So many lovely things happening and WONDERFUL NEWS!!!

I guess there has been a lot that has happened over the last few weeks...the following pictures are not really in order but I thought I would share all the lovely things that have been happening! Below is my brother Matt. He graduated from Marines boot camp on April 16th. He is now a United States Marine officially. We are so pleased with him for sticking through it even though it was difficult. We love him lots and are proud of him for the wonderful man he is becoming. Isn't he handsome!

This last weekend we had the wonderful opportunity to hear an apostle of the Lord speak at our Stake Conference. Our stake presidency underwent a reorganization and as a result we had the pleasure of Elder Scott's company. At both the Saturday and Sunday sessions he bore a powerful testimony of our Savior, which is his main purpose as an apostle of the Lord. He also taught us the importance of teaching the gospel in the home and about revelation in our lives and in the church processes. One of his messages was also about women and how they were the Lord's ultimate creations. It was truly touching to be there and we even got to shake his hand. He is a lot shorter than I thought...He is one of the 15 living apostles on the earth today and is truly called of God.

Here is a new recipe I tried called Strawberry Truffle dessert. I was soo excited about it. I got it from a friend who is such a good cook. I was happy with how it turned out...isn't it lovely?

Here are some plaques that I made for my young women laurel's class. We had a lesson on the blessings of the temple and so I made these to go along with it. I got the pictures from theideadoor.com under temple pics. You can download them for free and they are in jpeg files. There are several temple pics available.

So we have been talking a lot about Chase taking the PhD qualifying exam and how it was a three week process made of up three different parts and how he has been studying forever...Well here is a picture of him on his final day~he had to give an oral presentation and answer lots of questions.

We were soooo happy when he was finally done with all the test components!

AND DRUM ROLL PLEASE>>>AFTER ALL THE SWEAT AND HARD WORK it finally paid off AND AND AND

HE PASSED!!!!!

I am sooo proud of Chase and his hard work and determination. Of course we cannot forget to thank all of you for your prayers and thoughts in his behalf and of course most of all to our Heavenly Father for answering prayers and helping him along the way. He truly has a hand in our lives for which we are forever grateful.