November: Family Pictures

Mike was gracious enough to fit in a photo session for our family during the Thanksgiving festivities taking place.

Family photo sessions are always a comical event for us and the photographer makes all the difference. Mike was perfect!

I love this crew!

Levi and Daymia are a photogenic match made in heaven. Their Sunday visits are the highlight of our week. I admire their commitment to one another, their work ethic, and their ability to love life and see the good in nearly every situation.

Bret and Erika have an amazing family with so much personality keeping life interesting. They are wonderful parents with a smart, determined, loving little girl in Miss Kailee Jo.
P.S. Erika is expecting Lilly Rae and had just announced it to the family prior to these pictures being taken.

Ah, Derek. My pensive, creative, thoughtful, budding enterpreneur. I admire his courageous spontaneity and careful career risk taking. He going places for sure!

GQ Justin so full of skill, talent, tenacity, and humor. Though the other had a few shots taken for their individual profile, Justin had exactly one shot. Nailed it!

Nathan, my budding tweenager. He is kind, thoughtful, fun, spiritually sensitive, and his pun skills are improving daily. His care and thoughtfulness of his Momma fill my heart with joy.

Baby Hyrum is no longer a baby, but a growing young man with a creative mind and sensitive heart. His vivid imagination is impressive and leads to many backyard adventures. He has grown exponentially in wisdom, stature, emotions, and spirit.

The mid-life survivors.

Twenty-seven years has taught us much and blessed us beyond our greatest hopes. 

Through Walgreens I was able to use our new photos to design a Christmas card.

It truly IS a Wonderful Life!

November: The Everyday

Another piano festival is in the books. This was Hyrum's first festival. He was anxiously excited and did a great job. Per our new tradition, we went to Cocoa Bean afterward for some fabulous drinks that perfectly complimented my fabulous musicians.

As an LDS Young Women leader, I was blessed to celebrate the girls accomplishments and talents in our Night of Excellence Talent Show. I also gained a new talent as I learned how to decorate 75 cupcakes with thick, swirly, frosted tops complete with golden sprinkles. Our girls choreographed a delightful synchronized swimming routine sans water. Those 12 girls have been a joy to work with!

A visit to see our grand baby Kailee is always a treat! As she goes about her ordinary day, she is pure entertainment for the rest of us! She was especially interested in helping Grandpa install a switch, a circular fan, and bathroom fan in their house. When the fan was all finished she exclaimed in awe, "Wow! So pretty!" which I found rather observant for a 20 month old.

I adore watching my boys with their niece. What a blessing that as the youngest in our family, they still get to be big brothers . . . as uncles. She sure loves them!


A couple of new fur babies joined the family.

Justin adopted Gus and Belle from a local shelter. Life is just better with a fur baby to relax with.


November 27th brought a new feeling that we had never experienced before. We were ready for Christmas! We didn't fight the feeling at all, just pulled out the decorations from the basement and started unpacking. We didn't go all out and put up the tree but it certainly started to look festive.

Taking our first family selfie with Charlie found us using baby talk as we tried to get Charlie to look at the camera.

November: Big Dates

Erika and I celebrated our birthday's together in Utah.

At 11:17 on 11/17 my Erika Jo is now 24 years old. On Friday evening we went to Zupa's for dinner, then spent the night chatting in our over-sized hotel suite, slept in Saturday morning, and went to see Grandma Fullmer to surprise her for her belated birthday.

Also on Saturday morning we went to the Smith Marketplace near Oquirrh mountain. They gave us the largest (and free) birthday ice cream sundae served up by the sweetest gentleman manager we've ever met.

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Kimberly Edwards is with Graford LeRoy Edwards.

November 23, 2017 · 

LeRoy, our marriage is 27 years young! Eternity, here we come.

"What does tamed mean?"
"To create ties. If you tame me, we'll need each other. You'll be the only boy in the world for me. I'll be the only fox in the world for you . . ."

As I recently re-read The Little Prince, I thought of this taming that we call marriage. It takes patience and persistence (just as the fox taught) but is so worth it! For truly, "one sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes."

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Our second annual Thankful Tree filled the pantry door with heart shaped leaves labeled with our gratitude for a variety of blessings in our lives: spiritual, physical, emotional, friends, family, stuff, struggles, and the simplest of things that all make up a big beautiful life!

Hyrum had a school assignment to disguise a turkey so that he wouldn't get eaten for Thanksgiving Dinner. With a bit of scrapbook paper, scissors and glue, his baseball playing turkey was created. No one would eat a sports legend!

Thanksgiving happened to fall on our Anniversary. It worked out perfect so that LeRoy and I could stop by "our temple" on our way to Thanksgiving Lunch at Kate and Mike's house.

Also on the way there we passed our boys while they were joy-riding in Derek's fancy new car. 

What a handsome crew!

A highlight for the kids was playing Nine Square in the back yard with Grandpa Fullmer. 

He is such a wonderful grandpa to all these hooligans!

Evan and Trudy Fullmer with nine of their eleven children.

Cami, Josh, Kimber, John, Kara, James, Joe, Jake, Jared 

Mom and Dad