Wednesday, January 25, 2012

My Weekend with Chris

I went up to Provo during the Martin Luther King weekend for a couple of reasons. The biggest was to give her her car back and another was to get our car back and finally to have some fun!! Her car had been at the dealer's for a couple of weeks getting an air conditioner problem fixed. They had to totally tear her car apart to find the problem, order the part and fix it. As a result she had to take the Saturn back to Provo after Christmas. When her car was finally finished we needed to perform the great car swap. I had Shannon drop me off in St George then I got her car and drove on up. She was very happy to have her car back!! Very happy indeed. We wanted to get our car back because we had a seller for it waiting patiently to drive it.

The weekend was filled with lots of eating out and playing around.We always love Mimi's.
We met Laura & Rachel my nieces at Zupas for dinner one night.
Those are a few of our favorites restaurants that we hit up. Actually I can't say Dennys is a favorite but we went to Kneaders for breakfast Monday morning and apparently the entire city had the same idea and they ran out of french toast so off we went in search of good food. That's hard when breakfast is over so we figured heck Dennys always has breakfast. It was packed too and pretty ghetto but beggars can't be choosers.
I brought up the last season of Larkrise to Candleford for us to watch. It was bitter sweet when we finished it off. What a great series. We so enjoyed every bit of it. But all was not lost:
I introduced her to the fabulous Downton Abbey. We had finished the first season of that this summer so we did a quick refresher and jumped into season 2. Awesome!! We are both hopelessly hooked and caught up each week biting our nails waiting for the next episode. Saturday after we finished our shopping errands we did two super fun things. The first and no question the best was scoping out the HGTV 2012 Dreamhouse. We were at the mouth of the canyon getting close to turning off when we thought it would be fun to find it since it was so gorgeous out and we wanted to stay out a bit more. I told Chris the house was only in Midway so we decided to try and stalk it. I had gps on my phone so I looked up the name of the subdivision it was built in. It was quite the wild goose chase I must say. They apparently don't want you to find it. So as we are driving out in the boonies Christina yelled out "There It is" and sure enough we had found it.
There was a security guard parked out front so we stayed in the car and drove all around and took pictures of it. What fun we had. I am not sure how to get the pics off my phone yet so I just downloaded these to share. It was super fun and we were in heaven for sure as we planned our house warming party after we win it in 2 short weeks. It was very interesting to see it in real life too. It looks much smaller in person but still gorgeous. The drive way isn't finished yet just enough for pictures and that's it. We know that is to keep stalkers like us out.

We also spent some time in the mall looking for my dress for Jeff & Rachel's wedding. That was fun of course and I have a few good leads. Now it's time to get busy and choose I guess. Time is marching on...

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Engagement Photos

So I copied some of Jeff's & Rachel's pictures from facebook for my blog so everyone can see and I can save them. They turned out so good. Jeff has always had a nice smile but it's hard to coax it out of him. Apparently Rachel is the ticket because I love that he is looking so natural and happy in these photos. What can you say about them besides they are a gorgeous couple. They look so happy and content with each other...2 months to go!!














Thursday, January 5, 2012

The Drop Off

Well the day Mendis and I have been dreading for 30 years came and went. We are officially empty nesters. Maybe we have been since Sept when Jeff and Hayden went off to college but we still saw Hayden every week when we went up to his football games. So it didn't feel so empty I guess. So we are down to no kids left at home just 4 mighty fine adults that come and go occasionally.Getting Hayden packed up and set apart was exhausting after the action packed couple of weeks we had. It sure went by fast. Here we are trekking up to Provo to the MTC. No surprise that Hayden was exhausted. He didn't sleep much the night before he left in the motel too I guess. He was excited and anxious to get going.

His last night we went up to the SLC Temple since he had never been. It is always wonderful to go to that Temple but it seems like these occasions are always milestones for us: Ashley's endowment, Jeff going on his mission and Hayden. Makes for quite an emotional session but we all held it together pretty darn good! We decided to ask to see the sealing rooms so we could see where Jeff would be getting married and they nabbed us for sealings while we were there too. So we spent the whole evening there meanwhile Christina was waiting for us in Provo wondering what the heck happened to us. We also popped into the Joseph Smith Building while we were there and put a deposit down for Jeff's reception and checked out the venue. Awesome- it's going to be Awesome!!
So met up with Christina and headed to dinner. We wanted to take Jeff to that fab steak house but we were so late it was closing so we settled for Olive Garden.
So with this new drop off procedure you have to take your pictures before you get into the MTC so we went across the street for a couple of quick pics.
All the pictures look off centered because if you look closely you can see the MTC behind us and to the left.
The Official Start of the Missh...

So with one last look at the MTC Hayden decided it was time to get going. True to Hayden we arrived 10 minutes early. The drop off procedure is so much kinder than it used to be. Literally within 2 minutes we drove up to the curb, unloaded the luggage and gave him hugs and kisses good bye and off he went. He slung his backpack over his shoulder and didn't look back. Looked just like a real missionary!

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Hayden's Farewell

SO January 1st dawned early for us. I had pretty much all the dinner stuff ready to go with just a few things left to do that morning like make the rice etc. Sacrament was at 11am so off we went. I had to speak and so did Mendis and of course Hayden. I wasn't too nervous about speaking I just worried about sounding too preachy to everyone. Hayden on the other hand was downright nervous. Can't say that I blame him since they had to open both overflows. There were people everywhere but the funny thing was most of them were visitors. Not tons from our own ward it looked like.
It was nice to see he had so much support but man that was alot of people! We got through it okay I think then rushed home to feed the masses. We were in a hurry because there was another friend farewell that day at 2 so we only had a small
window to feed all the youth.
We had an incredible assembly line going I will say. We did a Cafe Rio day with pork and/or chicken salads! Man it was tasty. We feed everyone pretty smoothly and didn't run out. That was a miracle because we figured we feed more than 65 people that day. It was so fun to have everyone over especially all the youth. We will miss them being around after Hayden leaves.
Some of the gang with their funny faces going on.
Hayden and his buddies.
And of course Hayden and the girls!!

It was super awesome to have family there. All of Mendis' family made it but they always do. My sister and her family were there too and it was so nice to have them there with us. They are so supportive. It stinks that my family is so spread out across the country.
It was wonderful to have all of our kids were there too! (But we missed Rachel) Aweso me party!!
Insert token picture of Grandson here!
Hi Coop!