I’ve had numerous friends who wished they could have straight hair every day.  Guess we want what we don’t have, right?  Movin’ on…

Here’s Calista waiting in the locker room for her turn on stage.  This is her friend Lauren who we carpool with.  I might add that I did do the make up and I hated every minute of it.  My sweet 5 year old does not need to be wearing more makeup than I do.

Here she is after she danced.  Her performance was to a song called “Shake Your Tail Feathers”.

I hate to brag (well, not really) but Calista was one of the best dancers out there.  She has made such an improvement from her Christmas recital.  In six months she went from watching the other girls and copying what they were doing to being the one who the others copied off.  I might be biased and I mostly just watched her, but she was great!  She was on beat and didn’t miss a step.  It’s kind of become a tradition to get her flowers after her performances.  She loves flowers.  I feel bad for the boys she dates in the future and her future husband.  $$$

And this is Calista on the way home in the car.

The recital didn’t start until 7 pm and we didn’t get home until almost 9.  She was tuckered out.  I have to say I was too.  It was a long day.

Calista graduated from Kindergarten a few weeks ago.  Summer had been busy and I’m finally able to blog about it.  This year was great for Calista because she had a wonderful teacher who she already knew a little.  Téa had the same teacher when she was in Kindergarten.  I’m just hoping that the same teacher will be still be at Snow Springs when it’s Piper’s turn.

It’s still hard for me to believe Calista is done with Kindergarten.

Calista has learned so much this year and made huge progress with reading, math and writing.  It’s weird to think I will have two kids gone all day next school year.  For now, we will enjoy the summer and hopefully keep Calista reading and not forgetting everything she learned.

OK, so I can’t remember what number this project is on the long list of stuff we’ve already done and things we have yet to do.  But we finally started closing off the loft back in May.  We really needed to get the wall up before Téa’s baptism so we had another room for guests. 

Here’s the loft actually cleaned up before the framing began.

Here are the boys working hard.  Jared (our brother-in-law) was nice enough to come over and help with yet another project. 

The girls wanted to help out too.  With this new wall we get another bedroom, a nice sized closet to fit more junk and a linen closet for even more junk.  Sweet!

After framing comes drywall. 

And after drywall comes taping and mudding.  And yes, we did make our kids help. 

The doors were installed so those staying in the room would have privacy but we are still a ways from completely finishing the room.  Jared told us (somewhat nicely) that we need to redo some of it.  I’m sure it killed him seeing our work.  He is a perfectionist and very good at what he does.  We, on the other hand, are not.

Hopefully we can get the wall done before the end of the year.  It’s been 2 years since we started the bathroom on the main level and it’s still not fully done.  Oh well. 

Busy, busy, busy.  That’s all I can say for the last few weeks.  I’m just going to play catch up for the next few posts. 

At the end of May we finally got together with family to celebrate   Téa’s birthday.  I’m sure I’ve said this before, but I’m so grateful to have family close by.  I love hanging out with Mark’s family and I love that my girls are so close with their cousins.  Our family gatherings are never dull and this last one didn’t disappoint. 

Just after dinner it started raining really hard.  Then it turned into hail.  My nieces and nephews thought it would be fun to run out outside in the hail. 

It’s hard to see in the picture but the hail was coming down hard and the pieces were huge.  You can see Megyn covering her head, it hurt so bad.   I was laughing so hard because they would all just go back out in it and then come running back inside with handfuls of hail to show us. 

Eric brought me some hail to take a picture of.  I think they started getting even bigger, too.  The green thing is an M&M to give you a reference as to how big the hail was getting. 

It’s now June (first day of summer to be exact) and we are still having weird weather.  But I won’t complain.  It’s been a really wet spring, but it’s kept the hot weather at bay.