The big family news for this month is mom/grandma’s birthday bash. After completing seven decades of life, you are entitled to get some things you want and she wanted to
see her family (no explaining some people’s tastes). Alan and Mona hosted the central meeting place at their condo in Bend (thanks!). It was great fun to have everyone together and a bit poignant because of the Wrathalls’ impending move. I believe all walls of the condo are still standing.

Can you believe that several members of the family hiked nearly 9 miles? The youngest was Gerrit at 7 and the oldest was mom/grandma who, as previously mentioned is quickly approaching 70. Gerrit’s feat was made even more amazing by the fact that the day before, he did a four mile 700 foot elevation gain hike at Smith Rock. Jared won the prize for most mosquito bites at 32. We had cake and ice cream, games and a family tree building activity, where we all discovered how funny we looked when we were younger.

Kent arranged an exciting raft trip for us on the Monday following our big weekend. All of us who wanted to managed to stay in the rafts, even over some Class IV rapids, but we saw a lot of Deschutes River water very close up! Some of the kids learned how to “ride the bull."


For individual family news: Dean presently sports a full beard and seems to be healthy. Is the beard some sort of morphed Samson thing?

Jeff says he is boring-most know that he recently bought a new car. He is still working in the temple recording ordinances on Tuesday and Friday.

We missed having a representative from the Utah Peden household at the party, but we
hear that Jacob received his patriarchal blessing and is close to submitting his mission papers. Emily graduated from 6th grade and received a leadership award.

Alan and Mona are keeping up their busy schedule–Mona recently went to Scotland
where she attended the auction of Princess Margaret’s jewels. She also visited St
Andrews. Earlier in the month she traveled to Las Vegas to do some teaching there.

Speaking of the Wrathalls, they are short timers for living in the northwest, because of Kent’s promotion. We are all trying to be happy for him, but those of us within easy striking distance of their home in Orting will really miss them. Kayla will be the closest–she’ll be at BYU-Idaho in the fall. She recently graduated from high school and received four scholarships. Allison surprised her mother by bringing home a presidential scholarship award.

Eric and Gerrit get the prize for traveling the farthest for the family gathering. Ethan recently did “space camp” at school, which involved the students’ participation in a space ship simulation in a kind of “Star Trek” enactment. Ethan was in charge of the shields. Ethan also got an award from the state for scoring in the top 10% of the nation in 5 categories. Afton is already seven months old!!

Taking a break from caring for sick kids, Kerry and Melissa traveled to Canada while the kids played with their Orting cousins. Kerry’s volleyball team is in the finals for the city of Vancouver. Ryan graduated from preschool and his reward for that is that he will be having surgery on July 24, so please remember him in your prayers. Audrey was recently selected as outstanding student of the month. In the future, Ashlyn will surely be pleased to learn that we posted her latest accomplishment on the Internet. She has learned to put on and take off her own pants. We all discovered that her favorite word of the moment is “look!”

If you didn’t see any news about yourself here, I didn’t find out about it or have forgotten it already. Feel free to brag about yourself, your children or your pets! Anyone can post if I send an invitation-so let me know if you want one. Otherwise, e-mail me, call me or telepathically inform me of what’s going on with you and your family and I will post it for the world to read (if only they can find the blog).
posted by Cathy Crandall at 4:02 PM