1 Year Vacation from blogging...

So, please allow me to re-introduce ourselves. My name is Ryan, this is my wife Debbie, and these are our two boys...Nolan and Drew. We have recently returned from an unplanned, unannounced, year-long sabbatical from the blogging world. We've decided to make an unofficial/semi-official return to blogging. We would appreciate if you would allow us back into the blogging club.

In Memory of "Davey"

It has been one year since we lost a great brother and friend. This last year has been very trying on our family, and Deb's family. Although difficult, we've all learned lessons and grown closer. We are especially proud of Leanne, and how she has handled things and grown this past year. We had made this video for Leanne and Kaeson after the funeral. The quote at the beginning was said by President Hinckley at Deb's Uncle Bob's funeral. We love Dave and miss him greatly, but know that he is doing good and helping others, as he always did here.



We went to the cemetery today. Leanne has Kaeson draw pictures for his Daddy - they are so precious.

April 2009

So, you may or may not have noticed that we've taken a little "vacation" from blogging. I'd like to say there is a really good reason for that...you know, like we've been on a world vacation, our computer blew up, or we've been infected with the swine flu. Fortunately, or unfortunatley, we can't legitimately use any of these as an excuse. The truth is...we've been lazy.

It might seem like a tall task to recap the last 90 days that we've missed, so we'll make it as brief as possible. Here are some of the highlights, and lowlights of the last 3 months in the Thurston household:

-Drew's 1st birthday party
-Deb's XXth birthday
-Big party for Grandma Murph's 80th birthday
-Primary Childrens Hospital became our residence for 3 days when Drew had the stomach flu and became severely dehydrated
-Easter Sunday in sunny St. George
-Celebrated Nancy and Danny's wedding in St. George
-Witnessed the sealing to Amy and Casey, and blessing of adorable little Olivia
-Spring Training in Phoenix
-U2 concert tickets went on sale...Vegas, here we come!
-BYU tickets too
-Snowmobiling
-lots of other things that kept us from blogging

Some photo hightlights from April...

And Drew's birthday announcement:

Testing, Testing...

Testing, Testing, 1 2 3...Check, Check, Check. Testing, Testing.

Read This Book!

I may very well be the last person in the world to read this book, but for those of you who have not, read it!

I've never been much of a reader. I guess I don't have the attention span or the patience to sit down and read for an extended period of time, so I've often started a book, then lost interest 50 pages in to it. My goal this year is to read at least 1 book per month. So, at 2 am this morning I finally finished my first of the year.

My book review: It is the story of Randy Pausch who was a Carnegie Mellon professor who had been diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer and was giving his "last lecture" as a professor. This book offers great words of advice on how to live life, and offers amazing insight into the mind of someone who does not have much time to live.

This book has given me renewed energy to be a better husband and father, and not want to take any of life's moments for granted. An easy read, and inspiring.

I've already started my next book..."Dreams from My Father" by Barack Obama.

Sundance Film Festival 2008 - U23D

In honor of the opening of the Sundance Film Festival today, we were reflecting on our experience at Sundance last year. Because we didn't have a blog last year, we are posting the evidence now.

Those of you who know us well, know that we are avid U2 fans. In our "pre-kids" days we would travel around and see U2 as often as we could, and as much as we could afford. We've seen them in Salt Lake twice, Las Vegas, Phoenix, and 3 times in Seattle. We even met Bono on the Las Vegas strip one time (but, we'll save the details of that for a later post).

Anyway, we were lucky enough to buy tickets to the World Premiere of their concert film U23D at Sundance last year. Debbie and I, along with Amy and Casey, scored seats on the second row of the show thanks to some sweet talking by Casey, and I'm sure some flirting with the theatre ushers by Amy . It was an awesome show. The rumors that the band would be there to see the show were true, along with numerous other celebrities like Woody Harrelson (who sat right behind us), Al Gore, and of course Robert Redford. After the show, the band went up on stage for Questions and Answers and I couldn't pass up my one opportunity to ask them a question. Here is the result...




It was definately an experience we'll never forget. It was also the first time we had ever been to Sundance. We also saw another film while we were there, Bruce Willis and Robert De Niro were even in attendance. We hope to make it back up to the festival this year because it was so much fun.

2009 New Year's Resolutions

#1 - Blog more.

#2 - Oh nevermind, I've never liked New Year's Resolutions anyway...