Natalie and David come to visit.

While Rachel and Heather were in St. George going to EFY in July, my niece and nephew, Natalie and David came to stay with us. We took them into LA one day. Our first stop was the Hollywood Walk of Fame and Grauman's Chinese Theater. I'm not that impressed with the stars in the sidewalk, but I do get a kick out of the hand and footprints.

Can you tell which star's shoe prints my kids wanted their picture with? 

 

After Hollywood, we headed to Chinatown where we got a rockin' hot deal ($1 each) on some boba mango smoothies. Yum. They hit the spot on a summer day.

Gwen and Natalie couldn't resist the piano sitting and waiting to be played. They each took a turn and finished with a duet. 

Spring Break! Road Trip! Woohoo!

The kids and I (Stan had to work and we missed him) hit the road last week. We headed east and stayed with my darling friend Mandy in AZ. These signs on her fence made me smile. I'm guessing the first one is spot on, but the second one is a little bit of an exaggeration.

Here is her dog Ginger...see what I mean?

The kids LOVED Ginger and they also loved swimming.

Mandy made a chocolate cake for Heather, whose birthday was on Thursday. Heather really scored. She had three different birthday cakes this year. Amanda and I took care of the beaters!

Here is a video of the amazing birthday candle Mandy put on Heather's cake.

We had fun listening to Amanda and David play the piano and drums together. When they were done, David let the kids mess around and play his drums. They had a blast.

We spent an day (during which we went shopping at some really fun stores) and two nights in AZ. It was wonderful spending time with Amanda and her family.

The next day, we headed east again. The desert we drove through, especially for the first hour or two, was beautiful. The picture doesn't come close to doing it justice. There were flowers of almost every color of the rainbow in bloom. My favorite was the ocotillo - so lovely!

I am glad my sister-in-law Steph gave me the heads up, because when I saw the Gila Valley Temple on the side of the road, I stopped and we had lunch, instead of driving by with my mouth hanging open in confusion :)

We went to see Matt, Steph and their darling girls in NM next. They had pu pu platters for dinner when we got there. They were amazingly delicious and I ate way more than fit in my stomach...oooo full!

Matt and Steph also had a cake for Heather (cake #2 - lucky girl).
Aren't the cherry blossoms pretty?

Here is birthday song video #2. Can you guess what my favorite part of the video is?

After dinner, Summer and Rachel both got on Facebook and chatted with each other. I kid you not.

We piled most of the kids in the living room which is just how they wanted it, at least until the middle of the night, when some of them wandered in to the room I was in to snuggle.

Here are all the cousins together.

We spent two nights and a day with Matt and Steph. The day we spent with them, they took us to the coolest place, Hueco Tanks State Park. The pictures pale in comparison to reality. It is a honeycomb of boulders, caves and crevasses to climb and crawl through - kid (and parent) heaven.

Opal, Matt and Steph's youngest.

One of the many crawl spaces.

You never knew where someone would appear. I looked up and there was Matt.

Steph and their oldest, Ruby.

Coral, their middle girl.

Gwen was really in her element.

Here is my beautiful Heather on her 13th birthday.

After we hiked around for a while, we ran all the kids through the restroom and started on our tour. I thought the old archeologist who was our guide looked like the Pied Piper most of the time.

Here is Newspaper Rock, with paintings and graffiti layered on top of each other from the 1800's to thousands of years ago.

The cactuses were blooming.

The kids were excited when the guide showed them a rock smoothed by woolly mammoths wanting a scratching spot.

These masks were some of the older paintings on the rock walls.

These are more recent and were painted by Apaches.

He took us to one spot near water that had a slide smoothed by generations of Native American children playing. Our kids did their part to erode.

Naomi was a trooper on our hikes. She kept going and going until she tripped and fell near the end and then she wanted carried for a bit. One of the men on our tour said she did better than some of the adults on a hike he took a month before. It was a wonderful day and especially fun to spend it with Steph and Matt :)

Somehow, I ended up with three kids in bed with me that night, on a full sized fold out couch. When I woke up in the morning, Michael had a leg over me on one side and Naomi had a leg over me on the other. It was tricky getting up...

Friday we headed back to AZ to stay one more night. David planned Mandy's birthday party for that night, a bit early, so that I could come. It was so nice of him and so fun. Somehow, Amanda got me on the dance floor which brought back memories of stake dances when we were teenagers. How did the time go by so fast?

Here she is with David and her son Nathan.

We made it home safe and had one more birthday party, this time with brownies and ice cream :)

Happy Birthday Heather!

A Week with Grandma and Grandpa

My parents came for a week. We had a wonderful time with them. Here is a small sample of what we did. I was too busy having fun to take pictures of everything :)

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They arrived on a Saturday and Grandma Buppie opened her suitcase to find that the TSA had moved stuff around enough in her luggage that the box of quinoa she was bringing us exploded. Just for the record, it is delicious, even after being salvaged from a suitcase!


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Sunday, Grandma and Grandpa came to church with us and heard Rachel give a talk. She did really well.

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Monday we headed to San Diego. We started at the Mormon Battalion Visitor's Center. Everyone loved it. The Church recently remodeled the displays and it was a lot of fun. Grandpa Dale introduced Michael to a big gun.

Everyone had a chance to pan for gold.

Naomi LOVED pumping water.


I think my mom's and my daughter's profiles look similar in this picture. What do you think?

I should have timed the people who were panning for gold. They kept at it for a while. My dad was having as much fun as anyone, which brings to mind the expression, "Boys will be boys and so will a lot of middle aged men."

There was a tower you could climb to look out over Old Town San Diego.

Michael needed a little bit of help with the binoculars.

There he goes!

It took some effort to drag everyone away from their prospecting, but we were getting hungry.

On the way out, Gwen was fantasizing about leading a wagon train...

...and Michael found an even bigger gun!

Everyone who wanted one got a small nugget of fool's gold from the prospectors, but this was my favorite souvenir :)


After the Mormon Battalion Site, we went out to lunch, then to Mission Beach where Grandpa, Summer and Rachel rode a roller coaster and the younger kids played in the water and sand.

On the way back home, my parents treated us to Italian food at Vigilucci's, which was so close to the beach that we could see the water. It was delicious.

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Tuesday, we recuperated a bit and went to see Gwen's school play.

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Wednesday, we took off to the Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology. We also stopped at the Graber Olive House and Handel's Ice Cream.

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Thursday, I let Gwen skip school and she, Michael and Kelly woke up really early (hence the lack of cheer) and put on their overalls and went fossil hunting with Grandpa!

Thursday night, we ate at a local Mexican restaurant I really like. After dinner, my mom, Summer, Rachel, Heather and I went to the Art Walk downtown.

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Friday, we went to the farmer's market and picked up lots of yummy things. For dinner that night, we ate corn on the cob, artichoke, and watermelon radishes. My mom also bought us some flowers :)

Since my dad had done stuff with all the other kids, he took just Heather on a date to see Shrek in 3D Friday afternoon.

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Saturday, Kelly was baptized. This is the dress my mother made when I was baptized. My sisters and I each wore it and five of our girls have, too.

Summer played the cello while the sisters of the two children being baptized sang. Here they are practicing before the baptism started.

When we got back to the house, my dad and I tortured everyone by taking multiple pictures before we ate. You can see my mom and dad, as well as our cousin Lorna, who was so kind to come for Kelly's big day :)

Everyone recovered from starving in front of the camera by filling up on taco salad and trifle. Yum!

After lunch, my parents hit the road for more adventures, beginning with a drive up the coast. Thanks Dad and Mom for coming!