Cousins and Fun in the Canyon

   So we had the privilege of having my mom and my youngest sister, Marie and her cute little girl, Lottie come for the weekend and Brock took to Lottie pretty well, minus the one morning he came and said, "The tiny girl is being mean."  The tiny girl, that cracks me up.  Five boys and this one little two year old girl came in and threw them all for a loop.

Seriously, this was too cute!
 

    So while my mom and sister were here we had the annual Kmetzsch gathering up at Mutual Dell and the kids had a blast.  I took a few photos of some of the kids but they would not cooperate on taking a family photo and I wasn't in the mood to fight with them so here are a few of the snapshots of a few of them.

Now just imagine the other five standing in front of the tree with Brock like I had envisioned.

Or all six of them right here would have been cute too.  These two are pretty cute all on their own though.

Rolling down the hill is always fun.

This looks like fun, McClane is trying to throw sand on his big brother.

Can you say, "Exhausted"!?

   Then we had a week early birthday celebration for McClane so we could have two Grandma's and one Grandpa there and here are a few photos of that little party.

Happy two years of life McClane Thomas!!  (This might be the only photo I got with Grandma B in it.)

He's not sure what to think of the thing behind him.

But he totally understood the bowl full of chocolate cake.

Oh, ok, now he gets it and yes, he likes it.
 

   Tomorrow will be McClane's official birthday so we'll pick up the traditional balloons for him tonight but that will be about it.  It's just crazy to think he's two years old already, the time goes way too quickly!
    It was sad to send off my mom and sister and Lottie (I really need a little girl close by to do hair occasionally.) but we enjoyed what time we did have with them and all the pleading from the kids for Grandma to stay just wasn't enough to keep Grandma from returning to all her "orders".  I hope those pouches are all done and delivered by the time we get to Heaven;-)

Temple Tour!

     Remember when we went to Brigham City to tour the Temple and so did everyone else!  Let's just say there were a few people touring the temple at the same time and day we were there.  It was really fun though and I know the kids loved their early dinner at Maddox (Thanks Grandpa Ralph!!) as well as their bus/shuttle ride to and from the temple.
     Here are a few photos of our adventure.

Maddox Fine Food sign!

All the Ralph and Judy Kmetzsch family was there minus Melissa and her little family and Heidi and Blaine's son Ben.

Brigham City Temple

We enjoyed our tour and are now ready to get back on the bus with a few of the thousands of others at the temple that night.

They could have spent a lot more time on the bus, they loved it.

Don't mind Kayli in the background, she always looks like that;-)

     That about wraps up our Temple Tour experience.  Tomorrow is the dedication broadcasting throughout all of Utah which should be a special experience.  (And I don't mind admitting I'm happy of the break it's giving me from my regular Sunday responsibilities.)

Nasty Spider's!!

    So I had another run in with a huge wolf spider.  Thankfully this time it wasn't on any of the kids but close enough.  I was watching a movie in the basement with McClane and out of the corner of my eye I see this huge spider crawling up the wall from the side of the couch, right where McClane is lying.  I hurry and jump up and get McClane to move and then head for a shoe but when I get closer to the spider with the shoe I chicken out and decide only the vacuum will work for me at this point, so I get the vacuum but I have to make sure it's close to me so McClane can't turn it off while I'm sucking this nasty thing up so finally I'm ready and thank goodness the thing just stayed where it was and didn't try to run but dang, that thing was huge and this time I did take a picture.  This spider is almost an exact replica of the one that was on McClane last week.

He may not seem that huge in this photo, but believe me, he was big but I wasn't getting any closer to take the photo!
 

   Thankfully the rest of the week was spiderless, at least as far as I know.  I think it just might be a good idea to fumigate.
    And just for your viewing pleasure here's a shot of two of my cute boys sleeping together.

Greg had just gotten home from the Father and Son's camp out and McClane was just ready for his regular nap and found this to be the best spot to take one.

This is a photo Brock took while riding along in the stroller during one of our regular morning walks.  There's no denying, we live in a beautiful place.  You just can't beat those mountains!!

And here's a photo of my little "rock star".  Seriously, he's too cute for words in my oh, so humble opinion;-)

   So that's it for this week.  Tonight we'll be getting our first chance to see the Brigham City Temple and having a tour before its dedication next week so I'll try to remember to post photos of that special event next week.

Redo

    I'm in the mood for change and to make things simpler if possible.  I'm always trying to make things simple and lately this one part of the yard has been driving me nuts so after a friend suggested eliminating it all together and just add more grass I said, "Done"!  Now done means, "Greg, I have a project for you to do this weekend with some help from me;-)"  So here's a before shot...

And here's a mid-project photo....

And here's how it sits today...

    Some people are missing the little pathway and don't love the idea of change but I'm happy and I think Greg is too.  He at least got to deal with the electrical mess that was attached to that light post so that was a bonus but of course a ton more work but a three day weekend was all Greg needed and project COMPLETE!