We are so thankful that Julia was guided to a choice companion, Austin Doutre, from Puyallup, WA. They met in a religion class at BYU-I in January of 2012. His sister, Dani, was a roommate and close friend of Meredith's. She had stayed in our home just before Meredith's wedding and we immediately grew to love her, so we knew he came from a good family. Since he lived just 3 hours away, we were able to drive to Puyallup and meet his family and get acquainted with them as their relationship developed into a serious one. The Doutre's are wonderful people and we feel blessed to be connected to them. We so appreciated my sister, Meredith Ashton for coming from Utah, as well as my nephew, Spencer & Melissa Ashton and their 5 children from Walla Walla, Washington.
We were so thankful all of our children could be with us for this special event. We missed Janelle, Bryan, and Gary and their children, but we are grateful everyone else could be there for this special event.
We drove up to Puyallup for the Open House on Dec. 27th, Thursday. It was held in their church building. Angela Doutre had it decorated so nice. It was such a wonderful evening meeting their friends. My sister, Kathi, lived in Puyallup, but unfortunately she was out of town and couldn't be with us for the Open House. Her daughters, Christiana and Amy were there. Our girls had so much fun visiting with them.
One of the highlights was on December 28th when we were all together in the temple for the first time with all of our children. We reach our goal to all "Be Worthy and Clean in 2013." We made it a few days before 2013! I shared that event in another post. There was a family dinner that night for Austin & Julia at our church house. Our friends Alice Lyle and Sherilyn Kelly helped in the kitchen. The Doutre's provided a nice lasagne dinner.
I prayed for months for good weather. Not something that usually happens during December in Oregon, but we were greatly blessed with a lovely day. They were sealed by Pres. Childs. It was a beautiful sealing and such a memorable, incredible day.
We returned home and had soup that Tiffany had gotten ready before we left. We had a short time to eat, and get ready to go to the church for the reception.
The church was decorated so nice by Ashley Williams Keyes. She also did all the food, salads, deserts, crackers and cheese.
The whole day was a reflection of Julia and Austin's good, pure life. They have kept themselves clean and pure and worthy to marry each other in the House of the Lord. Our cup runneth over with blessings.
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