Goodbye Spenc

Monday, June 24th, 2024

On Monday evening about 7 PM my dad called to tell me that my mother found Spencer, dead in his vehicle. 

It was the night before we were supposed to go to Lagoon. 

Shay had come to pick up my kids and Oaklee and Kash (whom I had been babysitting) and take them up to have a sleepover at the trailer in the lagoon campground like they do every year. 

After we found out we got a hold of Shay and got her to come back to the house. 

During that time I had been talking to Sarah. No one was sure if we were still going to go to Lagoon the next day or not. 

Eventually mom decided, upon the advice of the social worker whom she met while working with the police downtown, to go to Lagoon the next day. 

So at about 9/9:30 PM, Jake drove the van full of kids, and I drove with Shayla in her car towards Farmington to drop everybody off. 

We didn't end up leaving til midnight, because Sarah and Brady had driven all the way up to sleepover in the trailer and be with their kids and my parents. We spent hours talking and crying. 

Mom said that the police told her Spencer had been dead for several days, and that because of the heat his body had been forced into decomposition rather quickly. 

Mom's friend, Lisa, was with her when they found Spencer, and they both smelt the decay and Lisa ended up setting a glimpse of Spencer, and pulled my mom away before she could open up the car door or peak in the windows. Lisa called the police, and Lisa told me later that mom was crying and fighting her to try and get "to her son." Lucky enough or because of divine intervention, my mom did not ever see Spencer in that state, and the funeral home told her it would be a closed casket funeral because of the state of his body. 

 

These are the last pictures I have of Spencer, from Saturday, June 15th when Jake and I drove Spencer up to the Harvey Family birthday party up at the park by Mountain Dell golf course

 

We will miss you Spenc. Love you.

Alyssa Goes Back to School

Starting at the beginning of October 2023, i was looking for online jobs and found i really needed a bachelors degree so i started looking into online colleges. I eventually signed up with Northwest Missouri State University. I got really lucky because by the time I got my application submitted and my FAFSA filled out classes started a few days later.  Everything went really quickly. It was only about ten days from start of looking for schools to starting my classes. My first classes started mid October 2023. The semesters are broken into two 7 week sessions. This means that the classes are much more condensed, which means the amount of reading I've had to do in small times frames is so much. 

I started my new journey with a US History class and an English class. I really enjoyed the English class assignments. I had to read an article and write a summary, and learn different quotation methods, and I relearned how to cite.  My history class was something I enjoyed and learned so much. The teachers videos were super interesting, but near the end of the seven weeks there was so much book reading that I ended up cutting out her videos just to complete the reading because I noticed that there were more book questions on the tests than from her lectures. The weekly discussions were super eye opening, and definitely opened my mind about a lot of what happened in US History. I grew frustrated with my professor in the way that she graded my discussion posts, because she kept knocking off points for citation and I couldn't figure out what she was looking for. I ended up with a B in History. I had to write a ten page argumentative research paper for my English class. I picked the topic of Walkable city's. My thesis was "Although many people believe that walkability and public transportation are not issues to be worried about, a more detailed examination suggests public transportation and walkability are only the tip of the iceberg addressing America’s infrastructure needs." I was so nervous about this paper. I bought so many books, found so many articles. I had no idea how well I had done on it. I was almost late submitting it because Jake was editing it, and I had to get my citation page made up. But I made it. With an A+ in the class!!! 

I probably spent 8-10 hours a day doing homework. And since I am not a morning person, the homework started around noon and went until 11 pm usually. 

My spring semester started in January, and the first block classes are People and Cultures Around the World and a Literacy class. My peoples and cultures class turned out to be really easy, which is a good thing because I have been averaging about 80 pages to read every 2.5 days for my Literacy class. But the works we are reading are so interesting. I didn't think I would like the class as much as I have. The discussions, despite being a pain, really make me stop and think. The discussion posts are a minimum of 350 words and sometimes it seems like it will be really difficult to reach that word limit, and then I usually end up flying past it. 

We are having to do a Literacy analysis paper for the end of the class, and I got stuck trying to create a claim (an opinion/idea that I can back up from a work we read) and so I wrote three different ones, and my professor helped me narrow it down to which claim to use. After that, I went through and wrote thoughts about the work I picked, which was a Thousand and One Nights, and then it was pretty easy to type up my 4-5 pages. 

My peoples and culture class is so frustrating, because I love learning that kind of stuff, but my professor doesn't have any lecture videos on the material, and isn't having us read the book. Instead he has made up word documents with important terms and sometimes events he wants us to know about, but doesn't really go into detail about the events either. The part of the class I have enjoyed the most is labeling the maps, although that is frustrating as well, because he lists geographic landmarks/mountains/rivers/body's of water he wants us to know, but have to google to find out where they are. 

Got A's in both those classes. So far school is going pretty good. I'm probably screwed for summer with the kids home all the time though.

Eric and Jenny Whitesides Wedding

Saturday, March 25th, 2023

They got married in the Draper temple. So it wasn't too bad of a drive. But we ended up getting there only like 5 minutes before the ceremony actually started.  But man was it cold. We stayed in the van, watched Brayla's son Lucas, and I ran back and forth between our van and Jason and Tami's car to check on their 4 kiddos.

Then when our family started coming out of the temple, and Mckay came to get Lucas, we got our kids out and dressed for the cold and went to line up to congratulate the newlywed couple. Then we took some group pictures with them.

Jake and I stayed to help Crista get the boutonniere on the guys, and found out she was hoping I would take pictures at the reception tonight. Initially I wasn't planning to really take any, because I just wanted to relax with Jake and the kids and enjoy the reception, that way I wasn't "working" a  wedding I wasn't getting paid to photograph.  I have done that at all of my extended family weddings so far and wanted to just participate this time.

So after learning this, Jake and I headed home to get my lights and extension cords so that we could light up the church gym. They were only going to have a string of lights going on the inside walls of the gym, so it was going to be very dark. And I was going to have to use my flash so my ISO stayed low.

After we picked up my camera gear, we headed to the church they were having the luncheon and reception at.

Before the reception, but after the meal my parents took our kiddos to the dollar store to get some toys to keep them entertained throughout the night.

So I did photograph the reception with a couple of other people from Jenny's side. And It wasn't too bad. I still played and took some photographs. I feel bad, because Jake once again was left to chase the kids while I did something I love to do. He didn't have a great evening, and that made me really sad, because I really did want to just hang out with him.

We stayed to the very end, leaving around 9 pm. My dear aunt let me take some extra cookies, that I gave to the teachers at Jim Bridger from the PTA.

Day trip to Heber-Sledding and Dairy Keen Tour

Monday, March 27th

It was the first day of Spring Break. Mom wanted us to come up because Shayla was giving her activity day girls a  tour of the Dairy Keen and she was inviting us up so the kids could get the tour too.

I had also offered to take Belle and Anna sledding during spring break, so I asked Tori if I could take the girls, go sledding, and go up to Heber. She said yes, so I picked up the girls around 11:30 AM. 

We headed up to Mountain Dell Golf Course to go sledding. We got there, the kids got all dressed up, and we headed to the hill, only to find out the snow was so deep, but no crystalized on top that we sunk a full foot into the snow. We could not sled! At all. So Lizzy and Anna made a snowball, William crawled around the snow, and tried making a snow cave, Sydney tried to help Belle make a sled path, but got bored after only a short amount of time. 

We eventually made a sled path, from the efforts of Belle, but with assistance from everyone else. So after 40 minutes, everyone got to "sled", which was a ten foot length of snow pressed down enough to allow the sled to slide. They all got a couple turns, and then it was time to go.

We made it up to Heber just in time to beat my mom to the Dairy Keen. So we hung out for about 15 minutes, before mom showed up. All the activity day girls were there. Shayla came out and took them on a tour and at the end of the tour they all go to make their own ice cream shake with any toppings they wanted. The kids loved that. 

Afterwards we went to my moms house to eat the food we ordered and let the kids play for about an hour before it was time to head home. It was now close to 5 pm and I need to get the girls home. 

The drive was pretty rough for me, I definitely kept dozing off at the wheel. And I was so tired, I got lost in Anna and Belle's neighborhood. Took an extra five minutes to get them home. I am really glad and grateful we all got home safely.

 
Camera pics uploaded last to first**