Our week with family

Jaaromy's brother and his family came up from Vegas to visit for a week in July and so naturally we spent a lot of time with the whole family. 

Sunday night we got together for a visit.  We played some games and I even got to chat with Emily for a bit while she helped little Hadley fall asleep in her stroller.  We also made plans for the rest of the week.

Tuesday was our traditional Girl's Night Out.  This is the one that I look forward to the most because it's pretty much the only GNO that I ever do.  We usually go see terrible chick flicks (17 Again being a notable exception) and have dinner.  This time the chosen activity was pedicures.  Not my thing but if that's what they wanted to do then I would do it.  It's about spending time together, right?  So, after our dinner at Zupas, that's where we went.

That's my foot at the bottom.  I decided to get a patriotic look for my toes since it was the 4th of July that week.  I will likely never do this again so I figured I should go big.  They lasted a long time too.  I just barely took off the paint last week.  It was starting to look a little sad.  After the pedicure we went to Chili's for dessert.  I wanted to get the cookie skillet.  I didn't realize how badly I wanted the cookie skillet until our waitress told us that they were all out of cookie skillets.  (sigh) So I had a brownie sundae instead.  It was okay, I guess.  Then the manager came and told us that they weren't really out of cookie skillets but the waitress didn't know that so he gave us a free cookie skillet to share.  That might have made it worse because then I knew for a surety that I had wanted a cookie skillet but had to settle on the brownie sundae.  So sad.  I guess we'll have to go back sometime.  Cookie skillet or not, it was a fun visit and my favorite part of our family visit.

There were other activities but we weren't able to go to all of them.  Friday night was Grandma Day.  Bill and Patti like to have all the grandkids sleep over.  Ours boys don't usually, but they come for the rest.  I was a little worried how it would go for Bill and Patti because they had just moved back in to their house and a lot of the furniture was still packed away (like the kitchen table!) and they were still working on projects around the house.  They managed to pull it off, although I'm sure they were ready for a break when it was over.  They had the kids make marshmallow shooters and I think that went well.  Jaaromy and I went on a date while they were at Grandma's.  It was library night so we drove to Orem and dropped off the books and then went to Magleby's in Springville.  The food there is so good but we don't have a lot of opportunities to get to Springville for dinner.  On our way back home Patti texted us and said that Nathaniel was ready to go home now.  Perfect timing.  Everyone had fun.

Saturday was Man in the Moon.  It wasn't really a family thing, Jimmy and Emily didn't even go, but since my brothers were there and Bill and Patti were there, it felt like it was all part of the plan.

Sunday was baby Sydney's blessing and our last chance to see Jimmy and Emily before they went home.  I made sure to take lots of pictures, including a big family picture.

 Baby Sydney and Grandpa Patti

 Little Hadley (so cute)

 Teagen is pretty darn cute too.

 Jimmy, Emily, and Hadley

 Baby Sydney with Mom Lyenna

 The whole family!

 The ladies

 The guys

 Silly Jace.  He really wanted me to take his picture.

 So I did.

 Four generations.

She makes that face a lot, it seems.

It was a fun week and a fun last visit.  I wish they would move closer to us but at least this way we make the visits count.

Man in the Moon

As many of you may know, I'm a Glenn Beck fan.  I listen to his radio show every day and even subscribed to his television network where I watch his nightly tv show among others.  He has put on several large events over the past few years in different locations.  The first one was in Washington D.C., the next year he went to Israel, and last year he had an event in Dallas, TX.  I briefly considered going to a couple of them (yeah, Israel wasn't one of them) but it was just too much money and time.

Finally, he announced an event this summer here in Salt Lake City!  I was so excited that I would finally be able to go without worrying about time and money.  Luckily, some of my brothers are also fans and we were able to go together.  I originally bought two tickets with the hope that Jaaromy would come with me.  He politely declined.  My younger (and poorer - those tickets weren't cheap) brother was more than happy to take his ticket.

After waiting for, like, ever the day of the event finally arrived.  Coincidentally, it was during the first week of July which also happened to be the wettest July on record.  We were a little concerned that we would be rained out since the show was at the USANA amphitheater.  It had been raining all day and was still pretty wet, but it wasn't raining quite as much by the time we got there.

We brought blankets and tarps and Scott even brought some ponchos which I am super grateful for since I don't own one.  Also, I'm so glad Rachel was there, so I wasn't alone with all those boys.

My in-laws were there too with some extended family and they were nice enough to save us a spot on the lawn.

Once we got settled, we went over to the concession area.  We had heard that Chris was manning the beer tap, so of course we had to go and make fun of him.

Sure enough, there he was.  We tried to tease him but he had so many customers it was hard.  So we went to find Sara and Sadie.  They were all there to raise money for the high school dance team.  It was so fun to have so much family there, even if they all weren't there to see the show.

We still had the problem of the rain.  Glenn Beck even came out on stage to talk to the audience about whether or not the show would go on.  The show required some pretty expensive equipment and would need to be replaced if they were damaged by the rain.  So, a friend of his came out and said a prayer that the show would be able to continue.

Not too long after the prayer we started to see some hope.  The sun was starting to come through the clouds and it looked beautiful.

We even got a double rainbow.  We all took it as a sign that the show should continue.

And what a show it was.  It started out with these two bi-planes flying over head.  That was pretty cool.  Then there was the flag raising to the song America the Beautiful sung slowly and simply by a female artist.  Glenn had brought in some acrobats from Cirque de Soliel to raise the flag.  They started on opposite sides of the stage hanging upside down dressed as soldiers.  They "walked" to the center to raise the flag so that when it "raised" it was coming down upside down.  It was very poignant and true.  I think that might have been the most powerful part of the show.  Following that was the story of the Man in the Moon. There was fun music and dancing.  The story was told about the history of mankind starting from the creation.  When we got to the part about WWII towards the end there were some loud fireworks to simulate the noise and confusion of war.  It was cool but also pretty intense.  Then when the show was all over there was a regular awesome fireworks show.

We all got home pretty late but it was a great experience and I'm glad that I could go with my brothers and sister-in-law.

Our Independence Day

We had a nice relaxing Independence Day.  We decided to get out the stomp rocket.  Always a favorite.

 Nathaniel started it off.

 Jonathan wanted to ride his scooter as he chased down the fallen rockets.

 Brigham was a little hesitant at first...

 but then joined right in.

 Jonathan wanted to ride down the driveway right as the rockets launched so he could ride out and pick them up.

 He also took his turn to launch a few.

 Brigham was finally comfortable enough to not cover his ears.

 It was so fun to watch him stomp.

 He would always crouch way down and jump.  We had so much fun.

Later that night we got started on our fireworks.  We decided to try sparklers this year and the boys did really well with them.

 Although they were a little nervous at first.

 Extreme closeup!

 Then we got started on the real fireworks.

I actually managed to get a fairly decent picture of one.  There were so many going off all around us, it was fun and loud.