Chicago in the Spring - Part 1

The end of March we went to Chicago to Visit Holli, John and Rhys. I think I've mentioned before that I love Chicago. I visited there in the fall and thought the leaves were so beautiful. In the spring, there are tulips everywhere! One of the first things we did was head to Nauvoo. John and Rhys had never been there, so we wanted to show them around, since the rest of us had been there before. 

I'll just put a few of the highlight pictures from beautiful Nauvoo.

 

 

This was Rhys's "handsome smile." Silly, huh! And he really is such a handsome little boy!

We also went to Carthage and visited the jail where the Prophet Joseph Smith was martyred.

 

 

Then we went on to Hannibal, MO. It was fun, but a word to the wise here. Don't visit any of these places until after April 18th. Before that is considered the "off season" and they are dead! You can't even find a place to eat lunch! We still had tons of fun though. Rhys is playing with "Noise Putty" in this picture. I'm sure you have heard of it and know the kind of "noises" it makes. Bampa insisted on buying it for Rhys, who loved it. But he left the lid off and it tipped over in the car, unbeknownst to any of us, so Holli and John had a horrible, hot pink goopy mess on their car's capet.

 

 

Rhys tried painting Tom Sawyer's fence.

Then we headed back to Nauvoo to see the rest of the sights there, and to do a session in the Nauvoo Temple.

I wanted to finish with Nauvoo for part one of our trip, but blogger is being really stupid and taking way too long, so it looks like this is it for tonight. I will finish up on the next post. Stay tuned........



Kaitlyn's Wedding

In March we went to the St. George Temple to attend our neice, Kaitlyn's wedding. This is her and Joe after the sealing.

It was a beautiful day, and the wedding was lovely.

While there we discovered our old friends from high school, Ann and Doug Neilson were there. Apparently Doug was Joe's Bishop, so they were attending because of that. We commented on how much Doug resembles President Thomas S. Monson, and also how our family kind of think Jeff looks like President Uchtdorf, so we decide to take a picture of them together.

What do you think?

It was fun to see some old friends and talk about "back in the day!"

And it was nice to see family members that we don't get to see very often. This is Jeff's Mom and Frank. They spend most of their time in Oregon, so we don't see them as much as we would like. It was a great way to spend a Saturday morning!

 

 



Hike to St. Thomas

We decided to hike to St. Thomas again one Monday for Family Home Evening. It was quite cold, so we bundled up good and made the trek. It's always so interesting to see the old foundations of the town, now that the waters of Lake Mead have receded so much.

There were a few things that we hadn't seen before. One of them was a well that had names and dates carved into the cement inside. I'm wondering why we didn't take a picture, but it seems like our camera went dead or something. Anyway, that was really cool.

 

 

Here we are on the steps of the old school house. President Messer and Corrine came along and took this picture for us. Apparently they had the same idea for FHE.

 



Post Holiday Visit

We had been planning to visit our parents right after the holidays, but Dad scared us all and had a six by-pass operation about the time we were going to go visit. Since Jeff and I were both fighting colds and flu at the time, we were afraid to go there when Dad had the surgery for fear we would bring germs that he didn't need. So we waited until he was out of the hospital and doing better before we went up to see him Martin Luther King Jr. weekend. By then he was in a re-hab place in Richfield. It was very hard not to be there when he had the surgery, but we all felt it would be better to wait. I'm kind of glad we did, because we had a nice visit with them in the re-hab center. I couldn't believe how good Dad was doing, and Mom needed a respite, so we were able to take her home to sleep in her own bed for a couple of nights and help her with paying some bills and doing laundry. However, we had strict orders from Dad to "get back over here before 8:00 a.m.!" He really didn't want Mom to leave his side, but she needed a break.

Lexi was able to go with us, since she had just finished with her degree at BYU.

We visited with my brother Dallin and some of his family. This is Farrah and her husband Shane.

Sometimes it got a little boring at the rehab center, so we resorted to this..........

I'm so glad we got to go visit both my parents. It was heartening to see how good Dad was recovering, and to give Mom some company for a few days.

We were also able to stop and visit with Jeff's Mom and see his sister and family.

Tiff and Baden.

Laurie, Taden and Grandma.

It was nice to get to see some of the extended family, and all in all a nice long weekend.



The Other Half of Christmas

When we got home from Hawaii, the rest of the kids came for a Christmas visit. It was fun to get to watch them open their presents, and of course opening ours from them too. Kind of like having two Christmases.

Holli, John and Rhys were the first ones here. In fact, they arrived before we did!

I searched all over for a Superman action figure for Rhys (did you know they are kinda hard to find?) but in the meantime he decided he REALLY liked Batman.............Kids! However, he did end up liking Superman too.

Hillari, Keith and the kids stopped on their way home from Spokane, WA where they spent Christmas with Keith's family, so they were kind of anxious to get home after being gone so long. They didn't stay long, but we had some fun with them before they left. This is Isaac with his racer car.

 I was a little worried about getting Sareny this doll (sometimes she likes to think she is older than she is.....) but she loved it! That made me happy.

I knew Finley would love her "Punzel" doll. At least that's what she calls it. It's actually Rapunzel, and it sings and everything. I don't know where Keith was hiding out, but I don't think we got any pictures of him.

Jake and Liz got here with the boys. Charlie doesn't look all that excited, but he really was.

I knew Josh needed some new Superman PJ's, since his old ones had holes in the knees bigger than he is! He does love his Superman pajamas, so hopefully he will love the new ones too.

Have you ever tried to get six little kidos to look at the camera and smile, all at the same time? It's impossible...........

We finally gave up.

But we tried posing them in front of the giant blow up Santa and got this cute picture.

Our dear friends, Paul and Michelle and their kids came to spend the night on their way home from California.

We all had fun dancing with the wii.

Lexi with Rhys and Caddy.

Jake and Josh

And then we had a pretty darn fun New Year's Eve party!

We had lots of good food.........

Played Up and Down the River.........

And stayed up way too late.

We had lots of fun and enjoyed everyone so much! Soon after New Year's Day, they all went home except the Ronquillo's, who stayed for a few more days.

We went to Valley of Fire with them, and had a fun time showing it all to Rhys.

 

We went on this cool hike.

Rhys loved hiding in all the nooks and crannies and then jumping out and "spooking" us when we came by.

He is a cute little bug. We had good visits with everyone, and all too soon it was back to school and the holidays were over. But as you can see, we had a great time with our family!