Sister's Retreat 2014

This year we met up on the first weekend in May. Who knew that after all our careful planning this would be right in the middle of everything else I needed to do! I missed Jenn Jack's wedding although I did her cake (separate post) and a trip to Washington DC with Mendis and Dane's Birthday all in one whack. Ah well it was worth it all.

A few shenanigans at the grocery on the way.

 I was the first one to arrive but within an hour or two we were all there at the airport. It was pouring rain and I just didn't see that coming. My umbrella was packed away so oops. We had dinner at the Olive Garden on the way to the beach. It was a great meal except for the sulphur soda you get in Florida!! Our waiter was super strange. Ya that's all I am going to say about that. Then it was off to the grocery store to load up on supplies. So while we were unloading Nadine's car and headed up to the condo in fact a horn started honking nonstop. It took us a minute to figure out it was indeed Nadine's car. She couldn't make it stop so she jumped in and drove it away until it stopped. Weird.

Saturday dawned early that weekend. At about 2 am or so in fact. We were woken up then by the car horn yet again. Talk about an adrenaline rush at that hour. We tore out there in our jammies to get it to stop. Nadine and Beth were already driving it away since it wouldn't stop so Carolyn and I ran down the deserted road to meet them in a vacant parking lot. Yup that was a sight. We are both a little outta shape can I just say. So it eventually stopped by itself again so we drove back and tried to get back to sleep. Needless to just say we slept in a bit to recover and no one slept well waiting to hear the horn again.
Saturday we had massages booked so got started on that while Nadine found out how to disengage the darn horn. What a relief. The massages were great and we loved every minute of it. We sure needed it after the stressful night. Dinner was fabulous:

The fondue where we eat until we burst

 Carolyn pretty much battered everything in sight and fondued it that night. We had so much fun we decided this has to be a tradition. Sucks for Nadine because she has to haul all the stuff but I'm down with it. We got so full that night we went for a walk in the drizzle. Lovely though.

 

 Sunday was a lazy, relaxing day. 

 

That afternoon we hit the beach.

 

  In fact we had lunch on the beach. We decided we wanted gelato for lunch so that's what we did. It was fabulous. We even had leftovers and didn't care. This time no one left any one else sitting there for hours either lol. And more importantly this time we slathered on the sunscreen like nobodies business. Not going through the sunburn trauma again thanks.

I was excited to see the part of the beach that they drive on!

That night we went out to dinner and thought we would try a new restaurant.

 Dinner was great and we made sure to use the Disney Princess straws Emily had given Carolyn for her birthday at dinner. She wanted picture proof! 

 We attempted to watch The Great Gatsby two times that weekend and I am the only one who actually stayed awake through both showings. Odd since I am the only one who had already seen it. We had such fun doing lots of nothing in particular, except maybe eating lots of chocolate. We had tons of that!

We were sad to say goodbye to the condo when we packed up Monday. All was not lost though because that meant it was Disney World Day!! Yeah:

Nadine posing for the camera

 

 We headed for Epcot because Beth had never been there. Besides we figured we could eat our way around the world! We shopped in Canada and headed over to England for fish n Chips for lunch. Man they are so good there.

 After lunch we shopped through Paris where I found and outrageously expensive perfume I just had to have. Call it pier pressure I guess. But I still have no regrets about that and wear it lots. Then we made a beeline over to the French Pastries. We had worked up an appetite by then.

The classic group photo. We are a classy bunch eh.

Seriously we just took this pic so everyone could see the guy in background! Sweatband and all!!

 

 Since we had park hoppers we ran over to the Magic Kingdom after we shopped the rest of Epcot. We were hoping to get into Be My Guest on standby for dinner but no go. Also no luck at Cinderellas castle but we made the best of it.

Sistas

This is as close as we got to dinner here this time :(

All was not lost since we had reservations at the Crystal Palace for dinner with Winnie the Pooh and his pals. Quite entertaining. Gotta say though what's up with Disney not using filtered water for their sodas?? I was dying for a coke and a shot of caffeine by this time but again with the sulphur water, yuck! We had a ball that day and just ran around Disney until we were ready to die. In fact we closed the place. Well worth every minute and a huge thanks to Nadine for scoring us free passes for the day!
So Nadine dropped us off at the hotel and one at a time we all headed for the airport the next morning. It was sad to see everyone go and here's crossing our fingers that we will be lucky enough to do it again next year.

The Wedding Cake

Cheryl has helped me so much over the years especially when it comes to weddings. She was in charge of Ashley's wedding dinner and she and Lori made all the fabulous treats for Jeff's open house. So when Jenn was getting married it was going to be my turn to help by making her wedding cake. Of course the sister's retreat was already planned and booked so it was time to get creative.
At home I baked the whole cake and froze it to travel. I made all the icing and got everything ready to go. I drove up to Provo Wed, April 30 and started to decorate her cake. I stayed up until about 3 and got it all done in the first day. The fun was getting it into the fridge!

Christina and I took out all the shelves and everything we could so it would fit inside. Cameron came by Friday and drove it up to Logan for us. Unfortunatley the cake didn't travel well. I hear it was completely lopsided by the time it got there. I am guessing it slipped off the dowels in the transport. Luckily Jenn's future aunt wasn a cake decortor and with the extra frosting I sent up she was able to reassemble it and save the day. Let's just say the whole time I was in Florida I stressed about it. At least until Saturday was over and it didn't matter anymore. I hope it was all okay in the end!

I stole this from facebook! They are so cute.

It was bound to happen...

We decided to run the satellite cable through to the kitchen tv while it wasn't screamin hot. The repair guy had left it up there for us about two years ago and since the cable was not working any more at all it was time. I heard lots of noise in the attic as Mendis crawled around up there. I was afraid of what might be going on up there and sure enough:

Darn it I didn't get there fast enough with the camera to get his leg going through the hole. Luckily he didn't hurt himself and he didn't even swear. He got it all patched up we are just waiting to paint it sometime when we get the paint matched. Like he needs another project right.

Absent for Easter

Things have a strange way of working out or not sometimes. We wanted to attend Laura's mission report but wouldn't you know it was on Easter Sunday. So we went anyway. Friday night Christina came down with two cars of friends and they stayed at our house too. So we greeted them Friday and made them a big breakfast Saturday then Mendis took them all shooting. It was good to hang out with them a bit before we had to get going. Then Hayden came down for Easter and while he was here he saw Ashley's house and spent some time playing with his nephews. Wow looks like they had a blast I'd say!

Ashley had Easter dinner at her house with Hayden and Charlie and Alisha without us :( but oh well. Next year we will be there. In fact I arranged our cruise so we would actually get home the day before Easter just to make sure we didn't miss it again.

Graduation

 

 Time flies! Jeff and Rachel graduated from BYU-Idaho this spring on Friday, April 11, 2014. We are so proud of them. Lots of hard work and tedious assignments paid off in the end. We were able to make the trip up to Rexburg for the occasion. Christina was able to go too so off we went.  

It was the best of weekends.

Aren't they cute

They were lucky enough to have both families there and both of Jeff's Grandparents.

We had a wonderful dinner together at the I-Center. They did a beautiful job but unfortunately I was starting to come down with the flu bug so it was way more than I could eat darn it. 

 After the dinner we headed into the I-Center for the Graduation. 

 

Love those pictures of the trek over. The auditorium was so packed we never could see them for certain wouldn't you know. I filmed some random graduates hoping it was them but nope.

Right after the main graduation we all gathered in the gym before we had to hustle over for the College Convocation. It was a great time to visit with friends.

Turns out either our camera we spent a small fortune on takes crappy pictures or we don't know how to use it correctly. Hmmnnn. So most of those ones didn't turn out great. Luckily I took some on my little camera to save the day!!

What a great day! We just love those two! We are so proud of them and all they have accomplished together. They will be headed off to Washington DC this summer so Jeff can go to Law School at George Washington University this fall. Rachel will be taking some well deserved time off before Grad school.
Life is Good isn't it.

THE Drawer

We're keeping the tradition alive. Everyone one of my grandsons has had a chance to play in the drawer. In fact I believe Hayden was the first when he was one. It's about the only drawer that is safe for them to play in so I let them go to it...

Dane having a good time until he found the other more fun cupboards.

Welcome Comeau Family

So while I was scrapbooking this year Ashley's family moved in with us! Let me explain...

The house from hell. Well I didn't think so but pretty sure that's how Ashley & Benjy saw it. Their house was supposed to be finished the middle of March so they set everything up to move the end of March. Well of course things didn't work out that way. So they were homeless while they waited for paperwork to clear. They were only in our house briefly so it was no big deal. The stress for them to get everything final and done was pretty bad though. They were able to work it all out and everything got the official okie dokie in June. A very stressful time for them. Their house is beautiful though and worth the craziness.

Making carpet angels in their new home!

Mission Accomplished!!

Scrapbook Weekend 2014

I have to mention my scrapbook retreat again this year. I love this tradition!! Patty, Jolynn and I have been doing this for years and we look so forward to it. This year we went up to Patty's cabin March 27-30. We tore out of here at noon so we could get up there and get to work.

 Husbands and family and friends find it hard to believe that we actually get some scrapbooking done. But we really do. We stay up super late every night and get as much scrapping in as we can. We barely stop to go to Milt's etc. Well food is pretty important too I guess. We have this down to an art now because we bring up so much food we barely need to leave, except for Milt's (yet another tradition).

This year I brought up some Devonshire clotted cream and we had scones and herbal tea. It was so fun. We also started a new tradition. We took one day and we didn't get dressed, do our hair or anything.

 We just played (scrapped) all day and got so much done. It was so fun. We even ran down to Joann one day in slippers to get some supplies. It was a great weekend and we are already looking forward to next year!!