Sisters Visit

Every since my sister Trista moved up to Salt Lake City we haven’t seen her much. Admittedly, we don’t travel up there very often but the net result is that we don’t see her as much as we want.

As fate would have it, Trista had a friend getting married and various aspects of that celebration were occurring here in the area so we were able to have her come over to visit. When we first found out she was going to be here we wanted to have a whole party. But the people we wanted to invite (several single adults) were otherwise previously engaged (in other activities). So we invited another sister (Larisa) to come over and we just had a chance to visit.

It was great to have them over. We did go bowling (on the Wii). This game belongs to Michelle, who completely dominated the game and scored a personal best 213! (Yes, she definitely broke 100.)

Michael's Birthday Party

This was Michael's 3 year old birthday party.  We had our good neighbors the Simmons and the Johnsons over to celebrate.  Also in attendance was Uncle Kyle, Grandma Jones, and Aunts Trista & Larisa.

Michael ask for a special birthday cake and wanted Lady Bugs!  So Michelle created the Lady Bug cake.  It turned out very well.

He was very pleased with his cake and was excited for all of the attention. (This is still one of Michelle's favorite birthday cake creations.)

Michael got some fun presents and little help from his brothers to open them.

(finally posted 8/3/14)

BYU Living Legends Concert

Friday night Michelle and got to go on a date to see the BYU Living Legends concert on BYU campus (at the De Jong Concert Hall). We owed Aunt Cheyenne a great big THANK YOU! She had amazing seats but her plans for attending the concert a second time fell through. She called me up and offered us her tickets AND was willing to babysit for us so that we could attend the concert.

While it may take me a little while to catch on to some things I didn't need help recognizing this fantastic opportunity. So I quickly agree to her proposal. We were running exactly on schedule, okay maybe slightly behind, but I picked Cheyenne up and brought her to our house. She came in, kicked Michelle out the door and we were off.

Aunt Trista is one of the members of the Living Legends this year and so is our friend Jacob Uda. So we were pretty excited to see them in action. I was certainly impressed with the performance. I can see how this group is an amazing missionary tool as they perform all over the US. It was also fun to see Grandma & Grandpa Jones and Larissa there too.

So in the end I got a fabulous evening with my wife. The kids got put to bed and I didn't have to do it. It was enjoyable to watch a fantastic concert. And we were able to rejoice with my sister as she did a wonderful job performing.

FHE with the Family

What a shock and surprise when I got a call from Darius, not that the call itself was a surprise but the fact that he was in town! Since he move to Oregon, I didn't expect to see him until...well I don't know when I expected to see him next. But he was in town for some business and had brought his family with him. He thought it would be great to get the family together on Monday night for games and just a chance to see each other. And so the planning began.

I don't think the planning went much beyond that simple idea of getting together sometime on Monday evening. So Monday evening after eatting dinner we loaded the kids in the car, grabbed a few simple games and headed over to Grandma Jones' house. Darius and Kristen were already there and were just fixing dinner for their family. Autumn had also arrived however Eric had other obligations. Before we left for the night we had Tatiana & Leo, Trista, and Cheyenne there as well (of course Larissa was there as was Grandma & Grandpa Jones).

Michelle, Darius and I got in a single game of Rack-O and the kids played Candyland. Mostly this visit was chatting with each other and just catching up on the last few weeks. We would have loved to stay longer but we had already passed the boys bedtime and they were starting to show signs of fatigue. It was certainly great to see everyone and hopefully we'll get together before the next sibling makes a surprise visit.

End of the Semester Game Night

We had a fun party to celebrate the end of the school semester. Obviously we are not in school so it was just an excuse to get together with my sister (Trista) and her boyfriend and with Michelle's brother (Kyle). Trista brought her friend Jean to even things out.

We played several games including Hookie 6, Scum and Uno. While I was heavily favored to win, somehow Trista seemed to dominate the Scum game as reigning President. I did edge out a marginal victory in Hookie 6 and I think everyone had a chance to win in Uno. It was a fun gaming night. We played games until past midnight. At that point we decided to let our friends go home as they were getting exceedingly tired and blamed their poor gaming on the time of night. We're hoping they can recover quickly and come back for a rematch or even a new set of games.

Birthday Surprise For Aunt Trista

My sister just had her birthday this week. Her boyfriend (Mike) tried to call me a couple of times this week. After a little phone tag we finally connected and he began to lay out his grand scheme of surprising Trista for her birthday. As circumstances would have it, her birthday fell on a Thursday, after she would be finishing a long shift at the hospital. So Mike's ideas was to have a surprise party on Friday instead.

We thought it would be a great idea except that the party was scheduled to start after their date ended, around 8:30 pm or so. Since our boys go to bed at 8:00 pm that posed a little problem for us to attend at Autumn's house. So, with a little texted messaging, we arranged to host the party at our house.

Then on Thursday evening I get another call from Mike. He wants me to call up my sister and "set the stage" by asking her if I could ask Mike to come over tomorrow (Friday) to help me move something. Then he would have an excuse to come over and bring the cake. Then he would say that he forgot his coat and would come by and "pick it up" and SURPRISE, there would a party all ready to go. He gave me specific instructions as to when to call Trista, what to say and everything. So I played along.

When I called Trista that night I wished her Happy Birthday. We talked about her day at the hospital and how she wasn't doing anything special that night (all by Mike's design but unbeknownst to Trista). I asked the appropriate questions and Mike happened to be there too so I talked with him. We even went through a whole dialogue for Trista's benefit. And we were ready to go.

Friday evening we're told that Mom was expected at 8:15 so that if she arrived late she'd still be on time. Larrisa was on the ball and got mom out of the door in order to make it at 8:00, right on time! Well they were the first to arrive so the go to help decorate. Cheyenne managed to make it just before 8:30 and help put the finishing touches on the preparations. Then we got "the phone call" asking if Mike could stop by and pick up the coat he had left earlier that day (he had never actually come over at any time). Of course we were still up and thought that would be just fine.

The plan went perfectly! Apparently the day had some interesting weirdness to it, none of which had anything to do with us so we found out about it later but it sounded quite fascinating.

It was great. Trista is so good natured that she loved the fact that everyone had worked so hard to have this party for her. We were set to play games and have cake & ice cream. In the end, reliving the day and the subtleties of the plot won center stage. Trista was certainly impressed with the great effort put forth in her behalf. A few more of her friends arrived and we talked a lot, were entertained a little and laughed the most.

In the end we just wanted to wish Trista a happy birthday. I'm impressed that Mike coordinated this great effort with our family, especially since I've only met Mike on one other occasion. It was great.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TRISTA!

Farewell Party for the Joneses...Good Luck in Oregon!

Saturday night we had a farewell party for the Joneses (my brother Darius and his family). They are leaving our fair state and headed to the great north-west, to Oregon. They have been talking about this move for some time but it has finally become reality and we are sad to see them go. Before they left town we wanted to get together a final time (for a while). We decided to have a weenie roast & pot luck dinner followed by some games.

The weather was perfect, hardly a breeze, clear skies, cool air and fall colors in the trees. In spite of these perfect conditions (and because we had just had hot dogs on Wednesday) we decided to cook up some hamburgers on the new grill. Michelle has been using her new (early Christmas present) grill for bottling our chicken meat; we've beat our poor stove into the ground trying to bottle our pears, peaches, grape juice, etc...the stove was not designed for bottling and canning; so we invested in a 3 burner grill to handle to intense heat from the bottling and set it up in the garage.

We have now discovered that the garage is a great place for bottling but not a great place for cooking, smoking, BBQ-ing, or anything else the will produce smoke!

We had the family start to arrive around 5:00 pm, around the same time we started the fire. Darius and Kristen (along with Morgan and Olivia) were the first to arrive, followed closely by Trista, Cheyenne, Larissa and Mike (Trista's new boyfriend).

Larissa wasted no time jumping into the social circles of conversation...through text messaging with...well no, it wasn't with us!

Aleky spent a lot of time hanging out by the fire, in his high chair. For the most part he was content but he was quite excited when the food started showing up on the tables. His first course was...bread.

Despite our incredible success with roasting hot dogs 3 nights previous, the boys acted like it was torture to eat a hot dog this time. They were okay with the jell-o and definite approved of the Cheetos and potato chips but hot dogs we "so yesterday" and they would have nothing to do with them.


We've heard rumors about the guy named Mike from Georgia that Trista has been dating for a couple month now. We were quite excited to finally meet him. While he claims to be from the south I strained to pick up any hint of the true southern accent; if it wasn't for the fact that they met through his sister who lives in Georgia I might have to wonder! But over-all he seems like a very cool guy.
While Cheyenne tries to appear like an innocent college freshman we know that she's anything but innocent. After bathing the boys and putting them to bed we played the game "Cranium." Cheyenne was on the team with Trista and Mike and it was obvious that they were in cahoots and had played the game before.

Larissa took some time off the text messaging to join teams with Darius and Kristen. Don't let 'em fool ya, they are good at this game as well. I think someone forgot to remind them about proper gaming etiquette at our home...we are supposed to ALWAYS win. As it turns out we ended in 3rd place of the 3 teams! I don't supposed that had anything to do with poor luck, no TV knowledge and limited exposure to this game?

It was quite an enjoyable evening and we were sorry that it had to end. We called the game just after 11:00 pm when Morgan's energy finally ran out and she was too tired to carry on. We had a lot of laughs, sometimes a little too loud (somehow our boys slept through it all!) but an enjoyable evening never-the-less.

We are going to miss the Joneses as they head off to Oregon for new opportunities. They have been wonderful friends and great family. We wish them the very best as they begin this next chapter in their lives. And we hope to stay in touch and up to date with each excited new adventure that they have! Good luck guys...hope to see you soon!