A Surprise Visit, Finally a Date, and a Blessing

This last week had a few good days of enjoyable weather and the other days consisted of a cold north wind that made it pretty miserable for getting anything outside of the indoors done. One highlight of the week was having my dear friends (practically family), Ty, Kaly, Raleigh, and Kysa Shippen blow in on Thursday night and stay over during their spring break California return trip. The kids enjoyed playing together and I enjoyed Ty and Kaly's visit as well as them getting to meet and know Adam more. Kaly had made it to our wedding and when I visited them two summers ago Adam was unable to come with me due to work, so it was good to finally have Adam and Ty meet. Ty gifted a Skyline Grizzlies basketball shirt to Adam as we found out that to be the name of Ty's b-ball team name in Idaho where he coaches and Adam's company name for roofing. All in all it was great to meet up even though it was short. Saturday Adam and I were finally able to get away for a few hours on a date since our last lousy excuse for a date was to Stake conference and then who knows before that time. Yes, we don't make time enough to spend just the two of us together. We tried to go to a friend's basketball game over in St. George, but showed up at the time he told us only to find out that it was all over having started two hours earlier than informed. I told Adam I wanted to see what this new store 'Shoe Carnival' had to offer the area and so we went there and it just so happened that they were having their Grand Opening so we splurged and purchased a new pair of basketball shoes for Adam as he has had his current ones for three years and they are pretty worn (these new ones have a little higher support for his ankles as he managed to sprang them both last month). He has also worn holes in his work shoes and so he can now switch the old basketball shoes to semi new work ones. We then took advantage of the buy one get one half off and purchased a pair of running shoes for me. They didn't really have women's basketball shoes in and so I'm just going to keep my current shoes for the court and use these new ones for outside since the current ones I have can't be worn very long when just walking since the heels are worn to the plastic frame and give my heels blisters. So it was a productive date. Sunday I went to choir practice in the morning and then we headed to Enterprise for Canon's blessing (Adam's niece Anna is holding him in the pic). There was a good family turnout as Adam had a few siblings in town with their families for butchering their pigs. (The third pic is of Emily, Erika, Tyson, and Samuel sitting on this cute little furniture that Monterrey has and the fourth pic is of Savannah with Sophia as she had bought the Jordan outfit for Soph on sale and it was too cute especially when Soph gives you the peace sign whenever you say, "Say Cheese". That's the connection she has made with taking pictures).

The Projects & Linoln's 11 months

I decided to show some of the projects that I helped my sister-in-law Heidi accomplish at her house. This first one has Emily, Erika, Lizzy, & Tyson posing on the bed where Heidi made the quilt and we made the time to put up a wallpaper mural that Stuart had wanted/purchased 2 1/2 yrs ago. I had never wall papered before, so this was a first for me. It had 8 panels that we strategically put together and in my opinion we did pretty good. It was an added bonus that Heidi knew how wallpapering was suppose to be done too. This is also the room that Adam and I stayed in when we lived with them (a very different room now). This next one is of the kids in front of the World Atlas mural that we put up this last Wednesday. We liked this one quite a bit more because it only had 3 long panels and seemed to be a better quality which made it easier and did not take us nearly as long to put up. It was a little tricky trying to get letters and lines to match up, but it worked out pretty good in my opinion. Heidi had purchased this one for Stuart a little over 3 years ago and it felt good to be able to help her get these two projects done. She told me how my mother-in-law, Phyllis, had one in each of her homes so that her children could learn where states and countries were located. The kids would spend hours in front of the wall mural pointing out places. I appreciated learning this bit of information from Heidi because it explained why Adam and his brothers have such an infatuation with maps. If you ever want to provide some kind of entertainment for them just pull out a map and you are good to go (don't do it if you want any attention though :) So this last picture is of Lincoln sitting on the pool table, which is mostly why I took out the camera because he is in his 11th month of life and doing great. He has his bottom two teeth in and the two side top incisors working their way out along with the front ones. He continues to pull himself up and stand anywhere he can, so we know he'll be venturing towards the walking soon. He greatly dislikes it when his dad leaves for work early in the morning (yes, he is up then), and cries his eyes out until I get up and distract him with breakfast. Adam is greatly loved by his boys as a few days ago Adam was playing in a church b-ball game and as we arrived early he went to take Tyson out to the hall so they could bounce the ball around and when Lincoln saw that he started crawling after Adam and yelping at him. Adam has his hands full with excited, loving boys. Linky also loves his brother Tyson. Earlier this week he was up before Tyson and decided after playing with mom for a while that it was time for Tyson to get up and he crawled down the hall to my bedroom door and started banging on the door while yelling who knows what. He got what he wanted. We sure do love this boy.

Accident Prone

So last week ended with quite the accidents. Adam has been helping a friend of the family frame his house and earlier in the week he managed to pull the trigger on a nail gun only to find it having shot through the side of the board straight down to have stopped at the bone on the top of his foot (no picture) and then on Thursday he was framing again and will tell the story as "WE" forgetting to nail down a board and I will politely interrupt to make sure that he truthfully tells the story as "HIM" forgetting and the board falling down and hitting him on the head inflicting a nice gash that exposed alot of blood to which that night he begged me to pick off the mound of scabbed blood so that he could go shower without having to worry about it opening up again...not an enjoyable chore for me (shown in picture). He finished off Saturday night spraining his other ankle and almost staying home for church, however managing to get some movement after some help to the bathroom and getting a shower. Then there is Tyson, who while we were helping my sister-in-law Shelley clean and unpack in their new house he decided to try climbing up their shelving in their closet and we think that one of the shelves slipped out and wacked him in the nose splitting open a couple of gashes. And then there is Lincoln who while trying to crawl to me from our bathroom to the closet he lost his grip and wacked his forehead on the tile floor (shown in the duo walker picture which I turned around today and found Tyson having invaded Lincoln's space- love my boys). I came away from the week without a nail, sprain, cut, bruise, or scratch. Feeling pretty lucky!