Angela came back home from Idaho this evening! We’re glad to have her back home with us. Unfortunately, I had to drive up to Milwaukee to pick her up! That was a pain in the evening traffic, but coming back home wasn’t really a big deal. It was nice to have some quiet driving time to talk to her about the great time she had out there with her family!
Brittany and Kirstyn got home from Girls’ Camp today and were very smelly! 🙂 We got them in the shower ASAP and after that, the house was much better! They had a GREAT time and did a lot of fun stuff. Kirstyn has a TON of pictures which I won’t post here on the blog, but some will be in our yearly family album.
Today was Mark’s and Jocelyn’s big wedding day! Angela arrived safe and was very excited to be there with family. The rest of us were sad that we couldn’t all be out there, but with the short notice and the fact that we were all just out there, we couldn’t make it work.
Angela had a great time and said that the ceremony was beautiful and the luncheon and reception were great as well! Tomorrow morning early they are heading up to Salmon to get ready for the open house up there! Busy busy! Congrats Mark and Jocelyn!
Last night, our friends, the Gaul’s, left for vacation and dropped off their Foreign Exchange Student from Spain to stay with us until Friday. Her name is Paula and she’s really nice. She’s a little younger than Sarah and the boys took right to her!
This morning, Angela and I left at about 3:30 to drive to Milwaukee so Angela could fly out to Idaho for Mark’s wedding. It was really early and quite the long drive when you’re that tired (even though it’s only about 2 1/2 hours away. 🙂 I’ll have the wonderful privilege of picking her up from Milwaukee next week again! 😐
After dropping her off, I drove back home and worked from home today while watching the boys. Paula for the most part watched the boys and played with them. Sarah had to work her nanny job, and so after lunch, I took Paula over to hang out with Sarah. They had a great time together.
After Sarah and Paula got home and I finished up work, I took everyone to Sweet Tomatoes for dinner. It was fun to watch Paula deal with an all-you-can-eat buffet! 🙂 The boys had a great time and I’ve never seen them eat more than they did tonight! 🙂 Yikes!
Today, Brittany and Kirstyn got up early and headed off to Girls’ Camp! They are pretty excited to go out and have a blast with all their friends from the Stake. It will be fun for them to get all dirty and slimy, camp out in tents, and be crazy with a bunch of other girls!
They have been working on these crazy tutus and just seeing what they are going to do makes me (as a guy) appreciate scout camp more. 🙂 I’m sure they’ll have a GREAT time!
Zach started swimming lessons again today! He’s actually talking about maybe joining a swim team. We’ll see!
This morning (after only about 3 hours of sleep), we got up early and headed over to a cemetery for a ward activity. It was entitled “Our Greatful Dead.” We all got together and each took a section of the cemetery. We cataloged all the headstones, took pictures of them, did rubbings where we couldn’t read them, and uploaded them via our smartphones. This all goes into a database for a group that is working on cataloging all of this stuff so family history work can more easily be done. The name of it is BillionGraves (www.billiongraves.com).
After the activity, we went home and took a nap. The rest of the day was spent cleaning house and getting ready for Sunday.
Today was a VERY long day! Sarah found out that the niece (I think) of some friends of ours is in the Marching Band at BYU and is the piccolo section leader! She was in town visiting and so Sarah and Kristen went up to meet and talk with her about expectations, etc. What a great way to start off!
Tonight, I drove Brittany and a few of her church friends up to Kenosha Wisconsin to a dance held by the Kenosha Stake. This was organized by the son of the Stake President, who, it just so happens is one of the guys she met at EFY and (as discussed in a previous blog post) is the son of the friends of ours who used to live next door when we were in the Naperville 1st Ward. 🙂 The girls were so giddy on the way up that it almost drove me crazy! 🙂
They had an “awesome, amazing, incredible, and wonderful” time at the dance (in their words), while I drove around the countryside, stopped for some junk food, and then went back to the church to take a nap in preparation for the long drive home. The dance finished at 10pm, but we didn’t leave until about 10:30pm because they were being so social and couldn’t tear themselves away from the guys. 😐
On the way home, we got totally jammed by Chicago O’Hare Airport by construction and traffic. By this time, it was around midnight and we couldn’t believe how many cars were out! We didn’t get everyone home and back to our house until after 2am! We are really going to feel it for the next day or so! 😐
Tonight we had a tri-ward carnival at the church. Every year we have an activity with all the other wards in the building in hopes that the youth will continue to work on building relationships with each other. It was a lot of fun! We had a GREAT DJ blasting out a bunch of good music. Thank heavens we got a permit for this because some of the neighbors complained and the police came over to see what we were doing. 🙂 They were just fine with everything and thought the neighbors were really dumb for complaining at 7:30 that it was too late to have music going. 🙂
They had all kinds of games (including two fields of Human Foosball), and served ton of food. Brittany just got her wisdom teeth out a couple of days ago so she couldn’t eat much of the food at all. She looks like a cute little chipmunk!
Today we got an e-mail out of the blue that Sarah had made the BYU Marching Band! She was so excited when she found out that I thought she was going to hyperventilate! 🙂 She had given up hope that she would make it and boy was this a great surprise! Since they don’t march with flutes in the band, we now have to buy her a piccolo which is going to set us back quite a bit! 😐 Oh well, just to see the excitement and joy on her face makes it worth it! 🙂
The cool thing is that three kids from our area are in the band… Sarah (piccolo) and Hannah (color guard) from our ward, and Kristen (piccolo) from the 4th ward. It really helps to come from a grammy-winning district! 🙂
Go Cougars, go Sarah, and go Cougar Marching Band!
It is hard to believe how dry it is back home! Our grass is totally dormant and looks completely dead. I don’t remember it being this dry in a LONG time!
The last two days were spent driving and they actually went pretty fast. The kids were pretty good all the way home and they rested a lot. We saw some beautiful country! We decided to drive up through Rexburg Idaho and then over a beautiful canyon through the Teton Mountain Range.
We sure miss it out here in the west! We have nothing like this back home! The air smells so clean and the country is just beautiful!
We’re now home after spending the night in Grand Island, Nebraska and then getting an early start for the remainder of our trip. The kids are excited to be home after all that driving, and every single one of them is really missing their own beds! 🙂
