Making Memories in N.E.

“You can leave heirlooms, but the most precious things you can leave are memories. When you are gone, you won’t be gone in your grandchildren’s lives—they will remember you. Grandparents, you are memory makers.”  M. Russell Ballard

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While Adam was off gallivanting around eastern Europe, I left the homeland at the end of April to make memories with my New England peeps!  New England in the winter is treacherous (they got over 5 feet of snow this past year), but New England in the shoulder seasons is much more delightful.   

Even the rain was delightful, because rain in Utah is exceedingly scarce...especially this year.   We've barely had any more rain than a  few drizzle events all summer long, so watching the kiddos play in puddles brought back so many memories of my own childhood and....  

more memories from when our kids were little.  This cute one of Ellie and her friend Gavin (?) from when she was a similar age makes me smile! 

I think I may have been a bit more indulgent with their puddle escapades than their mom would have been, but, you know, that's what memories are made of.   😂

Cami was quite sick (possibly with pneumonia) when I arrived, so I did a lot of babysitting at the beginning.  We spent time at the library...

in the yard and at the park....

and at the zoo where Lucie was delighted to meet a goat named Lucy...

Oliver, however, was not so sure...

Cami ended up at urgent care one day after having been quite ill for about 2 weeks and was prescribed some antibiotics.  Thankfully that seemed to be the ticket and she was soon better enough that we took the whole fam downtown before I left for home.  

WE made sure to send this photo to Heather to let her know how scared we were of the swan mural... (IYKYK)  

It was a very pleasant day exploring beautiful Providence...

which, surprise, surprise, also included some ice cream...

I quite enjoyed this unique ice cream place downtown made with cereal milk. 

Another day, we  also enjoyed this fun ice cream spot one of our ward members from BYU had told me about.   It's not far from where she grew up and she had recommended it to us to try.  

We went on walks most evenings.  We let the kids walk, so they weren't fast or far treks, but it was nice to get outside together once everyone was home from work.  

I left there a little tired...

but with a happy Grandma heart for the memories we were able to make together. 

Stay tuned for more catch-up posts to come...

Birthday Weekend with Birds and Trains

Glen and I have a deal that we don't really go big for birthdays.   We celebrate them, but neither of us has any expectations for anything elaborate.   Good food is required, while gifts are totally optional.   We try to do something fun to celebrate, but honestly what we do is driven more by the birthday person than anyone planning something for the other.   That may make us sound a bit lame, but it works for us.

  Between all of the stuff going on with my family (Heather's injury and my Mom's new diagnosis), the extended family drama (which happily crossed a good threshold in the last couple weeks), Glen winding up working at one toxic job and beginning to transition to a new one (in essence working part-time at TWO jobs currently),  some health stress for our missionary,  and our very busy schedule serving in Provo, I hadn't really been thinking much about my birthday at all.  But when I realized it was on a Saturday, I decided we needed to do something...anything...to celebrate and relax a bit.    

Thus our grand birdwatching and historical birthday adventure began!   

We started the day early by driving up to Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge.    Heather let me borrow her fancy camera for the day, and though most of my pictures turned out a little blurry, I did get a few good ones in the mix.   And I thought that having a good telephoto lens camera along with our binoculars really added a fun element to birdwatching.     Here are a few of our favorite shots from the day.  

These American white pelicans were just chilling in the water and were one of our first "exciting" finds of the day...

This ring-necked pheasant was gorgeous...

We saw several raptors, including American kestrel, Swainson's hawk, a red tailed hawk, and others...

This pretty little meadowlark looked like it was posing for us...

We thought these long-billed curlews were fascinating...
 

We did the auto-tour twice and did a guided walking tour as well, and after all that soaking in the beauty and peace of being out in nature, we journeyed onward to the Golden Spike National Historical Park. 

  The park marks the place where the Eastern bound railroads met the Western bound railroads in 1869.  Apparently Promontory Point became a bustling hub for a while, but eventually the railroads built a new causeway across the Great Salt Lake, which was a much more direct route, leaving it a ghost town. 

We were surprised to learn that during WWII, they ceremoniously UNdrove the golden spike, ripped up the railroad for steel for the war, and officially decommissioned the railroad line completely.   Everything there at the historical site  now is a replica of the original, including the two trains that made the official original trek.  

It was an interesting place to visit, though it was out of the way enough, I don't think we'll be going back anytime soon.  Perhaps someday we'll take Oliver (and other interested grandchildren) to check out the trains, but for now I think the long drive would be too much.  

After all that adventuring in the middle of nowhere, we were ready for some real food!   So on the way home we stopped by Smoked Taco (my favorite)...

And then found Milk Barn Creamery in Ogden for some ice cream.  We love finding independently owned ice cream places when we travel and this one fit the bill perfectly.  We've been searching high and low for Zwahlen's equal (our favorite ice cream ever near our home in PA), and this one was better than average, but still not quite as good!  Definitely a great way to end a relaxing day of adventures.   

After that we went home.   I very much enjoyed these flowers from an apartment of guys in our YSA ward (the Dutch boys) and lots of nice texts from friends, family, and ward members.  

It was exactly the kind of laid-back day of adventuring that I was craving and it made getting older feel not so bad. 
 
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A Visit from My Favorites

Becoming a grandma was everything I dreamed it would be and I love the connection we are forging with Lucie and Oliver, despite them living across the country from us.   I have a goal to see my grandbabies at least quarterly and so far we've been able to stick pretty close to that, though we'll have to see if we can keep it up once we have a few more grandkids in the mix (someday).   We also strongly hope that one day they'll live a little closer to us...actually a lot closer!  

Usually we plan on visiting them, because it's easier and cheaper to get 1-2 of us out there than to fly 3-4 of them out here.   This year, we  thought they wouldn't come out here until Ellie gets home from her mission (in June!!!!), but Garrett's sister got married at the end of March, meaning we got a bonus visit from them this year!  HAPPY DAY!  

They came mostly for the wedding, so we had to share them, but I soaked in every moment I could with C, G, L, and O!   

Which meant we even volunteered to help watch kiddos (including some of their B cousins) outside the temple while the ceremony was happening.   We are good friends with Garrett's parents and are a bit jealous of the fact that despite them getting started on the marriage/grandparenting journey at the same time as us (with the marriage of Cami and Garrett and the birth of Lucie), they are now leaving us in the dust on the grandkid count.   That's okay though, because the two we have are pretty doggone amazing and adorable!  

Oliver had a toy car or truck in his hands almost the entire time he was here (sometimes even sleeping with one) and Lucie was as spunky and talkative as ever.   We told stories, read books, went on walks, played with Denali...

And went to the farm, so they could ride ponies and take a train ride.

We also went to visit Rosy-nanna and Heather.   They both were obsessed with the cats and with playing the piano.  It was very cute that whenever a low note was played on the piano, Oliver would get this slightly alarmed look on his face and say, "Scary," like it was a scary movie soundtrack or something.   We also spent a lot of time with Adam and his girlfriend, Tia, who quickly became a favorite of theirs too.   It was also very cute how concerned Lucie was with Heather's injury.   She asked her a lot of questions and responded with an empathy beyond her years.   It was very sweet.  

Their last night in town, we met Adam, Tia, and Spencer in Provo and had dinner and ice cream before dropping them off at the airport for their red-eye back home.  

In amongst all the heaviness of late, it was good for my soul to have them here and it was hard to say goodbye!   Thankfully it won't be too long before I see them again!    

Another Thanksgiving in the Books!

I feel like I've been a little off my game with blogging lately and I'm here today to try to get caught up a bit by {finally} blogging about Thanksgiving.   What about the trip we took back in September, you ask?  Well, blogging about that, my friends, is going to have to wait for another day.  Maybe another year.  My bandwidth is not quite there for diving into trip photos yet.   

So, I'll start off the rundown on Thanksgiving with our Christmas decorations.      I've been feeling a lot more minimalistic this year and we didn't even put half of the ornaments on the tree this year.  I originally thought we might get a narrow tree for the dining room to display some of the other ornaments, but ultimately we left it more sparse.   Maybe we'll find a tree on clearance at the end of the season.    

I also tried to go a little lighter on decorating the display shelves.    It's probably still too much and it's definitely way too much brown on brown, but until I finally get around to painting these shelves, it is what it is.  It usually takes 5+ years of an item being on my home improvement to-do list before I even think about making it actually happen. Someday...perhaps!     

IN Virginia, we almost always hosted Thanksgiving at our house, but we haven't done it much since moving here to Utah, since my Mom was already filling that role when we arrived.  {Click here to see a glimpse of  past Thanksgivings}. It's been nice to just show up as a guest the past few years.   This year, however, my Mom and sister needed a break and we became the host house!   With all the hosting we've done with the YSAs the last few months, it didn't feel as stressful as it might have otherwise.   We had 2 of our 5 kids there {Spence and Adam}, my Mom, my sister, two aunts, one uncle, three cousins, the mother-in-law of my cousin, and four kids of my cousin.   We assumed we'd have some of our YSA ward members join the crew, but everyone we talked to already had plans, and the 1st counselor beat us to the punch with the two that didn't.    That was right about 20 people...just enough to keep things lively, but without it being that stressful.   

Glen  smoked the turkey, made mashed potatoes, and gravy.  Adam and I made the pies, which turned out dog ugly, but tasted pretty good anyway!    I need to keep working on my gluten free pie crusts!   

The rest of the Thanksgiving dinner was made by everyone else, which is an awesome way to do things. We played one round of Codenames and then I gave everyone a postcard challenge.   Everyone picked a random word and I went through my postcard stash after they left and sent them a postcard with that word on it.  No one stumped me, though a few people got close (all with food words).   

 In the end I actually found postcards with a pretzel....

pasta...

 and another with a taco on it...  

The words they gave me (besides taco, pasta, and pretzel) were iridescent, watermelon, tiger, purple, lake, candy, beach, pig, octopus, and heat.  And none of the rest of them were that hard.  

 Haha!   Yes, I'm aware that I'm quite a nerd when it comes to postcards.    Feel free to leave a comment and challenge me with your own word.  😆

Now, back to more Thanksgiving shenanigans. 

The boys also played a lot of Magic the Gathering...

And I was quite enraptured with the pics from Thanksgiving out East!   I really missed having any of our girls home and I am somewhat obsessed with Oliver and Lucie right now.  I really really need to see them again soon.   Isn't that flannel on Oliver the cutest?!   

 Adam gave a talk the Sunday after Thanksgiving, so I skipped out on part of 2nd hour and went to watch.   He spoke about becoming new creatures through Christ and did a great job! 

Last but not least, we did a peppermint ice cream taste test over Thanksgiving week.   

Last year, we did Tillamook vs. Umpqua and declared Umpqua the winner.   

This year we put BYU Creamery and Farr's peppermint up against Umpqua....

And Umpqua won the day again!  

 It's got a great creamy texture and by far the best peppermint flavor.    We'll look for more brands to test next year and see if any can unseat Umpqua!   

 

All in all, it was a great long weekend with my boys and it was nice not to have much on our schedule.  I've got a lot to be thankful for and you, my dear blog readers, are on that list!  Thanks for tuning in and have a beautiful holiday season filled with  peace and lots of love.