Tracy family visit 2014

Here we are again as the complete set of Tracy siblings. 

Gotta get pictures when this happens as it doesn't happen often and we've lucked out to have it twice this year. 

(These pictures were taken at Deer Creek Reservoir up Provo Canyon)

Emily & Sariah

Rebecca & Will

Mel & I

Will looking rather hot here. I had to put him in the water to cool him down right after this picture.

Caleb & Emily were just taking in the waves created by the boats at the shore here. It was really cute.

Sarah was loving me taking her picture.

The birthday boy and I.

Aaron didn't bring a bathing suit. When I told him it was Will's chair he was sitting in he said, "It's okay, I've got a small butt."

 True. How nice for him:)

John with a log he found and then claimed as his own.

The only pic I took of Jarom and he has his back to the camera!

I think this is such a great picture of Jay!

Will becomes an official toddler

Guess who's two?

Cute sign Mel made. Caleb & Will share the same birthday.

Watch cute video of this here.

He was thrilled with his new bike. 

These run about a hundred bucks and I looked for one used but they are extremely popular and I couldn't find one. Then a neighbor happened to mention it was the special of the day on Zulily and I got in on it. I was so excited that he took to it right out of the box!

Caleb's colorful and gluten/dairy free cake

20 year anniversary

June 25, 1994 was 20 years ago now . . . 

Jay looked at these pictures while he was visiting and had to make the comment about how young we look. 

Yep. Younger. Thinner. More stupid. 

I guess it all balances out.

Somehow I thought things would be different at twenty years. I think I pictured us having life a lot more figured out. Peter would be at a great place in his career, we'd own a nice home and newer cars, and I'd get a big diamond ring to make up for the fact that we weren't able to buy our own when we got married.

Alas, reality. 

Here we are and Peter is going to school (again) as we try to figure out what direction he wants to take with his career. We are renting our house and our newest car is over 12 years old. I've lost my desire for a that big diamond ring and instead feel nostalgic about my original one and don't think I'll ever really want to replace it.
Yet we also have these five amazing kids and who knew I'd be almost 40 and still have a two-year-old? I struggle to believe we are getting ready to send off a missionary next month and am starting to freak out just a little about that as Nathaniel's friend Hank left this last week (and I went downstairs as he and Nathaniel were playing video games and hugged him and bawled and made them super uncomfortable and then later when he was gone I realized he wasn't  coming in the door without knocking and calling me Mama Mitchell anymore and bawled some more) and then I sat through yet another farewell today. How did this come so fast and how am I going to handle it? How do I have two children dating and why does does my son keep asking hypothetical questions about marriage? So many firsts are coming up-- and awfully soon.

All these years later and our marriage is far from perfect. The same things that annoyed me twenty years ago are still there (with grinding regularity) and I'm sure Peter feels similarly. We are the same, but sort of different too. We work at our marriage and still love each other and we've hung in there through some hard stuff and in the end it doesn't matter about what kind of house we live in or how much money we make (or whether I'm perfectly thin and stunningly beautiful) because what difference will it really make in another twenty years? All that is going to matter is that we are together and moving forward. Or mostly forward. Even sideways is good. (As long as we don't move backwards?)

Actually twenty years is not at all what I thought it would be. When we were married for ten I thought wow, look at us! Then I saw people who had been married twice as long and admired them and thought we'd really be some sort of marital success story when we hit our twentieth. Now most people around us have been married thirty or forty or even fifty and longer and I feel sort of humbled and a little apprehensive about what the future holds for us and a little silly about my naivety and wonder how much I'm still so naive about now.

Anyhow . . . back to our current life.

Here we are hiking in Cedar Breaks while doing our annual anniversary trip to Cedar City for the Shakespeare Festival. I hadn't showered yet and am looking quite lo-ve-ly.
I forgot the camera so all the pictures were taken with Peter's phone.

Our selfie before we saw "Comedy of Errors." 

For the record I'd just like to say Peter only found out this week what the word "selfie" meant. (What?? Are you kidding?) He was actually more than a little proud of himself about that.

We've seen some very good plays here and this was definitely high on our list of favorites. You may not think you'd like a Shakespeare but they do them so incredibly well here you almost don't even need to know the story behind the play to enjoy it. This year they set the play in a wild west theme with all kinds of character quirks and it was hilarious and magnificent and outrageous and we loved it! We also saw Sense and Sensibility-- which was really very good--but I think the movie with Emma Thompson and Hugh Grant ruined all other versions for life as that is probably my favorite movie of all time. 
Just so you know if I had my choice in that book/movie it would be Colonel Brandon for me. But of course I already made my choice twenty years ago;)