Zach Starts Swimming Lessons
Zach started swimming lessons again today! He’s actually talking about maybe joining a swim team. We’ll see!
Ben Talk in Primary
Today Ben gave a talk in Primary. It was so cute. He was a little shy when he first started, but then (true to form), he got confident and then started smiling from ear to ear as he spoke (with help from his mom). It was quite cute and humorous at the same time. Everyone just falls in love with the little guy every time he opens his mouth! 🙂 The problem, is that he’s cute and he knows it! 😐
Great job with your talk, Ben!
Greatful Dead Ward Activity
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.
Major Trek to Dance!
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! 😐
Tri-Ward Carnival!
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!
Sarah Made Marching Band!!!!!!!
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!
Dry, Dry, Dry
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!
Back Home!
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! 🙂
Relaxing Vacation Day #1
After all the partying and events over the last few days, we are all beat! That said, we decided to stay a day longer, rest, and do nothing. We all got our hair cut from Carla and Ben got a buzz cut. It is really cute, but it’s really weird to see him with no hair! 😐 Right now we’re trying to get ourselves mentally prepared for the LONG drive back home over the next two days!
Mark Homecoming and Party Day #4
Today, Mark gave his homecoming talk at church, which was wonderful. As part of the program, all the kids and grand-kids got up on the stand and sang Called to Serve in Spanish! 😐 It was crazy! What also was very interesting is that the speaker that spoke with Mark had a family visiting him from Denmark (that he baptized on his mission). It turns out that they were in the Smiley’s ward in Copenhagen and Angela met them when she was over there!!! SMALL WORLD! They had a reunion of sorts and then the family came over to visit tonight.
After the meetings were over, we all went over to Grandma’s and Grandpa’s house and had a huge dinner/welcome-home reception for Mark. The funny thing was that at this reception, it was almost like a Weber High School reunion! One of Mark’s companions, Elder Hales, was there with his family. Elder Hales’ dad is a year or two older than me and we were at Weber High together! Again, SMALL WORLD! In addition, Elder Hales’ mom, is also a Weber High grad and is a year younger than me. Her brother (Eric), and his brother (Will) were friends of mine, and I played soccer for years with “Uncle Will” Hales. To top that off, Angela’s cousin, Scott Burns was there, and he graduated from Weber High as well and is the same age as Elder Hales’ dad! 🙂 It was pretty funny. It was nice to catch up with all of them and talk about the good-old-days!
Zach Baptism and Party Day #3
Today was Zach’s big baptism day. He has been looking forward to this day for a long time and couldn’t wait! He got up really early and wanted to know if it was time yet! 🙂 We had to laugh about that one. We hope he is that excited to be good all the time going forward! We met at the church in Salmon, and Zach was baptized and confirmed at 11. All the family was there and it was a wonderful experience!
The spirit was really strong there and we had the whole family there with us. We missed having our ward friends and neighbors there with us, but they all understood when we told them that Zach would be baptized out West. It’s really amazing how fast time flies! We only have one left to baptize. It seems like only yesterday that little Sarah was baptized, and now it’s about 6 weeks before she goes out to Provo to BYU. Sniff sniff… 🙁
After Zach’s baptism, we had a big family party out at Scott and Carla’s. Greg was there and took family pictures of everyone and they turned out really great!
We then had a huge milk can meal that everyone loved. Along with that, we had a ton of other food, and also had a birthday celebration for Zach and Austin.
A bunch of the kids finished out the afternoon riding on Carla’s and Scott’s horses. Other than being baptized, that was Zach’s favorite part of the day. He just loved it!
Tonight we saw some of the craziest things ever. We went to the annual Salmon demolition derby. We were all excited, because the family had entered a car in the event. The event started off with insane kids on motorcycles trying to pop balloons on each other’s heads. I can’t even write about how crazy it was.
After that, it was time for the main event and the first heat of the demolition derby started. Our car came out and we cheered like crazy.
It got rammed all over the place and had to be pulled off (not a very big car)…
It kept coming back out and coming back out after work on it, and it made it to the final heat! We couldn’t believe it. The thing wouldn’t quit! It was by far the smallest car out there for the final heat and obviously wouldn’t win, but it was fun. During the “halftime” show, another group of crazy kids, this time on 4-wheelers, came out and did the balloon popping thing again! This was even more dangerous than on the motorcycles…
The cars then came out, and after it was all over, our car wouldn’t even run any more. The axle was broken down into the ground, and it was smashed to bits.
What a crazy night! I’m sure we’ll talk about this day for many years to come. 🙂
Party Day #2
Today was a really busy party day as well! Salmon had their Salmon River Days 4th of July parade today so we went to that. It was pretty busy, and at this time of the year, I swear, the town doubles in size. 🙂 The parade was fun to watch. It’s a very small town parade with lots of horses, tractors, demolition derby cars, stuff like that. It’s no where near the “commercialized” versions of the parades we have out in Chicago, which was a breath of fresh air. 🙂
After the parade, we wandered around main street and enjoyed the festivities. Zach got to learn how to be a detective and fingerprint people, there were a lot of local things for sale, and Angela enjoyed a quilt show (not Zach’s, mine, or Ben’s cup of tea, but she liked it). 🙂 The quilt show was in the room where we had our wedding reception up in Salmon over 21 years ago!!! I had to take a picture of Angela outside the building for posterity’s sake. She’s even more beautiful now than she was then! 🙂
After we tired ourselves out from all that, we went over to David and Gina’s house for a fun-filled afternoon of food and water. It’s Gina’s birthday today and to celebrate, they had turned their backyard into a water park.
Everyone totally wore themselves out getting wet, playing volleyball and football, and eating a ton of great food! David and Gina have a GREAT yard that’s really big, and Angela was totally jealous! She’s always wanting more yard and where we live now, it’s not too likely. With every square foot of house and yard, the property taxes go through the roof. 🙁
We’re really tired now so it’s off to bed!
