Graduation!!!!!

We have had so much going on lately. Our caboose, Lauren, graduated from Dixie High last Thursday. Andrea and Adam came out for Adam's brother Andrew's wedding in Salt Lake. They flew into Las Vegas late Wednesday night so that they could go to Lauren's graduation Thursday and the next day take the shuttle to SLC for the wedding. Lauren was the Senior Class Secretary and as such, she had a part on the program. However, she didn't say a word to us about it. We sat down in the Burns Arena at Dixie State College with the other 3,000 people and started to read the program. We found out that Lauren was first with the "welcome." She was sitting on the stand getting ready for her part. We could see that she was up there at the front and she was having major trouble with her cap. She didn't have it on straight as it was tilted severely on the back of her head and it seemed to want to fall off at any moment. She kept fiddling with it and no one was helping. All we could do was wait for it to be over. She went to the podium and got through her part without any glitches. Because of difficulty parking, Adam, Andrea and Scooter missed her thing. At least we got to go to lunch at the Olive Garden, then Lauren was off to Tuacahn for play practice. Above is a picture of Lauren behind her two best friends, Elise and Patricia, standing in the "D" and below is a photo of the happy nearly empty nesters. We adjusted her cap.



Here are Andrea, Dad, Lauren, Janet and Jessica. Rachelle is in Europe on a study abroad with BYU.




On another note, Janet and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary by going back to Zion National Park where we honeymooned in 1983. To our surprise, Jessica and Scooter got to our room before we did and they had planted many treats on our bed! You can see teary-eyed Janet looking over the surprise: among the things were our slippers, a DVD player with a carefully selected movie, many treats of chocolate and fruits, etc. The hightlight of the basket was finding a CD with our wedding photographs on it. Actually, all of our girls were in on this surprise and they had realized that we didn't have digitalized photos of our wedding. We watched the pictures on the DVD player and had a good cry reminising about our big day. The thoughtful gift by the "fruits" of our marriage was much appreciated.



Here we hiked up the "Narrows" the next day and found the water high and cold. It was painful just to stand in it for 15 seconds! But we look pretty good for an "old married couple," don't you think?




Here is a photo taken while we were at our anniversary dinner. This was just after I had presented Janet with a special ring commemorating our 25 years of marriage.

Scooter and Jessica's Big News

What a wonderful day Wednesday was! Scooter got word that he had received an incredible scholarship for his year of study at Oxford University. It covers full tuition and fees plus living expenses- a package that is worth approximately $90,000! He and Jessica have worked so hard at BYU and now their future is set. Scooter applied for this "Clarendon" scholarship last January when he applied to Oxford. He simply checked a box that he would like to apply for the scholarship when he filled out the entrance application, not knowing what the Clarendon was as he had never heard of it. A few weeks later, Oxford asked for his scholarship application. He used most of the stuff that he had used filling out the Rhodes Scholarship and then forgot about it. To their surprise, this E-mail arrived Wednesday. He was floored to read what the Clarendon was. Less than 5% of the applicants actually receive the scholarship which is reserved for the very best "international" students. They will be at Oxford for a year while Scooter gets his Master's degree in "Diagnostic Imaging." They will then go to Kansas City, Kansas to go to KU for an MD/PhD degree, which is also "free" as they are waiving his tuition for the six years there and paying him a stipend. Scooter, you deserve the famous "Doxey Red Plate Award"- a distinguished award for those in our family who really accomplish something terrific- plus the real reward- my wife's cooking to go with it!