Monday night we had the missionaries over for dinner, but Emma was still at school for her final yearbook work night. It ended up being a late one and I finally picked her up at 1:00 in the morning. Oh man, that’s too long to be at school! The crazy thing was that she had driven herself to school but the car was parked at the church. I didn’t want her to walk to the church at that hour, so I still had to go get her. She missed seminary the next morning for the first time (besides being sick or gone).
I helped at school on Tuesday morning and had to take a picture of these cute twinners. I love Grace’s friends.
Lee and I went on a lunch date that day, definitely one of the perks of him working from home. We sent this picture to Emma.
Piano lesson pick-up that afternoon was a wet one!
Grace got the cutest invitation to Anna’s Harry Potter party. It was delivered by owl.
The slugs and snails are starting to come out. Found this little guy on the window one morning.
But I didn’t mind at all because I was leaving that morning to fly to Utah for a roommate reunion at BYU Women’s Conference. We had been planning this reunion for a very long time. The group texts had especially been flying between us all in the weeks leading up to the awaited weekend. We were so excited! Meredith and Stacy waited at the airport for me. I’ve been lucky enough to see Meredith often, but I hadn’t seen Stacy in 6 years. We hadn’t all been together since my 30th birthday.
Tasha picked us up from the airport and we headed down to Provo.
We ate dinner at Cafe Rio. Yum! We kept sending these pictures to Elasha and Allison, giving them teasers until they could join us. 
We checked into our dorm at BYU and Meredith gave us some fun welcoming presents.
Our beloved Deseret Towers are no longer standing, but we couldn’t believe our luck to get one of the new Heritage buildings that is exactly on the footprint of our S Hall. Our rooms looked out on the exact same view Meredith and I had in room 606. Oh how we loved that view! We could see Mt. Timpanogos and the Provo Temple beautifully, not to mention the MTC. It’s funny to think that Lee was at the MTC while I was looking out those windows in 1994 and 1995. The new MTC building blocks the view of Timp a little now, so it’s not exactly the same, but it was so fun to see that. 
We were a little underwhelmed with the new Heritage buildings. They seemed very industrial and we thought it would be difficult to meet other people living on your floor. We loved how we were able to keep our doors open when we lived at DT and be social with everybody on our floor. We wouldn’t have met each other if it wasn’t for that. The living room and kitchen of the apartment were locked and not available to us, so maybe we would have liked it better if we had been able to use those areas. We all decided we would probably recommend the traditional dorms of Helaman Halls to our kids.
That night we met up with Elasha and we went to the creamery for ice cream. Allison met us there and then we were all together! It felt like we hadn’t missed a beat, we picked up right where we left off. Back in our apartment we lined up on a bed just like old times and stayed up way too late talking.
But the tired moms in us definitely came out. One thing that hasn’t changed, Meredith can sleep anywhere. Actually, lots of things haven’t changed. We found ourselves falling back into our college roles. Tasha went to bed earlier than the rest of us, and we stayed up later and were loud. Tasha asked us to be quiet, just like she used to! I felt really bad when I realized I was locked out of our shared room and she had to get up, and then later when my key was stuck in the door. That brought about more laughter and noise. Sorry, Tasha. Good thing she still loves us!
We ate breakfast at the Cannon Center. Oh man has that place been updated! We were super impressed with how good and different the food was than from our Morris Center experience was when we lived at DT. So many good choices!
After breakfast we set off to our classes for the day. Sometimes we stayed together, and sometimes we separated in groups so we could share notes at the end of the day. One class found me and Stacy and Allison in the Fieldhouse. I spent so much time there and have so many memories in that building. I took a picture and sent it to Lee to remind him of our times at volleyball games while I was the student athletic trainer for the women’s volleyball team. Good times!
We ended our day with Jamba Juice at the Wilkinson Center. Some nice person agreed to take our picture. 
We really just couldn’t believe we were back at our beloved BYU more than 20 years after we first met as freshmen (well, I had known Meredith my whole life and Tasha for almost that long, but the rest of us met then). It was so fun to be there together again.
A delivery notice was on our door when we got back to our rooms that afternoon. After taking naps (we are old and stayed up too late the night before) we went to retrieve the delivery and found beautiful flowers, but we couldn’t figure out which husband sent them.
We finally figured out they were from Jeremy, Stacy’s husband. What a guy!
We walked around campus and admired all the improved spaces. We found a mama duck and her cute ducklings when we were on our way to the concert that night.
The concert was really good and enjoyable, better than we thought it would be. On the way out of the concert we tried to get a picture of the Y all lit up. This picture reminds me of the good conversation we had as we walked from the concert to the creamery…again.
Allison can’t eat ice cream, but she was a trooper and brought along bananas to eat.
Oh I’m missing that Graham Canyon ice cream right now. My favorite!
After another night full of laughing and talking, we were ready for another day of classes.
We were missing Tasha this day. Her husband’s grandpa passed away and she was with her family for the funeral services.
We hung out with Cosmo instead.
And continued to love Y Mountain.
For one class we found ourselves in an overflow room that had coloring sheets available as a service project of some kind. It was a little weird, and we had to sit separately because the room was packed, but we all ended up doing some coloring!
After classes, we got Jamba Juice at the Wilk again before heading to the closing session of the Women’s Conference. That closing session was so good. We loved hearing from Elder Stevenson who gave such a great talk on comparing ourselves to others, especially with social media. It was funny, poignant and relative. It was the perfect way to end the classes and a high point of the whole conference. Afterwards, we got a treat and relaxed on the Marriott Center lawn. The night before we had dinner at the Marriott Center before the concert. We bought Irish Tacos from the cutest grandpa who told us funny jokes. We ran into him again as we were sitting on the lawn. He had a ton of grandkids, I can’t remember how many now, but he kept all their names and birthdays in this little black book. He loved showing to us and telling us stories. He was the cutest!
Tasha rejoined us there and we went back to our apartment before heading to downtown Provo for dinner at La Dolce Vita.
Where we had to document a “grandma moment”. We used to have “husband moments” where we talked about what it would be like to be married and have kids. Now we have moved on to talking about what it will be like to have our kids grown and to be grandparents. So crazy.
About now is when I got a picture from Lee at the temple. Perfect timing. A real husband moment!
After dinner we went to King Henry to scout out our old apartment.
We were hoping someone would be home so we could tour the inside, but nobody was there. Oh the memories from apartment 209!
We went back downtown and were shocked by the different place that Provo is now than when we were at BYU. It is quite the happening little town! Of course, the new Provo City Center temple adds new beauty.
And the nightlife was so different! There was traffic and lots of people. There was a concert going on and people walking everywhere. This is the building where Kinko’s used to be where Lee and I met.
Here’s a close-up. The front door is gone now, but those windows are the same. Kinko’s was open 24 hours a day. I worked swing shift (mostly) and Lee worked graveyard, so we were there at all hours of the night. Never was it like what it is now on University and Center!
We had ice cream at Rockwell (yes, we ate plenty of ice cream on this trip!), that was right next door to where Kinko’s used to be.
I sat right outside where my color copy counter to used be. Now it is a restaurant. So crazy!
After a fun night on the “town”, we headed back to our apartment. For some reason, Stacy and I found ourselves ahead of the others, so just like old times, we decided to try to scare them. And just like old times, we couldn’t get up for fear we would pee our pants because we were laughing so hard. Some things never change, except now it’s worse since we’ve had kids. We laughed so hard!! And we didn’t even scare them!
There was more talking, laughing, and sleeping that night. We had such great conversations. It was so good to share our happy things and our struggles with each other. We all have different families, live in different places and have different lives, but we are all striving to be happy and to live the gospel. We were strengths for each other.
The next morning we dragged our tired selves out of bed and got ready to pack up and head to the temple. Tasha and I took a roommate selfie. I sure love that Tasha, it was fun to share a room like we did at Winters Quarters the summer before I got married and she left on her mission.
Meanwhile, Lee was at home going on a run with Isaac and doing yard work with both the twins. I loved getting these pictures, I missed them.
Back in Provo, we were able to attend the beautiful Provo City Center temple.
It was seriously gorgeous on the inside. And it was even better to be there with my roommates. What a wonderful experience.
After our session, we changed clothes so we could go on a hike in Provo Canyon.
Meredith had to leave us at this point so we dropped her off at the nifty new train station in Provo so she could head to the airport. It would have been nice to have that while we were there instead of having to beg for rides to the airport. We were sad to say goodbye to Mer.
You can see from that picture that it was starting to get really windy. Right after that, it started raining and there were lightning and thunder. The mountains looked really ominous so we decided it would probably be best not to go hiking. We were bummed about that but ate lunch at the Wilk instead.
Elasha had to head back home to her family for a bit at that point, so we went to Tasha’s house and watched La La Land. And maybe slept a little bit. When Elasha joined us again we met Beth for dinner. Beth was on our floor at DT when we were freshmen. It was so good to catch up with her. Even better, her husband Matt joined us a little later. Matt was in our King Henry ward and a really good friend of ours. He was our home teacher and we spent a lot of time with him and his roommate. We were thrilled when he and Beth got married.
After that late dinner, we had to start parting ways. Elasha took Stacy to her house for the night before Stacy’s early flight home the next morning. Tasha and I drove Allison back to her car at BYU and said goodbye to her there. I went to Tasha’s house to spend the night before my morning flight home the next day. It was so sad to say goodbye. I love these women and have been so blessed to have their influence in my adult life. What a great reunion we had. Tasha dropped me off at the airport the next morning. Unfortunately, my 10:00 flight kept getting delayed. I didn’t end up leaving until 5:00 that night! It wasn’t so bad though. I spent the whole day in the airport going over what I learned at Women’s Conference, reminiscing on new memories made with my roommates, and catching up on a lot of reading. It was totally appropriate that I read an article in BYU Magazine about BYU roommates who had been having reunions for many years and were now 80 years old. I sent a picture to my roommates expressing my hope that that would be us someday!
When I was finally on the plane and headed home, I marveled at the beautiful place that I live. It’s always good to go home!
When I finally landed I sent a PDX carpet picture to my roomies. Meredith, Tasha and I had tried to explain the significance of these pictures to the rest of our roommates at one point during our reunion. Portland is weird.
I was so glad to see my family. I came home feeling refreshed and renewed. And armed with BYU chocolate covered cinnamon bears. My favorite. They helped me through my real life re-entry, as did the group texts from my roommates over the next several days (which are still going, even in November).
What a weekend to remember!
.JPG)