Vegas, Baby!

Last Thursday, Claire and her boys had a layover in LAX, so Michael, Naomi and I drove over to see them for a little while. It was so wonderful to get hugs from them all and to sit and chat. The kids all ignored each other until I said the magic L-word, Lego, which broke the ice. Theo and Luc showed Michael the Lego sets they got for the trip and the other stuff they brought for the plane.

After we got home from the airport, I took a nap because I had a six hour drive ahead of me Thursday evening. Heather turns 16 in just over two weeks and so she and I took off as soon as school was out. My sister Sara took Summer to NYC for her sixteenth birthday and Rachel to San Fransisco for hers, but now she has a husband and other vacation plans (one of which includes coming to see us this summer - yay, we can't wait!) so I told Heather I would take her on a road trip.

Heather is interested in aerial circus performances, so she chose going to a Cirque du Soliel show in Las Vegas. We headed up to Southern Utah first to see Grandma Spencer, the Craigs and the Bangs. Heather, Cynthia, Mother and I went shopping on Friday, I took nap and helped make dinner. Then, the surprise for Heather showed up! Summer, Rachel, and their boyfriendscame down from Provo. It was so great to see them, even for a little while. We had dinner, cake and ice cream for Heather and watched Frozen Friday night.

Saturday morning, Cynthia, Nikki and Jake made us a big, delicious breakfast and then we used some of the calories up hiking to look at some petroglyphs not far from their house. Here are Cynthia and I chatting away in the sunshine.

Will and Jake checking out the goat family.

Heather and Tristan with the Craig's adorable little dog Ryah (total guess on the spelling).

Saturday after lunch, Heather and I reluctantly left our loved ones behind and headed to Vegas, slowly getting excited as the time passed for our big night out. After agonizing way too long over the price, we finally decided to bite the bullet and eat at the buffet the hotel clerk recommended. Even though it was expensive, for a once in a lifetime trip, it was totally worth it. Almost all the food was delicious and it was so much fun being able to eat so many different things!

Here is my (first) plate - 

1. California roll
2. spring roll
3. cocktail sauce
4. fried calamari
5. crab legs (I went back for seconds!)
6. steamed clams (my favorite food as a kid - I ate at least a dozen)
7. heart of palm (I had never had this before - delicious!)
8. crayfish
9. Brussels sprout (trying to eat my vegetables)
10. mussels
11. fresh pineapple (with an antennae)
12. clarified butter
13. sweet potato casserole
14. white truffle cheesy potatoes (amazing)
15. lamb with mint jelly (Heather thought that was gross, but I told her that is how we always had it when I was a kid)
16. lemons (obviously)
17. oyster on the half shell (I kept the shell for a souvenir)

Whew! Do you know when the next Shellfish Anonymous meeting is?

Here is my beautiful, fascinating almost 16 year old date for dinner in her new birthday shirt :)

We stuffed ourselves and then went to the dessert bar. Big mistake. We should have saved more room. That didn't stop us from choosing, yes, fifteen desserts between the two of us. It is a good thing the portions were tiny. Smart buffet people! We tasted each others' stuff and reluctantly, didn't finish every last bite, but oh my, they were good. My favorites were the sorbets and souffle. Mmmmmmm!

Here's the lineup - 

1. hazelnut chocolate cup
2. cheesecake
3. canolis
4. coconut macaroon
5. meringues
6. cookie dough gelato
7. raspberry sorbet
8. mango sorbet
9. coconut sorbet
10. bread pudding
11. chocolate souffle
12. chocolate marshmallow bark
13. flan
14. raspberry pistachio cup
15. mint chocolate chip gelato

We wobbled out of there and booked it over to our show. We saw Mystere. It was supposed to be the most family friendly Cirque show, and it pretty much was, except for when the clown gave the ringmaster the bird. Oh well.

The performers were absolutely amazing! There were balancing acts, trapeze artists, a woman on aerial silks that took my breath away, these two incredibly strong men that contorted and balanced on each other, people climbing up poles (one guy did it with just his hands touching the pole and his body held out away from it) and sliding down headfirst, then stopping just in time, flipping, dancing, twisting, and flying everywhere! It was so fun!

We collapsed in our hotel room, slept a while, then woke up this morning, ate a quick breakfast, stopped by at a nearby sacrament meeting and headed home. 

It was a wonderful trip and I am so glad I could spend time with Heather. Happy early birthday, Darling!

Senior Prom

The big day is finally here! I think Summer and I spent at least five hours at the fabric store figuring her dress out. She chose the purple fabric for the sash to match a pair of my shoes that she wanted to wear. I finished sewing yesterday. Isn't she lovely?

She made the flowers at her waist. She got the idea for the poofs by her hips from a dress she saw a Macy's.

Anthony came to pick her up with more flowers for both of them.

Summer's corsage was easy to put on. It had an elastic wristband.

Anthony's boutonniere, on the other hand, came with two BIG pins. Don't worry, no blood was drawn.

Don't they look schnazzy?

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!

Dancing the Night Away

Summer went to a Midwinter Dance last month with Robert.

Michael and Naomi are getting ready for their own turns as teenagers on dates by practicing their dance moves.

Phone Pictures

I got a new phone a couple of months ago and finally took the time to get the odds and ends pictures off of it.

We took a trip to the Redlands Temple grounds as a family on our ward temple night.

Gwen and Heather each competed at the end of the year competition their ballroom dance club at school has each spring.

They both did well :)