Merry March, 2025

So fun to begin a month with a wedding! Our grandson, Sam, met Nayeli on his church mission to Bolivia. Nayeli was a missionary from Ecuador. Sam was the zone leader over the elders and Nayeli was the zone leader over the sisters, and they worked in the office together. After Sam got home from his mission, and she got home from her mission two months later, he emailed Nayeli, they emailed back and forth, he visited Ecuador and met her family, she visited Idaho and met his family, and I hate to use this tired idiom, but the rest is history!

We all showed up the evening before to sparkle up the venue for the reception and dinner.

Next day, Sam and Nayeli were married in the Meridian Idaho Temple. They were both so thrilled and we love getting this great girl in our family!

She is a brand new member of the Smith family. Nayeli has just one sibling, who lives on the Galapagos Islands with her husband, who is a tourist guide, and she was able to come to the wedding, but Nayeli's parents were not able to come. Now she has lots more family members, becoming the newest member of our big old family!

After the temple ceremony, we all met back up at the Rustic Daisy Event Barn for the dinner and reception. Rick and Jodie flew in from SLC, Emily (Ryan had a last-minute surgery to perform) flew in from Mesa, Arizona, Stacy came a couple days early to help Missy from Gilbert, Arizona (Tom also had surgeries on his schedule), and Mindy, Jeff and kids drove from Alpine, Utah.

Sister-in-law, McKenna, made them a gourmet wedding cake.

There was a great turn-out to the dinner/reception, and afterwards, there was a fun dance.

 

This cute girl with me is Balladier Don's daughter, Anne, who is close friends with Missy and was in charge of the decorating. I love her, and she did such a beautiful job!

Anne and her husband, Darren's, pretty daughter served a mission in the same mission field as our granddaughter, Abby. Small world! Here she is with her new husband.

Off the happy couple go, leaving on their honeymoon to Puerto Rico.

We drove to SLC the next day to get there in time to watch Blake while Rick and Jodie went to their Stake Conference's Saturday night meeting. Rick, who is the 1st counselor to the stake president, spoke on Sunday morning, and, of course I'm his mom, but his talk was truly masterful. He works on his talks for the six months between stake conferences. We usually watch him speak on Zoom, but it was a treat to watch him speak in person! Afterward, Jodie had a wonderful Sunday dinner, and it was the last one for a while for Katie and Easton. The next day, they flew to NYC for Easton's new job, and Katie will begin her Master's program at Columbia in August.

On March 12, Roger was invited to golf in a USU Aggie golf tournament that was put together in St. George because the USU basketball team played in the Mountain West Basketball Tournament in Las Vegas. It was an event for Aggies on the way to the tournament. Roger got Aggie friends from our ward, Loran Van Noy and Steve Whitmer, invited, also, and they are pictured with the Events gal, Sian Smith, and the USU athletic director.

It has been a long-standing tradition to meet Jane and Dan Madsen, friends from our long-ago USU days, for dinner each year to celebrate Jane's and my birthday. It got put off until March this year, but we met up with them in La Verkin at the River Rock Roasting Company and enjoyed catching up. Great friends!

We love having our granddaughter, Ellie, over for Sunday dinner and she brought her friend, Lauren, from Colorado, who is a darling girl. Ellie has made so many nice friends here attending Utah Tech University and she plans to come back next year. Yay!

Ellie and Lauren enjoyed their berry trifles.

Some choice merry events in our family happened this March, and now on to April.