Church

Today we had a big and busy day!  We started out going to the temple to take pictures of Zach in his suit (like we do for all the kids when they are baptized).  We had an enjoyable time there and Zach looked so cute in his suit and tie.  🙂

After the temple, we drove over to the Chicago Botanical Gardens where we spent the rest of the day relaxing and viewing beautiful flowers, trees, and landscapes.  We had never been there before as a family (Angela was the only one), and we very much enjoyed it.  At first everyone was not too happy that “mom was going to make us do this,” but when we got there, the mood changed!  🙂

By the time we had walked at least 7-8 miles around the place, we were exhausted and ready to go home and take a load off our feet!  We got some GREAT pictures and had a great time together.  The day couldn’t have been any more perfect!  It wasn’t too hot and the sun was out and shining!  Good last weekend family activity before Sarah leaves to go to school!  Sniff sniff…  🙁

Brittany and Kirstyn got home from Girls’ Camp today and were very smelly!  🙂  We got them in the shower ASAP and after that, the house was much better!  They had a GREAT time and did a lot of fun stuff.  Kirstyn has a TON of pictures which I won’t post here on the blog, but some will be in our yearly family album.

Today was Mark’s and Jocelyn’s big wedding day!  Angela arrived safe and was very excited to be there with family.  The rest of us were sad that we couldn’t all be out there, but with the short notice and the fact that we were all just out there, we couldn’t make it work.

Angela had a great time and said that the ceremony was beautiful and the luncheon and reception were great as well!  Tomorrow morning early they are heading up to Salmon to get ready for the open house up there!  Busy busy!  Congrats Mark and Jocelyn!

Last night, our friends, the Gaul’s, left for vacation and dropped off their Foreign Exchange Student from Spain to stay with us until Friday.  Her name is Paula and she’s really nice.  She’s a little younger than Sarah and the boys took right to her!

This morning, Angela and I left at about 3:30 to drive to Milwaukee so Angela could fly out to Idaho for Mark’s wedding.  It was really early and quite the long drive when you’re that tired (even though it’s only about 2 1/2 hours away.  🙂  I’ll have the wonderful privilege of picking her up from Milwaukee next week again!  😐

After dropping her off, I drove back home and worked from home today while watching the boys.  Paula for the most part watched the boys and played with them.  Sarah had to work her nanny  job, and so after lunch, I took Paula over to hang out with Sarah.  They had a great time together.

After Sarah and Paula got home and I finished up work, I took everyone to Sweet Tomatoes for dinner.  It was fun to watch Paula deal with an all-you-can-eat buffet!  🙂  The boys had a great time and I’ve never seen them eat more than they did tonight!  🙂  Yikes!

Today, Brittany and Kirstyn got up early and headed off to Girls’ Camp!  They are pretty excited to go out and have a blast with all their friends from the Stake.  It will be fun for them to get all dirty and slimy, camp out in tents, and be crazy with a bunch of other girls!

They have been working on these crazy tutus and just seeing what they are going to do makes me (as a guy) appreciate scout camp more.  🙂  I’m sure they’ll have a GREAT time!

This morning (after only about 3 hours of sleep), we got up early and headed over to a cemetery for a ward activity.  It was entitled “Our Greatful Dead.”  We all got together and each took a section of the cemetery.  We cataloged all the headstones, took pictures of them, did rubbings where we couldn’t read them, and uploaded them via our smartphones.  This all goes into a database for a group that is working on cataloging all of this stuff so family history work can more easily be done.  The name of it is BillionGraves (www.billiongraves.com).

After the activity, we went home and took a nap.  The rest of the day was spent cleaning house and getting ready for Sunday.

Today, Mark gave his homecoming talk at church, which was wonderful.  As part of the program, all the kids and grand-kids got up on the stand and sang Called to Serve in Spanish!  😐  It was crazy!  What also was very interesting is that the speaker that spoke with Mark had a family visiting him from Denmark (that he baptized on his mission).  It turns out that they were in the Smiley’s ward in Copenhagen and Angela met them when she was over there!!!  SMALL WORLD!  They had a reunion of sorts and then the family came over to visit tonight.

After the meetings were over, we all went over to Grandma’s and Grandpa’s house and had a huge dinner/welcome-home reception for Mark.  The funny thing was that at this reception, it was almost like a Weber High School reunion!  One of Mark’s companions, Elder Hales, was there with his family.  Elder Hales’ dad is a year or two older than me and we were at Weber High together!  Again, SMALL WORLD!  In addition, Elder Hales’ mom, is also a Weber High grad and is a year younger than me.  Her brother (Eric), and his brother (Will) were friends of mine, and I played soccer for years with “Uncle Will” Hales.  To top that off, Angela’s cousin, Scott Burns was there, and he graduated from Weber High as well and is the same age as Elder Hales’ dad!  🙂  It was pretty funny.  It was nice to catch up with all of them and talk about the good-old-days!

Today was Zach’s big baptism day.  He has been looking forward to this day for a long time and couldn’t wait!  He got up really early and wanted to know if it was time yet!  🙂  We had to laugh about that one.  We hope he is that excited to be good all the time going forward!  We met at the church in Salmon, and Zach was baptized and confirmed at 11.  All the family was there and it was a wonderful experience!

The spirit was really strong there and we had the whole family there with us.  We missed having our ward friends and neighbors there with us, but they all understood when we told them that Zach would be baptized out West.  It’s really amazing how fast time flies!  We only have one left to baptize.  It seems like only yesterday that little Sarah was baptized, and now it’s about 6 weeks before she goes out to Provo to BYU.  Sniff sniff…   🙁

After Zach’s baptism, we had a big family party out at Scott and Carla’s.  Greg was there and took family pictures of everyone and they turned out really great!

We then had a huge milk can meal that everyone loved.  Along with that, we had a ton of other food, and also had a birthday celebration for Zach and Austin.

A bunch of the kids finished out the afternoon riding on Carla’s and Scott’s horses.  Other than being baptized, that was Zach’s favorite part of the day.  He just loved it!

Tonight we saw some of the craziest things ever.  We went to the annual Salmon demolition derby.  We were all excited, because the family had entered a car in the event.  The event started off with insane kids on motorcycles trying to pop balloons on each other’s heads.  I can’t even write about how crazy it was.

After that, it was time for the main event and the first heat of the demolition derby started.  Our car came out and we cheered like crazy.

It got rammed all over the place and had to be pulled off (not a very big car)…

It kept coming back out and coming back out after work on it, and it made it to the final heat!  We couldn’t believe it.  The thing wouldn’t quit!  It was by far the smallest car out there for the final  heat and obviously wouldn’t win, but it was fun. During the “halftime” show, another group of crazy kids, this time on 4-wheelers, came out and did the balloon popping thing again!  This was even more dangerous than on the motorcycles…

The cars then came out, and after it was all over, our car wouldn’t even run any more.  The axle was broken down into the ground, and it was smashed to bits.

What a crazy night!  I’m sure we’ll talk about this day for many years to come.  🙂

Well, EFY is now over and I drove down to Normal IL to pick up Brittany and some other folks that went down.  That’s one of my favorite things to do.  It’s great driving back home listening to all the fun stories and such from the kids.  🙂  The only thing I don’t like is getting up and leaving at 4:30am to get down there to pick them up at 7am.  🙂

After we got home, I took a rest, cleaned a bit, and then we drove downtown for a little kayaking adventure and Cirque du Soleil entertainment.  Angela had found a Groupon for kayaking on the Chicago river for a really good deal, so 6 of us got tickets and went.

It was a lot of fun.  This was Angela’s first time in a kayak and so she and I got a tandem one.  The kayaking was actually an architecture tour while on the Chicago river.  We would paddle around the river, stop at specific places, and our guide would tell us about the buildings and such.  I had been on an architecture tour before, but not this way.  The kayaking was awesome (as long you don’t fall into the river which is really gross and dirty).  🙂

It was actually pretty good exercise!  We were out on the river for almost 4 hours!  We think we’ll do that again!  Only one person ended up swamping his kayak and that was because he thought he was really cool and was goofing around.  Some people are just not the sharpest tool in the shed.  We about gagged when he went under.  🙂

After our kayaking adventure, we drove over to Navy Pier and went to a great performance from Cirque du Soleil.  It was called Cirque Shanghai: Year of the Dragon.  It was really cool and we had a great time!  The acrobatics and balancing acts were amazing!  It was really cool and crazy at the same time.  Who would think to have 6 motorcycles going around and around a metal sphere at the same time without hitting each other.

After the performance, we walked around for awhile and tried to find something to eat for dinner.  We were all pretty hungry.  Navy Pier was totally crammed with people, so we decided to walk back toward the lots where we parked to find something.  We ended up eating in a hotel restaurant but it was really good.  Maybe it was because we were so hungry.  🙂  We got home pretty late and after getting up at 4 to get ready to leave, I was totally ready to crash!  🙂  What a great day, though!!!