2017

2017 We had a very fun Harry Potter themed birthday for Rose with a trivia contest which Rachel won. It was very fun to get "sorted" into our houses. 

Here comes Henry James Howe on February 9th! He is our second grandchild and Nick and Shay's first. 

For some reason, I don't have a lot of baby pictures of Henry but here he is at about 4 months old and I had to include this because Nick looks way to young here to be his dad!

We took a spring break trip to Gatlinburg and had a blast playing Coup. My kids are excellent liars-- which is important to this game. 

And we did this Escape room--was this the first one where the mummy fell out of the closet onto Hannah? It might have been. It was very fun and we won. That is the most important part. 

It was still pretty cold in Tennessee in March when we went but we still made the kids go with us on drives with lots of pretty scenery including this cabin. They just loved it all so much. 

Joey is getting bigger every day!

I am pretty sure this picture is in the spring from a Madison 3rd ward family campout at Hulaco and it is the one where the Thorum's (Mike is on the left) brought their dog that scarred Isaac for life. I saw Isaac running across a field faster than I had ever seen him run in my life and literally thought--wow, he should run track or something. I didn't pay any attention to the fact that the Thorum's dog was chasing him and that Isaac was literally running for his life. 100% adrenaline--Poor kid. 

The girls and I went to see Shawn Mendes at Bridgestone Arena!

The Tucson temple is dedicated and Jer and Isaac got to go out there for it thanks to his parents covering that cost for us as they wanted all their kids together for it. Barbara got to sing in the choir for the dedication and that was an incredibly special experience for her. 

I don't have a lot of pictures of this but it was a huge change for us--we moved out of our home at 232 Grantham Rd in Madison, AL where we had been living since June of 2011 and put it up for sale. We moved into the Grand Reserve apartments over on Kyser Blvd (where Jr and Rachel lived for a while) into a fully furnished unit (the living room is pictured below) and put most of our belongings into storage. The kids hated living in this apartment and we had all sorts of not-so fun experiences there (mostly involving pests although I do remember a pretty good nosebleed of Hannah's too) but although it was a hard 5 months or so, it ended up being the BEST thing we ever did since we found our dream home and managed to pull off this whole epic change. 

There was also a total solar eclipse on August 21, 2017 that you could see in Tennessee and a bunch of us went up there to enjoy it together. I love this picture of my parents waiting for the big event. 

Although we had different plans when we set out, we ended up at a church building in Tennessee with a bunch of other members who were excited about this whole thing too. 

It was pretty warm that day so it was nice to be able to hang out in the church and have restrooms right at hand and everything. Isaac is clearly excited about it all. 

He definitely liked the part where it was getting closer a lot better. 

Gotta love this train we made so none of us missed the big event. 

So crazy that it started getting this dark in the middle of the day! And darker even, but it was so cool! Wonderful memory!

What a great picture of Isaac with his Alabama cousins (Ida, Hans, and Baer Potter) at their house just down the street from us...until we moved of course. 

At some point this fall there was a family history activity at church where we were encouraged to participate in recreating a family photo in the past so we got this one of Junior and Nick...

And had them assume the same poses... :-)

Then we tried to get their sons to do it, but they weren't having it--this is the closest we could get. 

We also got our last Eagle Scout all celebrated and all--yay Spencer! Still so glad this was the last one--whew!

Love this picture of the kids from that night. 

Oddly, I have no holiday pictures from this year and I am not sure why. The very last photo I took in 2017 was of this painting Hannah did and I love it so I will leave it here.

We went on vacation to Tennessee for Christmas so we didn't have to spend it in that apartment and Jer and I decided the day after Christmas it was time to give up the dream of moving into the 49 Green Creek Rd house (which we had put a contingent offer on) because financially it had just gotten too hard and literally the next day I believe, our realtor Randy Nash, called to let us know we suddenly had 2 offers on the house. So in less than a month from then, we would be moving! 2018, here we come!