Kristina's Crew Comes to Utah!

Shortly after Christmas, Emma went back to Rhode Island and my sister arrived with her entourage in tow—four of her kids, including Manuel, Isaiah, and Jesus who bring a bit of mayhem with them wherever they go. And right behind her came one of her friends, who brought her teenage triplets, increasing the number of people in our home by 200%.    Within an hour, my house had transformed from a peaceful post-holiday sanctuary into something resembling a combination of a Dave & Buster's and a convenience store after a tornado. Actually it wasn't that bad.  It really was loud...and messy...and a bit chaotic, but I have a good bond with all of Kristina's kids and genuinely enjoy having them around!   

LESSONS IN FOOD: 
  I raised five kids and know a lot about feeding them, however I can never seem to get it quite right with the boys.   I had stocked up on a bunch of their favorite foods before arriving, but I keep learning the hard way with them that there's a lot more to it than just picking the right kind of food for them.   Last time they were here I learned that chicken nuggets cooked in the air fryer were inedible and that soggy microwaved ones were the only way to go.  This time I learned  that different brands of mac & cheese can vary in taste and apparently I picked the wrong one.  I haven't eaten mac & cheese in approximately 40 years or so,  so I was unaware of these nuances, but apparently it's a thing.    Also, much to their happiness, I did manage to remember to get some of their favorite snack in the whole universe before they arrived--Blue Heat Takis.  However they thought I was quite mean for portioning them out into serving sizes for them, as they wanted the whole bag at once!  Ah, well!  I'll try again next time!  

 

THE SNOW THAT WASN'T 
Kristina and her family (and their friends) live in California and came to Utah very excited to see some snow.   Unfortunately for her and the record breaking low snowpack in the mountains this year, snow has been hard to come by this winter.  It's been unusually warm (something I appreciate) and very dry with only a couple little skiffs of snow here and there.  The boys were very disappointed by this and so Kristina went driving to higher altitudes in search of some.  She found the jackpot up at Suncrest and the boys happily played in it!   Sadly the triplets had never been to Utah or seen snow and it was all melted by the time they arrived.  They were quite disappointed.  

A TRIP TO LUMINARIA
One of my favorite parts about people coming to visit us, is that it gets us out of the house to see more of what Utah has to offer.  We went to Luminaria at Thanksgiving Point a  couple years ago and loved it, so Kristina and company coming to town was a perfect excuse to go again!  It was as amazing as we'd remembered and I think everyone enjoyed it!  

A TRIP TO ANTELOPE ISLAND

Another trek we took was to Antelope Island.   To my knowledge, I'd never been there before and I was completely enchanted by this wild and beautiful oasis so close to civilization.   

We saw this great horned owl...

and these beauties, an American kestrel and a starling...

Heather drove and my Mom also  came along for the adventure...

as did Adam and Isaiah.   Kristina and her crew came up an hour or two after us.  

We also saw bison (real ones) and this incredible bird, which was probably our highlight of the whole trip:  

It's a burrowing owl and they're pretty hard to spot, unless you know where to look.  My sister, Heather, has gotten quite into bird watching and bird photography lately and she had the inside scoop.  I totally want to go back  in the spring and see if we can find him again.  

VISITING OUR WARD
My niece, Madeline, and the triplets hope to come to BYU in the next year or two, so they all came to our YSA ward on Sunday to see what it was like.  They weren't very excited that we meet at 9am and had a half-hour drive to get there, but they made it with smiles on their faces.   I actually have no idea what they thought, but it was an excellent fast and testimony meeting and we were happy to share our wonderful ward with them for a week! 

Kristina was happy to see Alicia there too!  Alicia was Kristina's friend first and her husband is now serving as Glen's 1st counselor, so we are all friends now!   

HAPPY DENALI
Denali is 100% a diva.   She loves being the center of attention and there's nothing like more people being in the house to give it to her.  Happily, the boys adore her and she gets lots and lots of attention when they're around.  I daresay she goes into a bit of withdrawal when they leave...

 A FEW MORE RANDOM PICS
I'll finish off with a few more random pics from their stay here.  There's also a few more in this post about the Buttercup Neighborhood game.  

Madeline, Kristina, and me...

Jesus has grown up A LOT over the last several months, which meant a bit more sass, a lot more stubbornness, and a whole lot of silliness. He just got baptized this past weekend and I was super sad that I couldn't be there to join him.  

My sister, Kristina, is probably the only true extrovert of the family and she seriously has the best friends!    I've become friends with a few of her friends since moving here and we went to this gathering one night knowing no one but Kristina's crew, but came out with more friends!  We've even hung out with one of the couples again since then.  

I love when K's family comes to town and somehow even miss the noise and the mess when they leave.  

Happy February to you!  

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.  

Life Via Quotes to My Missionary

 I grew up in a home where being funny was valued as a desirable trait.   I tried really hard to be funny when I was young, but at some point had to admit that quick wit that requires the ability to think on your feet is completely and totally beyond the scope of how my brain works.   Self-deprecatory sarcasm is usually about where my humor efforts land these days--like "Oh, yeah.  I can totally win a karaoke contest.  Just sign me up and I'm there."  It's total hogwash, but relies on the other person knowing I'm a terrible singer to even be slightly funny.   And because there isn't actually any wit involved, it's not actually funny at all.  And some people might actually believe me and think I'm just a really confident singer and if I'm not careful I'll be asked to be the primary music leader or something.

  But, I digress.       

Recently I came across a few of my old blogposts and was reminded of the fact that  I'm not quite as unfunny in writing as I am in person.   Don't get me wrong.   I fully know that 99.3% of the posts on this blog are about as boring as the footnotes of a textbook on ferns, but, I do have written evidence that I have  occasionally posted mildly funny content.    

Here are a couple that made me laugh... (10 commandments of a teenage boy,  princesses don't toot, three versions of how to pack, helpful advice) 

But, I still claim no real wittiness, even in writing.    Really, it's all about the kids.   Kids make life funny and the only kids left in my life are living 2000+ miles away from me, therefore I continue on blogging like an out of work botanist.  Not that I'm calling all botanists boring, but maybe some.       

So, you all know my style well enough to know that I'm not really into writing long essays on any topic, so I must be  leading this blogpost to be about something from our lives and you're right.   Today you get the privilege of reading about our lives via some direct quotes from a recent letter I sent  to my sweet missionary. I didn't really start off trying to be funny, but I do admit to feeling slightly off-kilter that night.   Long Sundays will do that to me! Vote in the comments if you have a favorite quote and whether you think I should always blog in an off-kilter state of mind or if I should stick with   blogging only when I’m well rested and feeling sedate (which would be never). 

      
QUOTE 1: 
" I am writing this letter to you today under the influence of not eating since breakfast, spending 13 hours at church (a typical Sunday of late), then stuffing myself silly at 8pm with a lunchmeat sandwich and previously frozen brownies.

DINNER OF CHAMPIONS!!!!! 💣

Do you want me to send you the recipe? Of course you do. It was fantastic and you'll probably want to make it every day.

INGREDIENTS:
lunchmeat
cheese
mayo
sauerkraut
bread (if you're me then make it gluten free)

brownies, broken into bite size pieces (frozen for at least 3 weeks)

DIRECTIONS:
Slather it all together (brownie bites intermingled with sandwich bites) and eat within 2 minutes 37 seconds.
ENJOY!


Next time I make it, I'll take a picture, so you can see how it all comes together." 


QUOTE 2:   
Oh look at that! We had a ward party on Tuesday night. 


There are cute guys in this picture that I would totally set you and Hermana B. up with....just say the word in 7ish months or so...


Sorry...that's the lack of sleep talking....you can forget I even said anything.

You'll never guess what I was in charge of for the party.

I'll give you three guesses....

1. teaching everyone the macarena?

NO!

2. bull fighting?

Good guess, but no.

3. karaoke leader?

Heaven help us all....that would be a big fat NO to the heck no!


I guess I'll just tell you and you can stop wondering.

I was in charge of making gluten free versions of all the Thanksgiving food.

Shocker, I know.

I made rolls using an expensive mix that were meh. Totally not worth what I paid for the ingredients....


But the apple pie...

It may look hideously hideous, but the taste was perfecto! 😋 Go ahead and lick the screen now. "


QUOTE 3: 
"CAN YOU GUESS WHAT THIS PICTURE IS?

It's the tea set we got Emma for her birthday. She decided that she wanted to keep working on her Britishness, so she's brushing up on her British accent and is holding a daily tea party for the entire YSA branch. 5am every day. For Christmas I'm sending her scones and clotted cream. 

 {Note:  This was meant to be the aforementioned sarcastic humor of which is my specialty, but then my own son asked if this were a true statement, thereby confirming the fact that my humor is actually rather humorless.} 

Speaking of your sister....here she is with her friends at the Boston Temple...probably pretending to be British if I had to guess. I hear she asked for the British translation of her temple session..."



QUOTE 4: Adam, on the other hand, is working on his peanut butter game. He got invited to a peanut butter party and sampled one of everything...Can you guess what he and {his girlfriend} made? HINT: It was my recipe and they borrowed my pie pan for the occasion. 



QUOTE 5: Oh, I have some life advice to give you now. Very serious life advice, which you should probably write in your journal and tell ALL of your friends. Whatever you do, DO NOT GO TO TRADER JOES ON AN EMPTY STOMACH!!!!! It's a problem. Perhaps not the worst problem ever, but a problem nonetheless. 




QUOTE 6:  "The other night, I brought Nutella uncrustables to our friend, J., for her 20th birthday. Lest you think me the randomest birthday treat giver ever, I'll remind you that J. is the one whose Mom grew up in Minnesota and her family now lives in Cami's ward, so I had sent a little text to her Mom and got her suggestions. She was actually quite excited!" 


QUOTE 7: We also went to the temple this week and had an awesome turn-out. Notice who's NOT in this picture? YOUR PADRE!!! Why didn't he come to this beautiful night at the temple? Was he too busy at work? Yes, but he was going to come anyway. Did he bruise his tailbone wrestling with Kiwi? Good guess, but NO! He was all ready to walk out the door and realized that he'd let his temple recommend expire. So Bishop G. didn't come to the temple because his recommend was expired. oops.

Okay, back to cute guys. I would give you and Hermana B the thumbs' up on any guy in this picture. CUTE AND RIGHTEOUS GUYS THAT LIKE TO GO TO THE TEMPLE! What could be better than that?! Absolutely nothing, but there I go again."

QUOTE 8: I'll close off with one more picture of a few of our ward members....


Can you tell this is kind of our lives right now? We had church activities Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday.   This was taken at institute on Thursday night. If you weren't in the habit of going to institute before your mission, I highly recommend it when you get home. It's a night to be spiritually and physically fed AND you get to hang out with friends. It is awesome. And lots of cute guys."  

THE CONCLUSION:  

This blog would probably be a lot more entertaining if I blogged only after spending 13 hours at church and after gobbling down  food for dinner with minimal nutritive value.   Though, perhaps it's best for the people who love me, if I keep things more sedate.   

Also...my poor missionary!  I felt kind of bad the next day after talking about guys so many times.  That is not normal for me.  But at least I wrote a letter, so I'll pat myself on the back for that.     

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!    

A Happy Swirl of Chaos

I've mentioned here on the blog a few times recently, that life has been in a bit of chaos mode the last few months.   It's not that anything is wrong, it's just that we are long on things to do on our calendar and short on routine and spare time.  As part of that happy swirl of chaos,  in the last month we've had the following houseguests stay with us:  

💗Cami and her family 

💗My cousin, Aaron,  and 2 of his kiddos

💗Cami's sister-in-law, Marissa, and her 2 kiddos

💗My sister-in-law, Mika, and my niece, McKenzie, who was just heading into the Provo MTC

💗Adam, who is in between 2 apartment contracts (#byuhomelessweek)


Honestly, we love hosting people and being able to host is one of my favorite parts about living in Utah.   In addition to the bonus it is to live in a crossroads area, where so many people come and go, we also enjoy having a house with enough beds that we can even host more than one group of people at once, which happened a couple times this summer.  

I didn't take any pics of Aaron or Marissa while they were here, but below you will find pictures galore that show a glimpse of the fun we've had over the last few weeks!  

🐔  One of Lucie's dreams before arriving to Utah was to hold one of our chickens.   We aren't quite sure how that particular activity made it onto her bucket list, but she talked about it incessantly after arriving and we decided that was a dream that was easy to help come true, so we brought her out to the chicken coop bright and early the morning after they arrived.   When it came down to it, she was a little too nervous about actually holding one, but I think sitting close to a chicken and being able to touch it more than satisfied her chicken holding dreams.    Finding the eggs in the nesting box sealed the deal and she was happy as a clam about it all!   

🐴  Lucie's other big Utah dream was to ride a pony.  I had taken her to the farm at Thanksgiving Point a year or two ago, and apparently it was a core memory for her, because she still remembers many of the details of it.   She happily got on the pony and was feeling pretty confident about the whole experience, but about 30 seconds into the ride, we had a little hiccup when one of the ponies got spooked and they all stopped suddenly...  

🐴They took everyone off the ponies and let them chill for a bit without any riders, then allowed them everyone back on again...only this time she was very nervous.   We eventually convinced her to get back on (a different pony) and with her Mom at her side, she was able to overcome her fear and try again.  

🏡We also enjoyed frequent visits from Adam, Emma, Heather, and Rosy-Nanna while Cam was here.   I loved loved loved having the sights and sounds of having a houseful again!   

😣I am so kicking myself that Glen and I didn't hop into these photos my sister, Heather, took while she was visiting one day.   We are still missing Ellie on her mission and Garrett, who hadn't arrived yet, but it was an almost full crew otherwise.  I think it had a good chance of becoming our Christmas card photo this year, but now we will have to see.   I'm thinking a collage...

🍛The night after my cousin, Aaron, and his two boys stayed here, we hosted a YSA dinner at our home.  We loved having the extra sets of hands, with Cam here, to help with the cleaning and prep.    Glen smoked a brisket and we served brisket tacos, roasted corn salad, watermelon, and lemon strawberry shortcake.  The food was VERY well-received and we loved having the YSAs in our home for an evening! 

👶Oliver is at a delightful stage of life (around 18-months-old) and I very much enjoyed watching him learn and grow right before our eyes. He's only been walking for a month or two, but he's quite the adventurer now and I loved hearing him try to say new words.  He was obsessed with our toy cars and he ended up adopting one of the few teddy bears we still had left in the house, after hew grew pretty attached to it during his time here.  He is a sweetie pie!   

👸I also really enjoyed my interactions with Little Miss Sassy Lucie!   She'll be four in a couple months and she is a girl who knows what she wants in life...which is made-up stories, dress-up clothes, all the good food, and no naps!   When she's slept well, she's fun, talkative, and silly.  When she's fighting bedtime or skipping her naps, she can be quite the grump, but she's still pretty darn sweet even when she's grumpy! 

👪Some adventures we went on together included, early morning walks to my Dad's grave and the neighborhood farm where we saw peacocks, camels, horses, cows, etc , Thanksgiving Point to see the butterflies and ride the ponies, meals out on the deck, holding the chickens, a visit to our YSA ward... 

🚗And a  visit to Midway to hang out with Cami's sisters-in-law and Lucie and Oliver's cousins.  We visited the Ballerina Farm Store, where we got some good food.  Then we mostly just window shopped at several cute boutiques.     Marissa, Annie Grace, and Jack stayed with us one of those nights too.  

🌄Cami and Adam hiked Kyhv Peak together.  Spence started out with them, but ended up turning back before they reached the top.  I think they both really enjoyed the sunset hike together.  

😐After a few days, Cami and her family took off for a B family reunion at Sundance.  It was sad knowing they were so close, yet mostly out of reach, but we tried to embrace sharing them like the mature adults we are (most of the time).  We did join them for a dinner one night in the canyon, which was fun, because we love Garrett's family and it was fun to be able to spend a little bonus time with them!   (a couple of these photos are from the evening in the canyon, but, sadly, I did not take many).  

💕Then Mika and McKenzie came to stay with us for a few days!   McKenzie had just finished Home MTC and was heading to Provo MTC before her mission to Gilbert, AZ.  It was delightful to have a missionary in our home again for a bit and I very much enjoyed the time to catch up with my sister-in-law, Mika!   We miss living close to them!   Sadly, they just missed seeing Cami and kids, as McKenzie's drop-off time was at the exact time Cami had a couple hours back here at home before we  drove them to the airport.   

👴👵As per usual, we loved the opportunity to be Gigi and Papa in real life.   It's fun to send postcards and do Facetimes with them  when they are far away, but there's nothing quite like the snuggles, giggles, and  general silliness that come with spending time together in the same house

💗💗💗