August pt 2

Harrison had his yearly x-ray to check on his malformation.  Everything looks great!  

Each year he takes his picture in this "sliced olive" table.  I didn't realize what he was doing with his hands when I took this one!

We took a day trip down to Turner Falls with Aimee and her kiddos.  What a fun day!

We climbed the mountain by the falls.  It was very steep and there were a lot of scary cliffs.  I was nervous about all of the kiddos, but they did great.  I was definitely sore for a few days afterwards.

I got some fun videos of everyone going down the slides.  The funniest was Aimee and Cami going down the spiral slide for the first time.  The went all the way down and then got stuck on the end and had to scooch off.  We will have to make it a tradition to visit each year.  We had a great time.

One Friday Jeff took the big kids on a scout campout, so Harrison and I went on a date night.  We had a great time playing mini golf together!

The next morning Hunter and Spencer came over to hang out with us.  There was a nearby church that had a fair going on with free face painting and a bounce house.  It was a really small church, so it was pretty empty.  We had a fun time. This is the first time I can remember that one of my kids was willing to be painted.  Harrison still didn't want it on his face, but requested emojis on his arm.  Silly kid!

I made a quick trip down to Dallas to visit Grandpa and Toni while Barb was in town.  I rode down with Mom and Alex and then I stayed a night with Mimi and rode the train back the next day.  It was really nice to catch up with everyone!  Sadly I didn't take any pictures with Mimi.  We visited the Kimbell Art Musem (amazing!) and the science museum with the kids.  What fun!

August pt 1

I realized yesterday that I never posted anything in August.  We were so busy having fun, visiting John's family in Denver, getting ready for school to start, planning a wedding, unplanning a wedding and  moving our friend Shyann in that there was no time for blogging!

Here are the highlights:

We drove out to Broomfield, CO to visit John, Bettina, Alex and Julie at their new digs.  They found a beautiful place right by a park and lots of bike trails.  I might be a touch jealous!  We spent our first morning in Boulder. My kids are not very good window shoppers, but they did enjoy some of the street performers.  Harrison loved a guy who did tricks from the top of a ladder because he made a Pokemon joke ("there's a hippiechu over here").  Lincoln found a guy who played speed chess for tips.  He was playing three different people at once.  It was pretty impressive.

We stayed at an airbnb place about 20 minutes from them in Lafayette, where we had our own chicken for the week.  It was such a cute little town and I thought it would be fun to live there, so I looked up the cost of housing.  The home we were staying in was about half the square footage and twice the price of our home here in Oklahoma.  Hmmm.

On Tuesday we visited the Botanical Gardens.  It was a free day, so it was crowded, but fun!

While John's kids had their preschool preview we headed over to a trampoline place.  It was awesome!

That afternoon we drove out to the mountains for a quick hike to Buffalo Bill's grave. 

When we left I guess I dropped my keys right outside of the car.  I have keyless start and it started just fine. We drove all the way back in town and went to the Museum of Natural History downtown. When we got there I couldn't find my keys anywhere, but the van would still start, so I figured they must be somewhere in the car.  I searched for a long time, but decided to just leave the car unlocked and hope for the best.  Everyone was waiting on us... including two kids who had run ahead to the museum.  

That night John, Bettina and Jeff took on the challenge of the missing keys.  They searched the car just like I had, only to discover that Jeff's set of keys was in his backpack in the trunk.  That is why the car would start.  John and Jeff drove all the way back to the mountains (about an hour) and my keys were still there.  Hooray!  While they were gone we walked into town and got treats.  There were some ladies doing some interpretive dance and singing there.  It was quite entertaining!

Getting Mom to her Mission

What a whirlwind of events the last few weeks have been!  We had been planning a wedding, but mom decided that it just wasn't the right decision. She was grieving her mission and found out that she could keep her original call and even her original MTC entry date.  She learned this on Tuesday and by Saturday morning we were off!  Just before she got to our house there was a huge (for me anyway) earthquake.  It was a 5.6 and was felt from Nebraska to Dallas and as far east as Memphis. It was long and woke up everyone in the house that wasn't already awake.

We made it to Denver the first night and stayed with John and Bettina.  Mom was pretty tired and went to bed early.  I stayed up and talked (intensely) with them.  We had a fun time playing games with the kids and luckily we had just seen everyone a few weeks before or it would have been far too short!  We took off for Utah in the morning.

We stayed with Pam and Jerry and had a chance to see Trent a few times there. I always enjoy spending time with Pam and talking about artsy stuff.  I had some really nice talks with Jerry too.  We took mom to the MTC (just a mile from Pam and Jerry's house) the next day.  I knew it would be really different than most MTC drop-off's because I would see her again on Wednesday.  It was so weird to have her calling me from there too.  She even called for advice on the TRC once.  Jerry helped us send her off with some faux teary drama.

Once she was in the gates (and after I went back to get her keys) I headed over to spend some quality time with the Wollenziens.  Mandy and I had just missed each other a few times recently, so I was super excited to see her.  It had been too long!  We had a good chance to chat on our own for a while and then we had lunch with John and Brielle at a new BBQ place in Spanish Fork.  

Mandy had another friend coming to town that day too, so she went to pick her up and I hung out at John's house for the rest of the day.  It was John's birthday and he wanted eclairs, so we spent most of the day working on those.  When I say we, I mean he.  When we told the kids that the eclairs were dinner one asked, "then what's for dessert?"  Vegetables were offered for dessert.  

The eclairs took about four hours.  The next day I went to a bakery that sold eclairs, really pretty ones.  They were 2.99/ea.  I thought they were very under-priced.

The next day I met up with Mindi and her daughter Sierra for a picnic in the park.  The park was in Provo Canyon and they asked if I would like to take a quick hike up to the top of the mountain with them.  That was unexpected, but really fun!  Thanks for being patient with me ladies!  What a fun afternoon!

On Wednesday I went back to hang out with Mandy.  We had a quick visit and walk at their farm and then had lunch with my mission companion, Amy.  I hadn't seen her in ages and it was fun to catch up!

Thursday I went to Dayna's in Sandy.  We had a great time catching up and getting our toes done.  There is never enough time!  I did get to come back the next night though with mom for a quick (and yummy) dinner.   Thursday night mom and I went to the City Center Temple in Provo and did some initiatories.  We had heard that there might be lines to do a session and just wanted a quick glimpse!

After visiting Dayna and Karen on Friday night we stopped in to see Corey and Liz in their new home.  It was great to see them and see how big the kids have gotten!   

Saturday morning we were back on the road.  There is so much variety in Landscape from one moment to the next in that drive.  These two pictures were taken just seconds apart.

We had quite a bit of extra time to make it to Los Angeles and we debated stopping at a National Park or something, but were really anxious to make it to California, so we opted for a pit stop in Las Vegas at an art museum.  We just picked one and then followed the GPS to get to it.  It was in this crazy area of town where all kinds of stuff was happening.  It had a pedestrian zone with street performers and a giant slot machine that was a 4 person zipline.  There were some CRAZY people there!  It took us a while to find the museum and then once we did I had to question a museum with a neon open sign, but it actually turned out to be a pretty cool place.  We spent at least an hour there and really enjoyed it.

I read off all of the eateries in the area and mom chose "Nacho Daddy."  It was yummy.

 That night we stayed in Bristow and then found a random place to go to church the next morning based on where we would be around 9:00.  It turned out to be a great ward and there were having a mission farewell that day.  A perfect fit since mom left too quickly to have one of her own!

Soon after, we made it to the LA temple.  It is like Temple Square there - it has a visitor's center, a Family History Library, the mission office, a Distribution Center and a chapel.  We stayed with a senior couple and met a few of the single sisters. There was a neat fireside that night in the visitor's center about Christ as the Tree of Life, especially in Mesoamerica. Mom is so excited to be where she is and feels like it is the perfect place for her.  I agree!  This is the view from the apartment we stayed in the next night.

Monday night I drove down to San Diego to visit my friend Christian's family.  He passed away about 18 months ago and sadly it is the first chance I've had to make it to San Diego.  I had a great visit with his kiddos, sister and wife.  They were so kind and loving.  We told lots of fun stories and cried together too.  Jana made us a yummy dinner and it was so fun to spend time with her.