Another Party Week

I see it has been just over two weeks since my last post, so I thought I better catch up on things here. We have just finished a week of "partying" with Andrew's birthday, my Grandpa Heward's 85th birthday celebration and having my family in town. With the kids in school we weren't able to do everything, but most evenings were spent doing some activity with the family.

Tuesday night we went to Orem for a barbecue at Mary & Frank's place. Tuesday was Andrew's actual birthday so he opened a few gifts that day and got a break from chores, but we had our family celebration on Wednesday evening.

Wednesday afternoon Mary dropped her kids off here to play & nap while she went to see the Joseph Smith movie with the rest of the family downtown. After the movie they all made their way over here for some dinner, cake & ice cream. Andrew got some fun gifts for his birthday and had a great time. He was disappointed to leave the party to go to football practice at 6:30. We waited for him to return and then watched his new movie "Suits on the Loose". It's a funny one. :-)

Thursday we were invited to go up to Grandma Eleanor's cabin, which is located up Big Cottonwood Canyon at Brighton ski resort. Andrew had to be left behind for football, so I just went with the three middle kids (Ashley, Alexia & Austyn). It was wonderful to get up out of the heat and smog of the valley and into the mountains. There were only a few sprinkles of rain and the temperature was wonderfully cool to sit out on the porch and eat dinner. The kids enjoyed a short little treasure hunt and found their "pirate's treasure" (a bag of stuffed animals) at the end of it.

Friday it was planned to go to the Weber County Fair and rodeo. We decided to let Andrew skip football practice to come along for this activity. The kids really enjoyed seeing so many animals up close. Ryan & Adalyn left early with Frank and his kids, while the rest of us stayed for the rodeo. It was dark by the time we left so the drive home was much cooler.

Saturday morning I wasn't up early, as I was trying to sleep off a stress headache. When I did get up I was scrambling to finish the sloppy joe that I was supposed to bring to my grandpa's birthday lunch. My brother Sam was able to stop by with his kids for a little visit before the party, which turned out to be a life saver since Ryan had taken the van and I would not have been able to fit all the kids in the car to get to the party. We made it to the party, pot of sloppy joe in hand, and only 20 minutes late. As that party ended, so did our week of partying. My family started their trip home to California and we came home and took naps.

Ryan will start back to work tomorrow, so today he is getting everything else done. (Running errands, dentist appointment, yard work, etc.) Hopefully it won't kill him to jump back into full time work after taking it easy for the last few weeks. I guess we'll just have to see how it goes.