Our June Visitors

In June my parents, Sarah, Mike, Corey and Emily came to visit for a week.

I first have to say that since my dad has lost so much weight I had to keep staring at him to get the ‘new’ dad in my brain. So hopefully he didn’t think I was a weirdo.

Sarah and Mike came down the weekend before my parents came, which was so wonderful. Sarah helped me plan meals, clean, do all the grocery shopping, cook, and had all of these fun games planned that kept us all laughing and entertained the whole time. She and Mike had put together some Minute to Win it games. It was fun to see everyone’s personalities come out as you are under pressure to do something in under a minute.

We visited the Old Man’s Cave area, drove up to Kirtland and went to the churches visitors center, walked around the Kirtland temple, went to the John Johnson farm, the Morley farm, Newel K Whitney store, and more. Again, the spirit was so strong there. I love going to the church history sites and having a picture in my mind of all the places that are talked about in the D&C and in the church videos.

Of course we played a lot of Beatles Rock Band and Wii games. We also dedicated one night to a Christmas in June theme. I want to have ‘Christmas’ memories with my family even though we can’t visit Utah and family at Christmas time. I sent my family, besides Sarah and Mike, on a walk while we put up a few Christmas decorations and set out the KFC Troy and Mike had picked up for dinner.

When my family got back, besides being extremely hot (this was at the end of June) they were completely surprised. Liked mentioned above, we ate KFC for dinner, we had everyone grab what they could and wrap it for a White Elephant gift exchange, and then we had a ‘snowball fight’ with Troy’s rolled up socks. It was so much fun.

Andrew and Parker also had a few T-ball games and practices while my parents were here. My family would all cheer for them as they would catch a ball, or hit a ball, or just generally did anything worth cheering over. Parker just loved it and by the end of his practice was strutting around, doing victory dances, and living all of the attention up.

A couple of memorable moments were the following, in no particular order:

1. When we went to Old Man’s cave, there is a part of the trail that goes down some stairs into a tunnel. Parker wanted to be first to go through the tunnel, and didn’t want anyone to walk with him. So we were all at the top of the stairs watching him walk down into this dark tunnel. Suddenly he turned around with a terrified look on his face and ran back up the stairs. Out of a tunnel came a ‘vicious’ dog (about the size of a Chihuahua) with its owners. We were all trying to suppress our giggles until Parker said, “I wasn’t scared”.

2. During an intense session of RockBand, Sarah being the lead singer, in the moment of the song she threw the microphone to the ground before taking a bow. She then looked embarrassed and said, “I’m sorry. I thought I was Chris Rock for a minute.” I was then there to remind her that in fact, she was not Chris Rock.

3. It was my niece’s, Jamie, 1^st birthday during my families stay. As we were driving in the car to Jenie’s ice cream (Oh, so good!), my dad called my sister Kelly to leave a birthday message for Jamie. We all sang the birthday song and as it ended we all called out our birthday wishes. Then before my dad hung up the phone, Parker called out, “Who’s Jamie?”

4. Last but not least, I have gassy children at times, and I’m trying to teach them how to say excuse me if this gassiness happens in places other than the rest room. One of the boys had some gas, so I asked him, “What do you say?” To which he replied, “Thank you.” And to which Sarah quickly replied, “No, no. Thank you!”