Oh the memories

It's fun to see so many of the memories I had with my parents as a youngin' be experienced by my kids with my parents.............Wow, that sentence was really weird. But you get the idea.

I really don't know a better "This Little Piggie" voice in all of human-dom then my dad's. You can't HELP but smile...

 Growing up there was also a lot of singing w/ accompaniment by my dad. This was Mom singing Happy Birthday to Iris while dancing in place with her birthday card. I think my girls are starting to see why their mom is how she is......... ;)

 Aaaaaaaaaaand the elevator. Just make SURE you do NOT press the pincher button. My rear-end definitely felt it's fair share of the pincher button.

 My mom......

 Of course mom is smiling in the picture above because that is BEFORE we went outside to play kickball with the kids and lost. My mom is a more gracious loser then I am for the record. Dad was the permanent pitcher....for both teams. No one could top his curve balls.

 My mother had 8 children and has well over 30 grandkids and still will sit and stare/admire/gawk over my babies. I love that. Pretty sure Everly has a big head now thanks to my mom. 

 Grams looooooves babies.

 Swimming......that would sum up their visit too. I drove over to their hotel every morning with the younger kids and we swam and swam. Iris said her favorite thing she did with Grampy in his whole visit was race him back and forth (and back and forth........repeated three times) down the pool. My dad is a trooper.

 Mom, who was also a lifeguard/swim-lady got my kids to love the water and even got Royce trusting in his lifejacket.........FINALLY. (We've been swimming many times since their visit and I can't get Royce OUT of the pool!!!! Gee, thanks mom) I just love this picture of Royce's huge grin jumping to Grams.

 (that picture was CLEARLY taken BEFORE her shoulders got burned to the color of red peppers....baked red peppers)

Another afternoon I brought the older kids over to swim and Mom and Dad came up with (once again) a genius idea. They cashed in a dollar for 100 pennies and threw them all over the pool and told the kids to dive for them. The one with the most obviously wins.........of course you wouldn't think we would just dive for the FUN of it!!! There MUST be a winner. (And Emerson was it) Here are their penny cups waiting to be counted.

I think Grampy really liked that game too because he could just sit on the side with Royce and watch the action.

Their last night here we took them walking around our favorite trails.

 I do love the trails but as an added bonus I ALSO love the fact that the kids don't have to "be ready". In fact, Royce can even dress himself and I ALLOW it to work......ya know, the whole button-shirt on backwards, shorts inside out with tag showing and no shoe thing......It's weird but that fashion hasn't caught on here yet. (But we will continue to try)

 Not the BEST show of frogs that night since we only caught 9 during that walk but nevertheless and notwithstanding they STILL get excited over them.

Thanks Mom and Dad for coming out! I sure love you.

IRIS IS 5!!!!!

Iris' birthday party was a huge hit......starting with a magic show. 

What are they laughing so hard at?

My dad.....her Grampy, gives the BEST magic shows. 

(and he gave this exact show on MY 5th birthday too)

 For the finale he makes "magic cookies" with the "help" of Iris. As Grampy put the ingredients in the pan to make the cookies Iris was NOT impressed......TOOTHPASTE?!?!?! (her face in these pictures kill me)

 SHOE POLISH?! 

FRESH (and dead) BUGS?!?!!? It was more then she could handle.

 Of course the watermelon cookies turned out delicious after being cooked in the fire that flew out of the pan. 

Next it was Iris' cake-time (I try to go for the OVER-SUGAR-LOAD effect at birthday parties). 

She wanted brownies with the ice cream on top (softened, spread on top of cooled brownies then thrown back in the freezer to harden back up). The ice cream she picked was Moosetracks and it turned out visually interesting since.....um......Sven (the reindeer) was on top of her cake.....ew

She loves Frozen and Pokemon.........so she got both on her cake. She just sat and admired it and I knew she (BEYOND) loved it since she stopped talking. Very few.....and I mean VERY FEW things make Iris stop talking. 

(I have NO idea where she gets that from...)

Then it was pinata time..........because they hadn't had enough sugar yet.

She wanted Olaf as her pinata which was nice she picked the shape of 3 balloons stuck together, so it made it easy for me.

 We couldn't find our bat so we opted for a broom this time. My dad volunteered to hold the pinata (or did I volunteer HIM?......I can't remember). Iris went to whack it first and mis-calculated the length of the broom since we are used to bats. Her first contact in her swing was NOT the pinata.......it was Grampy's knees.

TAKE THAT!!!

 The whole group with all their loot.

 We sure love our little chatter-box, peacemaking Iris.

Happy 5th, sweet princess.

The Big Day

 My parents also flew out in time for BOTH sets of grandparents to be here on this BIG DAY!!!!

Everly's Baby Blessing and Emerson's Baptism

Angel-girl in her dress

Family picture before Emerson's baptism

Which of COURSE I had to weed through the pictures to find one where we all look "normal" to get the above picture and not so much.........well..........this kind of stuff....

But heck....even Iris and Camden's photobombing was a WHOLE lot better then the family picture from Bronson's baptism (2011) when everyone looked PAINED to be there.

But back to Emerson's day.........

The priesthood men with the little-man-of-the-hour, Emerson.

 Smith grandparents

 Degn grandparents

Dad had to run in to finish practicing the special musical number that Aleeya and Iris were going to sing. I love this picture because it reminds me of singing along with my dad when I was younger.

After basking in that sweet memory-filled-feeling, I walked out in the hallway to see Emerson like this.....

For a kid who NEVER wears shoes, I found it funny I had to remind him he didn't need to wear them to be baptized!!!!

Emerson asked RA to baptize him. I just love this picture!

 And this...... (I just couldn't crop Kellyn's sweet face out of this picture)

Both grandmas gave talks and Aleeya and Iris sang.....(well, ALEEYA sang....Iris was there for her mumbling-background effect we like to have for duets)

Emerson was baptized and then received the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands (by those who held the Priesthood to do so......summary here in a previous blog post)

(Yes, I was sneaky to snap one with my phone right before Brooks started the prayer)

We were so grateful for all our friends of our church and friends not in our church who decided to come!

And those shoes I had to get him to take off before he was baptized?.......well, they were QUICKLY kicked off right after.........along with all of his brother's shoes too.

Say "I LOVE YOU"

 Let the tickle/torture fest begin!!!!

R.A. walked through the door and my kids jumped all over him. They LOVE Brooks' dad. He squeezes/tickles them/holds them in a wrestling hold while he says, "Say I LOVE YOU!" and in order to get released my kids have to scream 

"I LOVE YOU"

(and they do)

 Iris just wouldn't leave R.A. alone, she loved it. This is when she was sitting on his lap and she put her hands on his face and said, "RA, can I keep you forever?"

 Meeting Everly...........their 16th grandchild.

Miss Kellyn Pat wasn't sure WHAT to do with the guests. Grandma just swept her up in her arms without asking and that was all she wrote.......Kellyn was stuck to her the rest of the trip. Maybe it's because they share the name Pat..... ;)

Grandma WAS able to get a break from Kellyn for a little while and hold Everly for the first time...

 that is until Kellyn saw it and immediately wanted to stake her territory (it's funny she has never done this with me and the baby!)

So much for one-on-one time with Everly.......

And then it REALLY got ugly when Grandma had to go to their hotel for the night......

They were only here a few short days, but they DID get the chance to sit in close quarters around the dinner table with 8 young kids in a echo-friendly dining room......lucky them.

 There was obviously a lot of backyard basketball playing, game-watching, throwing the baseball and of course......golf.

RA and Grandma took Bronson golfing one afternoon.

and Kellyn was NOT happy to see Grandma leave to go golfing!!!! Talk about torture.

 Thankfully Kellyn didn't see me sneak Pat out with me one day to run to the store. It was AWFULLY handy to have her around to hold Everly. She even got her to sleep.

When Emerson turned 7, R.A. challenged him to read the Book of Mormon (aloud to me or Brooks so we can discuss it) before he was baptized. Emerson had three more pages when R.A. got here and saved them to read with him. This picture warms my heart.

 One of my FAVORITE pictures of their trip would probably be this one. On Iris' birthday Grandma and RA picked up Iris to take her to lunch at Daddy's work (the hospital). Clearly she was excited.

 Here Brooks is with his parents at work

 Walking through the hospital. Pat and I were trying to take pictures and Brooks turned around so embarrassed that we were snapping pictures while they were walking. I was able to grab this one before he told us to stop. :)

The birthday girl

Later that afternoon (and after naps....made obvious by Iris' face) they had to say good bye to RA and Grandma.......so sad.

But not before one more tickle-torture, "SAY I LOVE YOU"

 "I LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!!"

Petrified to Death

The girls are required daily to pick up their rooms.

We regularly "Deep clean" it 

(like under beds, the closet, under chest of drawers, etc.)

So I'm really not a slob.

But this just might prove otherwise.

This morning Iris and I were deep cleaning her room and for some ODD reason I decided to clean out their babydoll bin.....ya know, that's supposed to be full of babydolls?!?!?

And indeed it was..........

plus OOOOOOOOOOONE teensy weensie frog.

A dead one.

He was rock hard. Poor thing.

I held it up and said to Iris, "Oh, looks like we found Aleeya's frog"

She looked at me and the frog and said in a matter-of-fact tone, "He's dead."

YA THINK?!?!?!?!?!?!