I'm in the Garden!!

I just wanted to show the world how amazing my music teacher's garden is!!!

And these aren't even all of them.

Her garden pretty much blooms with color all year, although it's especially pretty in the Spring.

She is amazing.

She manages to teach piano, violin, and some cello,

keep her beautiful garden in ship-shape,

and take up new hobbies every other year.

I simply love wandering around the garden whenever I'm waiting for my turn to take a lesson.

By the way, I have been taking violin lessons from her for 10.5 years.

And over all those years, her garden has grown larger and larger, with more and more plants!!

I kind of consider it my own personal "Secret Garden"

The whole place feels magical to me.

I love flowers.  A Lot.

One day, I hope I'll have flowers as pretty as hers are, but for now, my thumb remains pink...

Just look at the pictures,

and you will understand just why I love this place so very much :)

Anyway...

School's almost out.

Things are winding down and closing up nicely.

It's almost time to say goodbye. 

Tomorrow is the last day of school.

and then...

It will be summer...

It's kind of sad, actually.

I will miss friends.

I will miss teachers.

I will miss being busy.

I will miss Luke, when he leaves.

I will miss Eliza, when she leaves.

I will miss the security of knowing where I should be, and what I should be doing.

I will miss riding to and from school with Tess and Luke every day.

I will miss (I know it's crazy, but it's true) getting up at 5 for seminary.

I will miss sack lunches.

I will miss life in the fast lane.

But life goes on!!  The flowers will continue to bloom, every year, and every year they will be beautiful.

Love,

Marta

Miraculous May

You're probably getting tired of hearing from me by now, but things have been happening so quickly that I've got to get this stuff on here, or it will go unwritten forever...  I will show you what happened over the last week in picture mode:

 This last week, we got Wednesday off from school because the internationally televised Amgen bike race was beginning stage 4 of their route right in our little town of Sonora!!  Our band played before the race  started, and downtown was more crowded than ever!

 In other news, I wrote an essay all this week and annoyed my family to no end by complaining about it... It eventually got done...

 Luke, after completing all of his AP tests, has been kicking back, and has contracted a serious case of :

 Also, on Thursday night, Luke attended Sonora High Scholarship Awards Night and received several generous scholarships from our community.  Oh, and he's valedictorian too, but we're trying to not let that get to his head so...

 Friday was Levi's 12th birthday, and we celebrated with a "Boy vs. Wild" party!  This particular contraption was part of the obstacle course

 More obstacle course

 and more obstacle course; other activities that occurred before the photographer could get there include boat races across Willow Springs Pond, and a compass/scavenger hunt at the park

  After the obstacle course, the boys did some archery

 and they cooked their own meat over the fires they had to start using flint and steel.  Other activities included knife throwing, stick sharpening, "chicken chasing", roasting marshmallows, and getting very, very dirty.  Needless to say, it was a hit.

On a cleaner note, we went to the Oakland temple on Saturday with the rest of the youth from our area.  It was a beautiful day, and it was great to be at the temple!

(In case you didn't know, this is what the Oakland temple looks like, it's pretty much awesome)

After the temple trip, I rushed home, and Luke and I both attended Prom; Luke went with his date Bethany and some other couples, and I went with an AWESOME group of friends.  It's been crazy.

Other Notes:

• There are only 8 days left of school
• Life-guarding starts on Memorial day for Eliza, Luke, and (maybe) Marta
• Parts of Dad's hiking trip are facing cancellation due to the large number of fallen trees along the route
• AP testing is over except I have one more test on Wednesday
• Water Polo is starting up again for and Tess, myself and (soon) Levi
• Did I mention  that we only have 8 school days left until summer?
• Oh, I almost forgot, Tess and I had a violin concert today, and Tess graduated from Suzuki Book 5!
• Umm... school's almost over.
• Yeah, that's it.

Love,

Marta

So, I changed the background because...

IT'S SPRING!!!!!  (I know it took a long time to realize that...)

Also... IT'S MOTHER'S DAY!!!  So I decided to honor my mother with some of my very favorite pictures of her!!!

                     

Above, are my grandparents William Doral Kemper and Ida Low, my Mother's parents.

Here's Mom when she was a wee lass!!

          

And as she grew, she began to look more and more like... 

MEEEEEE!!!!!

(Muahahahaha!!!)

 She Graduated from BYU in 1981 with a degree in nursing

 And Proceeded to go on many marvelous adventures throughout the world;

And cause a lot of trouble (a talent her children inherited, by the way)...

And THEN she graduated from BYU with an MBA, and against all odds, she was not married yet!!!

But don't worry, Dad soon fixed that :)

 Mom and Dad were married in the Washington D.C. LDS temple on November 23, 1990 after dating for about 3 weeks (says Dad) eye roll...

 They drove around D.C. in the back of a...(no one in this family knows cars, so we'll just call it an old car..)

 Many wedding photos followed.  These are just a couple of them.. 

For the record, I never saw these smooching shots until I dug them up this morning... very suspicious...

 Soon after, Mom and Dad were expecting their first bundle of joy!!

 And then Eliza Marie came into the world!! She was born at 9:00 p.m. on October 7th 1991 in the San Francisco Kaiser hospital.

 This Christmas just looks lonely, what with only one child, but...

 The house wasn't peaceful for long!!!  Luke Kemper was born on March 29th, 1994 at 2:21 a.m. in MacNeal Hospital in Berwyn, Illinois.

 Matching outfits at the "ranch" (our Aunt Michelle and Uncle Rod lived in the middle of peach orchards in the central valley of California) at a reunion in 1994

Luke wreaked havoc for the first few years of his life until Marta came into the picture to straighten him out...

 And then I was born!!!  It was November 12, 1995 at 2:40 a.m. in the Kaiser Fresno hospital when I was first introduced to this big place they call the world.

 Mom even made sure that Luke didn't drop me on my head too often!!

 One thing Mom is notorious for is cuddling!!  This particular picture is of me and Mom, but really it could be any one of us, because we spent a large majority of our collective infancies in the arms of Mom.

Mom suffered through ANY trial.  No matter how great!!!

We had great times though, the five of us!!

These days everyone in our family (with the exception of Eliza) swims almost every day.  Well, this is where it all began!

And then Tess Karina was born (dun dun dunnnnnnn) at 2:35 a.m. on October 29, 1997 in the Kaiser Fresno hospital, same room as Marta!!

But in spite of the trouble Tess caused, we were still able to go on hikes, a Houghton family past time...

 Another thing Mom always did when we were young was to make matching Easter outfits for all of us.  These days she does not do much sewing, but a large majority of our Sundays back then were spent running around in clothes made by our very own mother. Spring of 1998

 This was one of our many adventures to the beach

 Christmas mornings, back in the day! It takes a lot of will power to hold back the kids for the picture, can you tell?

 Yeah, we went to Yosemite a LOT.  It's one of our favorite places to be as a family.  Mom managed to get all of us packed up to go there many times over the years.

Mom keeping the kids happy on Easter!

And the final addition, Levi Jack!!!  Born on May 18, 2000 at 9:01 a.m. at the Emanual hospital in Turlock.

 With 5 kids to take care of now, Mom did, occasionally get help...

 Again with the cuddling...

Family Picture 2000

1,2, skip a few days, or months, or years and...

And after all that hard work from Mom (and Dad) we all turned out okay.

You may be wondering where I got all of these pictures, since I'm younger than 5 for most of them.  Well, while Mom was raising all five of her children, she also found time to scrap book...

This isn't even all of it.  There are at least 3 more binders full of pictures.

Do you see how cool my Mom is?

I love and appreciate my mother, and all that she has done, and still does for me.  I hope that one Mother's day I will be able to say that I have done as much for my own children.

Love,

Marta Irene

P.S. sorry for the RLBP (Luke's acronym for Ridiculously Long Blog Post)