Jordy.

I hate the part where you have to stand on the porch and wave goodbye.

I loved having Jordan and his beautiful family come to visit for a couple days. 

We hung out.

We had Minsky's.

We had Oklahoma Joe's.

We rocked out.

We had our traditional chicken pot pie and spooky drinks. 

We had so much fun trick or treating together. The kids were so excited...Anna laughed out loud from door to door. How could she not?  People were giving her free candy!

Hali sang modified Christmas/Halloween carols to candy givers on the doorsteps. Adorable.

And the funnest thing of all was spending time with my brother and getting to know him as an adult and a fellow parent. I was impressed. 

And now I miss them even more.

So thanks for that. 

Love you, Blanchards!

Utah trip -- Ice Blocking for the next generation

When I was growing up in Payson, one of the "go-to" activities for families and bored teenagers was to go ice blocking on the hill at Peteetneet Elementary school. It has a really great hill that is a local favorite for sledding and ice-blocking. Many, many, many respectable concussions originated on that hill. The whole top-right corner of that photo (that I snapped from my personal helicopter) is just one big concussion hill.

I tried to find out if we were still allowed to use the hill, since now it is all fancified and called "Peteetneet Museum and Cultural Center".....high falootin...

But it soon occurred to me that our kids still have their whole lives ahead of them and I didn't really want to spend the remainder of our day in the ER.

So we procured the ice blocks...

We found a toddler-friendly spot nearby...

And we bestowed the tradition upon our offspring...

Are you as hard-core as Cheyanne? Pregnant...toddler....ice block....

Impressive.

I seem to remember the ice blocks being a lot bigger. I wasn't the only one who felt the need to use the double-block method.

Jordan was always the daring one.

Like all respectable Mormon family activities, we ended with refreshments!

Utah trip -- SLC with the cousins

We started out with grand plans.

We were going to have a picnic at Liberty park, followed by a stroll through the new City Creek Center, hop over to Gateway to let the kids splash in the fountains and then we'd dry off and go to a drive-in movie on Redwood Road.

Quite an ambitious line-up, don't you think?

So here's what we actually did:

We made it Liberty Park and we had a picnic during which we only had to walk all the way to the bathrooms 3 or 4 times with each child that didn't need to go to the bathroom only minutes before when we were taking one of their cousins all the way over there. This happens because they all took an oath to do this at their last Union meeting.

The picnic was yummy, though, and the park was beautiful.

It was becoming very obvious, however, that there was absolutely no way we would have time to do all we had planned before the drive-in movie started. So we ditched City Creek Center and Gateway and we went for a dip in the splash area at Liberty.

I say "we", but I really mean that sweet Amanda did all the work and kept Anna from going under.

This is Megan's version of holding your breath under water. Only a couple feet lower and she has it perfected.

Ethan's pre-middle school muscles.

I was feeling queasy and pregnant, but I wasn't feeling as pregnant as Cheyanne. You're such a one-upper, Cheyanne. :)  <---- you know I'm joking right? I put a little smiley face there, just to be sure.

Right before it was time to dry off, we tracked down the source of the water and tried to dam it up with our many Blanchard bodies.

I'm sure the people at the bottom really appreciated us.

Then we headed to the Drive-in where the kids enjoyed to novelty of watching a movie outside.

But I focused more on what kind of snacks were available.

Never let it be said that I let a little queasiness get in the way of the munchies. You can include it in my eulogy.

Utah trip...4th of July

The Fourth was awesome.

It was my favorite kind of day.

Lots of food. Lots of family. Lots of craziness. Teenagers. Babies. Toddlers. Fireworks. Face-painting. Fingernails. The selling of one's homemade crafts to one's family.  Food. Food. Food.

A perfect way to celebrate the gifts of living in our beautiful country.

Utah trip...The Cabin

Our first order of business was to give Grandma hugs and then we rushed off to spend a couple days at the family cabin. I have a few memories of going there as a teenager, but they mostly consist of being annoyed or otherwise dissatisfied with everything and everyone. I'm sure I was super-fun to be around.

The kids loved it.

Especially the drive on the washboard dirt roads...



That evening, Jordan and Cheyanne brought their family up to have dinner and let the kids play together and get reacquainted. Cheyanne brought the BEST garlic bread I have ever had. I am still thinking about it.

I miss being around family. I miss our kids knowing their cousins. Being in Utah made reminded me what we are missing out on. Why can't you all just move to Kansas? Is that so much to ask? Don't you love me?

The "babies".  Reif and Anna.

Taking a nature walk with a very pregnant Cheyanne. There were no premature babies, but we did spot a deer!

And the best cabin game ever....throwing rocks at stuff.

I loved spending time at the cabin. It was fun to show the kids a little of my childhood and besides that, it was a full 10 degrees cooler up there. Totally worth it.