Birthday and Pope's

    We're back to making ice cream on Sunday nights and the people are showing up in droves. We love it!

 Second Sunday night of the year with 6 different ice cream flavors.

    Carter's 18!! It's hard to believe it was 18 years ago when I was forced to have a C-section to get this 'chubby' kid out into the world. I slept through the whole delivery and have a pretty great scar I've been sporting all these years. Totally worth it! He's fun!

Drinks and balloons to start the day.

He was surprised to get a gift since the big gift was a month off from paying his car insurance. Not photographed are the cool shoes Rachel got him and a few other fun things.

Best decision he made for his birthday, Costco's delicious chocolate cake!

    Greg and I attended the temple and did an endowment session for the first time in, literally, years. It was great and horrible all at the same time so I had to treat myself to one of my favorite things, white spinach queso from Chili's.

Man I love this stuff!

    And McClane did some research on the Pope for school and presented his work for his fellow classmates and parents today. His 'outfit' may have been thrown together 20 minutes before school, what are you going to do?!

I guess the Pope throws gang signs.

    Not photographed was the visit from my cousin Andrew who stopped by for a couple nights while making his way to Indiana. We enjoyed his visit and hope he does great things in his future endeavors. We also spent many hours on the porch visiting with friends nearly every evening and indulged in a few treats along the way.
    It's been a week with some serious downs and ups. Life is always waiting to throw you a curve ball or two. We feel blessed to have such great people in our lives who we can confide in and who in turn pray for us and bless us beyond what words can express. Life can't always be what you want but we're willing to take what comes our way and learn and grow from it. Let God prevail!

Shattered and groomed

    Some day, maybe, the real story will be revealed, but for now Brock is sticking to the B.B. gun ricochet to explain the shattered sliding glass door in my bedroom. We weren't home when it happened so, for now, we only have his word to go on. Thankfully it's only one layer of the glass so for now we'll just clean up the broken glass and see about fixing it sometime this summer.

 

    On the same Saturday Brock shot B.B. guns, the priests and older young women got to go shotgun shooting west of Utah lake and it was a fun morning. Carter brought his girl, Rachel, and shot plenty of 12 gauge, a little 20 gauge, 410 and then the last big gun, our neighbors assault rifle. It was a fun time with only one minor mishap. Lets just say, we're glad one young girl came home with both feet intact. (Yikes!) And then our Bishop treated us all to pizza.

 

    Then Thursday evening our neighbor/friend, Scott and his wife, Eliza, took us to this cool place so Greg could get his beard groomed and haircut and there was even a little waxing involved. And, bonus, I got a nice massage while I was waiting for Greg. It was such a fun night and this place was so cool. It's in downtown Salt Lake and very incognito. You go through a delivery door and down some very sketchy hallways and then you're in this really cool basement 'clubhouse'. It's hard to explain, but our friend Scott is a member and can bring friends to enjoy the services and we're just thankful he so generously brought us and Greg is looking pretty sharp and was feeling pretty pampered.

Thai for dinner that we got to eat at the bar in the clubhouse.

Cool barber spot and Mel was amazing.

We talked him into the waxing and I don't think he regretted it.

Check out these crazy hallways we had to go down.

Pretty cool!

    And Charlie got to participate in the 4th grade County Fair. She was responsible for researching Grand County. Fun stuff!

 

    So there's a few highlights from this week. There were other fun things, like our first ice cream social of the year. We didn't have a lot of ice cream but we're just getting started. We did have plenty of friends and neighbors show up so I'm glad I had brownies and cookies to offer in addition to the couple of buckets of ice cream. We just need the weather to be a little more Spring like!

    Now on to another weekend and hopefully some decent weather.

Happy Easter!

    We had a really nice week, a little more sunshine and finally a week without a snowstorm. We also had a simple and nice Easter. We had all the kids here and we were only missing one girlfriend, Carter's, that's why he's not smiling in the photo, I guess.

 

    We had other fun things this week, celebrating our friends birthday, an adult easter egg hunt with another friend and her family and several evenings on the porch with neighbors. We love the warmer weather so we can spend more time outside. Lets hope we see more regular sunny days!

Brock's fun time and silly girls.

    Brock had a fun opportunity to join one of his good friends on a little trip to St. George. He had such a fun time, ate lots of yummy food and went on some cool adventures. He took some of his own photos that are posted on his Instagram account but here are a few photos his friends mom sent me.

    We also are having an endless winter and had a snowstorm this week that is unprecedented for April! Will it ever be Spring?! And we had a fun visit from the grand-babies and Harley is the silliest. I think she didn't come to see Joey but to 'be' Joey. She's a character!

Fancy food!

Adventures and sunshine!

Amazing sunset!

Stupid amounts of snow!!

And what a cute “Joey”

     We sure are blessed but we’re overly blessed with the snow and now we get to look forward to flooding, at least that’s what everyone around us is worried about. Bring it!

       Happy Easter weekend!

Happy Birthday to Grandma Rosellen!

    I had such a fun time in Oregon! It was so great to be with so many of my extended family members who had such a big impact on my life and it was great to reminisce and remember fun stories of my Grandma who would have been 100 on the 27th of March. I'm glad we were able to make the trip despite the crazy weather! There was lots of great food and fun activities.

  

These kids and their selfies!

Charlie and Mackenzie are always taking silly photos together.

Saw this gem as we pulled into Burns, Oregon for lunch and fuel.

And this bad boy is my cousin Eric's.

A little quilting demonstration by my aunt Sally. My grandma was an expert quilter.

    Sadly I didn't get any photos of my mom teaching everyone how to make my Grandma's bread recipe.

Fun puzzle of my grandparents and I got to use the O.G. metal cup!
My cousin Sabrina has the fun purple hair.

The kids enjoyed the giant Chess set outside the barn. My grandma loved playing chess.

This horse loved all the love from the kids.

Charlie enjoyed petting the horses even though it was cold, muddy and snowy outside.

A little gardening demonstration by my aunt Gayla. My grandma was an avid gardner.

    And I also made sure to get photos with some of the more 'major' players from my growing up years.

Uncle Mark! The legend!

This is my Aunt Elizabeth and her kids, grandkids and great grand kids. My cousins, Eric and Sabrina were basically like my older brother and sister growing up. It was great to see all of them!

Three of my favorite cousins, Jason, Stephen (and his wife Melissa) and Eric. I loved catching up with them over the weekend.

And my dad gave us an update on his latest motorcycles. This one has a pretty amazing paint job. He only has 7 bikes, so you know, nothing too crazy about that!

And the amazing neighbors taking care of our driveway as we drove home to the 'never-ending' winter wonderland that is Alpine!

And Isaac finished fixing his car and now she's back home, registered, insured and ready for Spring/Summer weather!

    So many fun memories and now we're so excited for General Conference weekend and Spring Break for the kids! Now if only we could be guaranteed some warm weather but that might be too much to ask for.