We packed the van up on Wednesday morning and headed to Provo. We stopped to get her school ID first and then to the bookstore to get her books. We had been on campus for not even 5 minutes and we ran into her 3 best friends from Liberty Lake... it was crazy. Ashley said after they left, "I wonder if we would have stayed in Spokane, if I would have been their 4th roommate??" Probably... but we moved and she found great friends in Vegas. 
Our next stop was Helaman Halls!
After $100 dollars in rubbermaid containers at Target, we were able to get everything to fit! I was shocked. I was sure we would be taking 1/2 of her stuff back to Vegas.
After we got her all unpacked her roommate Kathryn arrived from Salt Lake. She is the girl on the left. She seems great! Courtney is the blonde and she lives down the hall. I think they are going to have a great time together! When Ashley and Kathryn were at a freshman orientation activity on Thursday, people were shocked that they had just met... they were acting like lifelong friends. I am sure they will become that!
On Thursday John and I went to a few Freshman Parent Orientation activities. They were very helpful. They said this year they have the biggest freshman class ever! We made several stops at the book store for more supplies for Ashley... man, college is expensive!
Ashley spent most of the day on a campus tour and getting her room organized. We felt like we were the parents that wouldn't leave, so we took off and met some friends for dinner.
We met up with Todd and Mindy Black... they are great friends from Spokane and they moved to Utah a few months ago. We love the Blacks! We have plans for their daughter Whitney to marry Tanner! She is a doll. Todd and John were cracking jokes right and left and it felt like old times. We miss you guys! It was great to catch-up on their lives and reminisce about Liberty Lake. They have had an awful year and I sure hope things get better for them.
Friday morning we picked up our niece Kathryn and took the two girls out for breakfast. It will be fun for these two to get to know each other at BYU. They have only met a few times in their lives because she lives in Chicago and they don't get out west very much.
After breakfast we met up with Jim Mitchell who was John's roommate when he lived in Helaman Halls. (Mitchell is named after him...) They roomed before their missions and then after their missions until Jim got married. It was fun to see Jim and his family. He has 2 sons going to BYU. Ashley and their son Jacob are in the same ward! She was pretty excited, because in her words, he is gorgeous! Jim and Deena live in Florence Oregon and we haven't seen them since the summer that John's dad died in 1996. We were on a trip down to the bay area to see John's dad and we stopped in Florence for a few days to visit and we got a call that John's dad had passed away. We missed seeing him by 1 day. That was so hard on John. I honestly think John's dad did not want his son to see him so sick.
Anyway, it was so good to see them and catch up a little.
We ended up having to say our goodbye's to Ashley right there in the Cougareat because she had a lunch to go to with her roommate. It was VERY hard to say goodbye. Harder than I expected. But we know she is having a good time and it's what we have always wanted. I have a new respect for missionary moms. We were able to call Ashley a few hours later and text her all day after we said goodbye. John and I left Provo very sad. We know that our little family is growing up and we don't like it! We know it's part of life, but we also know that things will never be the same. She will come home grown up and things will feel different.
John and I decided to make a pit stop in Brian Head and spend the night at Dix's cabin. We went on a fun 4 wheeler ride and had dinner at a cute little pizza shop. We talked about our little girl all grown up the whole time... it really seems like yesterday that she was in kindergarten. On our way home Saturday we decided to stop at Zion and to do a little hiking... but I was not in the mood. It was over 100 degrees and I got hot and grumpy real fast. After about a mile, I could feel the sweat dripping down my back and we were about out of water and I threw a fit so we turned around. I feel a little bad now, but John was understanding as always. He is too good to me. We decided to go back in the fall and try it again.
Well, we made it home and first thing, Mitchell wanted to go to Home Depot to pick out paint for Ashley's room. It is now blue. It is strange not having her here... We love you Ashley! Study hard and have fun!
Blackberries... yummmmm! If you are from the Pacific Northwest, most likely you LOVE blackberries. You can buy them in the store here, but they aren't nearly as good as they are up there. And I can't bring myself to pay for them since they are totally free up there! Blackberries bring back floods of childhood memories. They are a totally wild bush up in the Pacific Northwest... they grow everywhere and they are really hard to kill. Before they built houses behind the house I grew up in, we used to have some in our backyard. Somehow we made a fort in them. fun times!! They have huge thorns and you usually get tons of cuts on your hands when you go picking, but they are totally worth it. My mom was a huge blackberry fan and so is her mom. My Grandma Verhaaren always came to visit in August during blackberry season. I have tons of memories of us picking blackberries for hours and hours. We would scout out the best places and spend the whole day there. We'd each get huge buckets full. We would go home with purple fingers and my mom would make a huge pie and tons of jam! So... the reason for all this blackberry talk is because my brother Scott was up in Seattle last weekend and he went blackberry picking with Dave and Julie. He wasn't sure if they would let him carry them home on the plane, but they did!! He was kind enough to share them with me. So I went over to their house and helped Jenn make some jam. YUM!! It is so good!!! Thanks Scott!!
He finally went to bed around midnight and when he woke up he started at it again 
