St. George New Year

Walking into Mom and Dad's house with everyone there just opened the flood gate. Tears were streaming down my cheeks. (Rach looked too cute with her big prego belly!) We arrived just in time for "Christmas dinner" - Mom had put it off until the Garners and the Wallaces could make it. The food was delicious! Thanks Mom and Nat and A. I still need that salad recipe... We opened a few presents and did a lot of visiting and discussing plans.
Favorites:
Zadi's excited, "Yes, I don't have to sit at the little kids' table!"
Listening to Paris, George, Liesl, and Tess sing and talk. Those cousins are really cute friends!
Richie letting and appearing to enjoy wrestling with George, Paris and Henry.
Erma embracing Mike - the first niece or nephew not afraid of him!!!
All of the laughter which continued well after Mom and Dad went to bed.

SATURDAY: Rachel's Baby Shower
While the girls were gone to 25 Main (a modern retro cafe/cupcake shop) for the shower, the guys went and played some basketball at the church and then took most of the kids and headed to the park to throw the Frisbees around etc. I know Tucker was really looking forward to playing basketball with his uncles and grandpa. He and Richie held their own. I guess Tucker even beat Grandpa at a free throw competition. The kids had a blast at the park with all of their fun uncles. They came back worn out and happy.

Grandma, Rachel, Nat, Zadi, Adrienne, Taysom, Ilah and I had a wonderful lunch at the cafe. We tasted Italian sodas and decided peach is the best! Their cupcakes are out of this world... who knew there could be such difference in the taste of cupcakes... MMmmmmm... Rachel opened a few baby gifts, and then we played Ilah and Zadi's game. Rach pulled a gift out of a diaper bag that had a letter attached to it. She then chose baby food or question. For baby food she had to smell/taste some baby food and guess what it was... YUMMY! then for question we all took turns asking Rach various baby care questions, that she had to answer to our satisfaction to earn the little present. Zadi and Ilah did a wonderful job organizing and running the game. When Rachel had earned all of the gifts, she had to unscramble the letters to form a word(s). She quickly arranged them into Miles Thomas. He is due to arrive in 2-4 weeks. Keep those feet up Rach :)

We celebrated Russ and Nat's return home with Karaoke and smoothies... jk - We missed you guys, but that didn't stop us from having a great time. We all took turns showing off our vocal talents. Everyone did well, but Richie blew us away when he sang "Bohemian Rhapsody" - WOW!!!!

Sunday was spent at Chris and Adrienne's ward where the bishop called people up to speak impromptu. I sat in the pew with a smile on my face knowing that unless there was divine intervention I would not be called on to speak. (However, the smile soon vanished when we returned to Joplin and found out we would be speaking the next Sunday.) Taysom got to have Chris as a teacher and enjoyed the slight diversion of discussing Communism. Ilah and Zadi helped Adrienne with her sharing time, and I enjoyed NOT being the chorister. Back at G&G's we had the opportunity to watch the new Gordon B. Hinckley movie. If you have a chance, you need to watch it. The actors actually looked like Pres. Hinckley and Sister Hinckley. It is very tender. Even Taysom said that she was almost brought to tears when he talked about his wife being the woman of his dreams. At our request, Grandpa treated us to smoothies again. They are just too good to pass up!

Monday...
After Zoomba with Aunt A and Rachel, the parents enjoyed a carefree day of the temple with Great Grandma, lunch at Applebees and relaxing, but the kids just got stir crazy. We decided we needed to burn off some negative energy and told the kids we would be hiking Angel's Landing the following day. Can you believe there were tears of sorrow at that announcement? I mean what kid doesn't want to do a 3 plus hour hike in the snow? But Mike insisted on going, and it turned out to be exhilarating. So I hear... I sat in the van and graded school papers. You see, I didn't actually get to hike due to some lost shoes. (I conveniently found them after the hike. They were underneath Mike's suitcase.)

That night, we had a sweet FHE as Grandpa shared his thoughts on the Savior using one of Grandpa Hinckley's talks.

Tuesday -
We headed to Zion's. I admit I was worried as I sent off my entire family and niece. They were slipping and sliding just crossing the bridge to start the hike, but they returned alive and unharmed except for a few bruises, esp. on their bums. Apparently Zadi and Ilah kept giving the mountain butt kisses.

Later that evening G&G treated us to Chinese at one of their favorite restaurants (probably Taysom's favorite meal). We took up 1/3 of the place. Amazingly the kids all ate their food, stayed at their table and most importantly, no one threw up! Mom and Dad then took us to see The Tale of Despereaux. I loved the animation, and what I saw was wonderful, but I have a habit of falling asleep in movie theaters. I want to blame it on the mellow somewhat quiet movie, but as Taysom just reminded me, I also fell asleep in Pirates of the Caribbean. In any case, we all had a wonderful evening. Thanks again Mom and Dad!

New Year's Eve -
We ended the year making candies at Great Grandmas and playing SkipBo. I am starting to feel confident with my peanut brittle and fudge making skills, but I still don't want to attempt divinity on my own. Grandma is the master!

Russ and Nat returned to St. George since we were all planning on going to "First Night" around 7:30ish. All week Richie had been teaching Tucker, Taysom, Zadi and Ilah how to swing dance in preparation for the dance that evening. They learned quite a bit in 4 days thanks to Rachel and Richie's amazing lessons. I will post some video from the dance. Tucker and Taysom usually danced together and Richie took turns between Rachel, Zadi and Ilah. (Rachel can't do too much spinning these days :) Richie even taught Tucker how to do some lifts. Henry who didn't participate in the lessons still knew how to cut the rug all on his own - and he LOVED IT!

After the dancing, the kids attempted the rock climbing wall, played on some bounce house type of equipment and rode the barrel train. It was getting chilly so around 10 we headed back to the house to play our new favorite game "Banana Grams" and hang out. That game is addicting! At 11:50 several of us headed back out to catch the fireworks. We watched from the car and rang in the new year.

New Year's Day...
Grandpa decided to take those who were interested out to shoot skeet. Mike and I had to force Tucker to go. He was planning on staying home and playing Banana Grams with Grandma, Taysom, Nat and Zadi. Russ, Richie, Grandpa, Chris, George, Paris, Mike, Tucker, Ilah, Henry and I headed out to some BLM land near G&G's house. Mike and I primarily helped Ilah, Henry, George and Paris shoot the 22. Ilah got bored rather quickly and headed back to the van to watch a movie. Grandpa and Russ set up the pigeon thrower and started shooting. After "warming up," they played a game kind of like Knock Out. Grandpa convinced Tucker to try out the shot gun and Tucker fell in love. Tucker was a natural and even won one of the games and was runner up for another right after Chris. Henry had a blast pulling the rope to release the skeet and cleaning up the shells. Grandpa rewarded him with $5, and he was in heaven. Tucker though came away with the big reward... Grandpa let him have one of his shot guns. It isn't automatic, and Grandpa apparently wants to get another automatic so Tucker lucked out. Tucker said it was the best day!

Shooting skeet wasn't the only sport played that day. After dinner, all of the "cool" people went to the park for a rousing game of capture the flag. Everyone wanted to be on Richie's team, and they had good reason because his team ended up winning both games. The funniest part was when Richie and Taysom were trying to get the flag that Zadi and I were guarding. Zadi covered Richie and that left me to deal with Taysom. Using her unfair knowledge that I have a bladder control issue, she ran around doing weird moves until I finally started cracking up and had to bend over to prevent an embarrassing accident. Taysom used that diversion to "capture the flag" and run for the win. I decided to sit the next one out... but I'll be back (after my surgery).

That night I had to pack which was bitter sweet. I listened to Liesl and Paris play "house" and Zadi and Ilah share secrets. I heard Russ and Nat's laughter from upstairs. I can't remember if it was this night or not, but I remember listening to Chris and Mike sing, "You've Got a Groovy Kind of Love". Richie informed me that they were looking lovingly into each others eyes and thought he saw Mike's hand on Chris's knee... We love each other! I remembered Richie doing the hand stand move with Ilah, and Tucker trying to convince Taysom to let him flip her - which never happened by the way.

I never had a chance to just sit and visit with my mom - which I kind of knew would be the case with so much to do and so many people to do it with. I did have some time alone with Rach and Adrienne which I thoroughly enjoyed even though it was just at Wal-Mart. That night George spent the night which I thought would be incentive enough for the Lamb's to come see us off in the morning, but I didn't account for Adrienne's standard time :)

Mike managed to cram everything into the car again. I took a photo of the cousins with the new favorite, Uncle Richie. Then we hugged and cried and said good bye. It wasn't until Hoover Dam that I started cheering up.

We are looking forward to the summer trip.
Love and miss ALL of you guys!
Thank you for everything. It was a dream trip.

It could have only been better if Ben and Becca could have come with the kids. (Taysom can't wait to discuss your obsession with Obama. She says don't worry, no body's perfect, and she loves you anyway :)

(photos and video coming soon...)