Dad and Laurie come to visit!

A few days after the Tjejmilen, Dad and Laurie came to visit us. 

They flew in from London after spending a week with Uncle Bill and Aunt Juliet.

Highlights of their trip (with me) included a "royal canal tour" boat ride in the city, Gamla Stan, The Vasa Museum, City Hall, Trip to Uppsala to see Aaron's work and see sights of the town, Drottningholm Palace, The Nobel Museum, The Royal Palace (where we got a glimpse of the royal couple) and watch Aaron run the half marathon in the city. Dad and Laurie then spent a few nights in the city alone to venture out as they pleased. After which they headed to Copenhagen to finish out their big trip!

This is my favorite picture of them in beautiful Gamla Stan.

Dad trying to photo bomb us! :)

 Went to the top of City Hall. View was amazing!

During their visit Aaron decided to run the Stockholm Half Marathon.
This is a photo of the runners walking towards the start line.

It is a tough job waiting for a runner and then trying to take a picture.
Aaron is in the red shirt with long black socks, dead center of the photo. GO AARON!

Picture moment of my little buddy while waiting for Daddy.

One thing is certain...This guy still has it!

Visiting Drottningholm Palace.

 The King and Queen of Sweden are in the carriage on the grounds of The Royal Palace.

It was a great visit. I am so glad they were able to come!

Jaxon's first week of school.

(I should have posted this before my trip to Utah)

Jaxon had a great first week of school! His teacher's name is Ms. Evers, who is from England, and she seems absolutely wonderful for Jaxon. I am so excited to watch how this year progresses for him.

Jaxon was very happy that his good friend Jurre, who is from The Netherlands, is also in his class.

The following weekend we celebrated his first week by going to Grona Lund with friends.

Of coarse, Darby and Melynn had a good first week as well but they are at that age where photos are not really smiled upon by eager, overbearing mothers on school property on the first day!

The Tjejmilen

5 days after I landed back in Sweden I had the privilege to participate in a 10K race called "Tjejmilen". You pronounce it like...Shay Meelan. The translation for that is "Girl Mile". This is one of the largest women only races in the world. There were 32,000 runners that day!

Many months ago, Sister Candilyn Newell, had a desire to get as many LDS women that we could to sign up for the race and have shirts made that tied us all together. She wanted to be recognized and show the people of Sweden that LDS women are alive and well in this beautiful country. Candilyn, Lana and I met together to discuss how to make this all happen. My job was to work on the shirts and gather the orders. Lana's was to get a group facebook page running to make sure that we could communicate with everyone, which by the way now has 176 members! Candilyn was the brains behind the whole operation and made sure that we were progressing in our goal.

Charlotte Karlsson, came up with this design. It says, We will go the extra/second mile.

On the front of the shirt in smaller lettering it says... Live it * Love it * Share it

What makes the logo so great, which us Americans may not realize, is that in Sweden they sometimes refer to a 10k as a Swedish Mile. So it is really quite clever!

 After searching high and low, I found a place in Layton, Utah called Shirtbatter. Since I was going to be in the area twice over the summer it worked out to have them made there (where it was much cheaper than Sweden) and then I could just pick them up and pack as part of my luggage.

I was able to put two orders in with Shirtbatter. Both orders came to a total of 115 shirts! However, that did include a few extra for some U.S. friends that were interested and family members.

Aaron made me this wonderful pre-race breakfast. What a great guy!

Meeting up with my friend Lana and...

all these cute sister missionaries before the race to travel into the city together.

Here is the only photo I could find with everyone in the same picture. Unfortunately there were other runners that were not able to meet for the photo so we did have a few more than this. 

Candilyn Newell, Lana Wimmer and I. 

Charlotte Karlsson was my running buddy and very difficult to keep up with :)

I could not ask for a better day or more wonderful people to share it with!!!

Ashtyn goes to college!

Three weeks after I came back from summer vacation I turned around and headed back to the U.S. by myself! I flew into LAX and Ashtyn picked me up with her car already packed and ready to head out of California. Our first stop was my mom's house in Las Vegas where we stayed the night and then mom came with us the next morning on our road trip to Utah.

Sadly I did not get many photos of this trip. 

However, I will post the ones that I do have here.

 Ashtyn and I stayed at Dave and Kristi's house for the first part of the week.

Kristi, Taryn and Ashtyn

Now that we got all of Ashtyn's stuff up to her room, what do we do now?  AAUUGGHH!

I love the photo above of Mom. She is such a ham!

Cute bedding!!!

The day we were moving Ashtyn in was also the day that cousin Stacy was headed to the MTC. We took a quick break to say goodbye and good luck in Lubbock, Texas!

Photos of two pretty awesome and adorable nephews! 

Nathan has eyelashes that girls would kill for. Such a cutie!

Had a great visit even though I had a terrible cold the first 4 days. At least I was well enough to not bother anyone on the airplane. We were also able to visit Aunt Becky, Uncle Reid, Katie and Cassie and her family. Also visited with two great sister in law's, Karen and Geri as well as visit some dear friends, Tiffany Hoffman and Sueann Blackburn.
Yes, I know I should have taken photos!!!!

I also visited with Target, Wal-mart and Costco :)

The family was happy that I brought home 3 large boxes of foods and other essentials...

Can you say Refried Beans and Chocolate Chips????

I think Ashtyn has settled in nicely. Here are a couple of her the first week of school...

 funny picture she took on her way to her very first class

Ashtyn with her roommate Brittany (no, not B. Armstrong) and friend Will 

at her first BYU football game

Needless to say it is strange to have one child out of the nest. However, Ashtyn was ready to go and take on this new experience and I know she is making the most of it.

GOOD LUCK ASHTYN!