Monthly Archive

This weekend ours was a “house divided”. The Jon Wadley fam parted ways on Friday so that we could provide representation at two different family gatherings – I went to my cousin Michael Madsen’s missionary homecoming in St. George and BriAnne and the kids went to her parent’s place in Tooele where all of her sisters and one of two brothers were in town. I can’t comment on her weekend since it’s Sunday night and she won’t be home until Tuesday, I do know that the girls all sang in church and did great.  I had a great time in So. Utah but can’t provide pictures since BriAnne has the camera, oh well. Friday night consisted of Uncle Glen, dad and me carrying out some self appointed rodent control responsibilities. I won’t say anything more than it involved a big tree, two raccoons and a lever action Browning .22 (and that dad and Glen are pretty good shots for being old guys!).  On Saturday Glen, dad, me and Mike jumped on their four wheelers and spent an hour and a half riding in the desert south of Santa Clara. Mark my words, some day the Jon Wadley fam will have a few of those machines! I wish I had a camera because the desert scenery was pretty neat. We watched the BYU-UNM game which BYU won. Mike’s homecoming was this morning and he did a great job. We enjoyed tons of good food afterwards and then Aunt Roxanne, mom, dad and myself climbed into Rox’s new Pontiac Vibe and headed for home. I guess it’ll be probably a little too quiet around here until BriAnne and the kids get home Tuesday morning!

I had the opportunity of traveling to Atlanta, GA this past week (18th-21st) with my friend and co-worker Chris Finken on business. Actually, co-worker probably isn’t the right word since Chris is a co-founder of the company. At any rate, Chris had passed through Atlanta a year or two ago but I had never been. We had decided before the trip that since we were there and the Braves baseball team happened to be playing in town that we would take advantage of the opportunity and attend a game. We went to one the first night we were in town and enjoyed it enough that we went to a second game the last night we were there. Part of the enjoyment came as a result of all-you-can-eat seats that we bought tickets in – $28 got us into the game as well as all the hot dogs, nachos, pop, peanuts and popcorn we could consume (which was a lot!). It was great. And the Braves won both games that we attended, btw.
The business part of the trip involved meeting with one of my current clients, a lawyer in the area (my primary reason for going) as well as meeting a potential client and attending a two day marketing conference put on by one our biggest clients for their dealers in the Southeast region. Chris had been invited to speak about search engine marketing and did a great job.
We stayed at the Omni Hotel right downtown for the duration of the trip. An interesting point is that the news station CNN is located in the same building as the hotel (all owned by Ted Turner apparently) and on Thursday I had a free hour in the late afternoon so I took the opportunity to go on a tour of the CNN facility which included seeing the various newsrooms and getting a summarized explanation of how things work there. We flew home on Friday and while it was fun it was great to get home to BriAnne and the kids!

Well, after weeks (actually months now) of talking about it, we finally made it up to the Zoo! It’s been at least a good 20 years for me, 7 or 8 for BriAnne and Katelyn and Ethan have never been. We were pretty sure that Katelyn was going to love it and she of course did.  Ethan didn’t know or care what was going on, he just enjoyed hanging out in the stroller and watching all of the people around him (we’re pretty sure he didn’t actually see any of the animals). And we all loved being outside with fairly mild temperatures and a cool breeze blowing most of the time. I will say that it’s been a long time since I’ve seen so many people in one place – it was a zoo of people too! It seemed that most other visitors were just like us, humoring parents just trying to keep their kids somewhat corralled and moving along systematically from one animal type to the next. Overall it was fun to go somewhere we haven’t been for a long time, and to be enjoying it as a family. On the way home, BriAnne asked Katelyn what her favorite animal was that she had seen.  She responded enthusiastically “the Dinosaurs and Lions!” The funny thing is that of all the different types that we saw, neither of those were among them. Oh well, we still feel like the $22 was well worth it!

It’s hard to believe that Fall is almost here! It’s kinda that funny time of year now when you need a jacket in the morning and late evening but air conditioning in the middle of the day. Overall our family had a great summer.  I am now in the YM’s presidency in our ward so I had the opportunity of traveling with our youth to the Manti Pageant for Youth Conference in June and we were able to do one campout with the young men (of which we only have three).  I spent most of the rest of the summer working away!

BriAnne enrolled Katelyn in swimming lessons again this year so she enjoyed taking her to the pool on a daily basis for a few weeks and Katelyn did great and loved every minute of it.  She also put Katelyn in a ballet class but that didn’t go as well – Katelyn wouldn’t participate in the class at all and told her mom that she was done with it after only going a couple of times. Oh well, we’ll give that one another year! Ethan just sat there most of the summer eating, sleeping, pooping and looking cute! Also, Katelyn turned 3 on August 24^th – she’s growing up on us!

BriAnne became a teacher in relief society I think in May or June, and she has really enjoyed that calling.  She really gets the sisters involved in her lessons, contributing and asking questions and always gets plenty of complements afterwards!

This isn’t all we did during the summer, but it’s all I can think of at the moment. Please leave a comment to this post letting BriAnne know that you’d like to hear about the goings on of our family from her  point of view- I’m having a hard time trying to convince her you want her to write posts here as well! 

(Left)Katelyn with Grandma Wadley at the annual Canyon Breeze Luau (where Grandma lives). (Middle and Right) Getting ready for Katelyn’s 3rd birthday!