Utah: playing

Here are some random pictures while playing at Grandma's.

As mentioned before baby Ben was the star of the party!

Eve and Dane LOVED Milo - a little too much! They did a great job taking him on walks though.

Grandma got this bead crafting thing for the little girls to do and my older kids LOVED it.  They spent hours and hours making bead designs.  It was pretty cute.

We had a glorious Sunday morning breakfast.

Tired Daddy!

Madison fell in love with Lottie. 

Game night!

We went to Mikey's baseball game one night.

We went and visited Grandma and Grandpa Brown.  Noah spent some time with their record player.

And Eve got Lu-lu-ed.  And the boys cleaned off the deck and all the patio furniture

One night the kids slept on the tramp.

One evening all the kids under 8 spent about 2 hours making a giant spider web all throughout the front and back yard.  I am so mad I didn't take more pictures of the end product.  It was EPIC!!  

We ate our weight in ice cream.

Played plenty of yard games.

jumped

And of course made smores.

One night I snuck away after everyone was asleep and met up with some old friends.  These are the triplets.  Well... 2 of them anyways, Alyse lives in California but we did facetime her for about a half hour.  They are some of the dearest people to me.  It is weird because i haven't seen or talked to them in well over a decade.  But I love them deep in my bones, and I know they love me too.  Give us a little grace, this picture was taken at 1 in the morning and none of us have stayed up that late in years.  We are all busy moms with tons of kids and are serving God to the best of our ability.  

Utah: Baptisms

Several months before our Utah trip I tried to make baptism appointments for the kids to do with their cousins.  Getting a baptism appointment in Utah is still like winning the lottery.  It was tough.  We really wanted a temple they hadn't been to, but the only thing I could find was Draper.  But it was still wonderful.

The crew (plus eddie)

It was a heavenly night.

 

Utah: Temple Square and Elder Pace

Remember back during my General Conference post I mentioned that Elder Pace quoted me in his conference talk?  Well... he sent me a thank you note afterwards and in it he said he wanted to meet us next time we were in Utah.  So I took him up on the offer!  One morning we ALL met him and his wonderful wife down at temple square for a tour.  It was wonderful!  He was so nice and cute with the kids and they were so thrilled to be meeting a church officer.

After walking around temple square and seeing the construction he took us up to the church office building to tour his floor and to see the view from up high.  We were ecstatic, you would have thought we got access to the pentagon.  To be IN the church office building!  We were all hoping to run into some "people" but no such luck, it was pretty empty.  But it was still really cool.

We met the guys that write CFM and then we hung out in Elder Pace's office while we talked about hi talk writing process and the challenges of being the Sunday School President. 

We were there way longer than I thought we would be and both the babies were DONE.  We left and walked away, all the way to the conference center when I got a call from Elder Pace he wanted us to come back.  We all looked at each other with a bewildered look, we knew we wanted to but getting the babies that far felt like we had climbed a mountain, and now go back?  We turned around and ran back.

Elder Pace gathered my teenagers and bore a beautiful testimony to them.  Worth it!  As a side note he seemed particularly impressed with Madison and Noah.

Since we were downtown I CONVINCED everyone to go to the conference center so we could get a picture from the roof.  They weren't thrilled, but once we got inside they all really wanted to see their favorite "thing" in the conference center and we ran all around to each floor seeing all the favorite art and sculptures.  It was heavenly.  We finally made it up to the roof.

This was the shot I was going for but...

This is the shot I love.  I feel like it deserves some wonderful quote or scripture about vision or perspective or looking towards the temple.  I absolutely love it.

On the way home we all got icebergs.  It was a good day.

can't you tell?

 

Utah: Cemetery

One of the reasons I was so excited to come to Utah the end of May was to be there for Memorial Day.  I grew up going to our  family's graves every year.   I loved it.  I loved clipping the flowers out of my grandma's garden, I love arranging them in vases, I love taking lawn chairs and blankets to the cemetery and hearing the stories while my grandpa lovingly cleaned up and took care of the headstones and lawn around them. I loved running into other family members there, sometimes distant ones.  It had been 10 years since we had gone and my heart yearned for it and I wanted my children to experience it.  As luck would have it it was pouring rain on Memorial day.  So we went on Tuesday and ti was still cold, wet, and rainy.  We were only there for a few minutes and only got out of the car for 1 site, the rest we gathered around my grandparents car.  It wasn't the experience I had hoped for. but as I have learned that God compensates and I believe my kids will remember something, the sacrifice, the love, the smell, something.      

However as we drove around my kids, especially Brock, became very interested in some of the prophets headstones they found around the cemetery.  Brock would make us stop the car and he would go take a picture.  It was pretty cute and I was glad they were excited and having fun.  And then we saw it.    The Hinckley headstone.  President Hinckley was a wonderful prophet, the prophet of my youth.  He was the one that I first came to know that God calls prophets and that they are on the earth today.  But the real reason I had to stop and take a picture was for his dear wife, Marjorie.  Marjorie is my person.  She is the main reason I am who I am.  I have modeled my mothering, my role was a wife, my discipleship, my service, my everything after her.  I first picked up a book about her when I was 17, it was on my mother's night stand, I started to read it and I was filled with light.  In fact, the light was too strong, I closed the book and put it down.  I knew I wasn't ready, I would wait a few years before I needed the truths in that book.  Since then I have read it almost every year, it re-centers me.  Reminds me of who I really want to be.  One day I will be able to thank her. Everything good in my life has come from Jesus Christ, then her, then probably Karli.  haha

Then we went to the Murray cemetery where my grandpa's family is buried.  

 

Utah: Bells

Having the Bell's live in Willow Creek is awesome!  They are so busy that we usually still have to schedule a visit with them and we only get one or two, but we are grateful for what we get.  As I mentioned earlier Karli and I went for early morning walks, which I hope becomes a tradition, and then on Sunday morning Karli had us over for brunch before church.

Than another night we met at her parents house and played some pickleball and jumped on the tramp.  It was great.