Nauvoo

We've had almost a full 2 years with some of our best friends the Norris's here at FLW. We finally pulled off our Nauvoo trip that we scheduled and rescheduled for 2 months. It was beautiful and so much fun to go back with our kids. They weren't quite old enough to sit through the presentations but we still had a blast!

Outside the cultural hall and bakery. The cultural hall performance was our favorite event. All the senior couples put on an awesome show for the kids. Hannah is still quoting lines from it.

At the end of the first day. David was tired from leaving early. And this is so Hannah with a hand full of flowers snuggling.

Sweet Aileen was the best little babysitter all weekend!

Rope Making in the family living center.

I was ridiculously excited to take this picture. Lucy and her namesake's house.

We went to the temple before we headed to Carthage Jail and it was way colder than we thought. We all under dressed so David snuggled Lucy.

We had so much fun with the Norris Family and visiting church history sites.

Family!

One night I was talking to Mandy on the phone at 9pm when Taps was playing outside on the speakers like it does every night. I went outside so she could hear and then she said "Aw I want to visit and experience the post!" I knew I could appeal to her patriotic side and begged her to come. She checked flights on a Allegiant and somehow convinced Jason that a trip was in order. They bought tickets the next day and they were here 3 weeks later! When our family heard the Hafen clan (party of 6) were coming to stay for 10 days they thought we would be on edge from living on top of each other for so long. I'm happy to report that this house was easily big enough to entertain 8 kids and 4 adults and we had a blast.

 

Cousins! As soon as they arrived Ben and Emily walked up with their kids. This is the picture we sent to my parents and said, "Wish you were here!" It was like a mini Ashton reunion with 3 couples and 11 kids playing together. I just realized with 3 kids and their respective families this would have been a complete sibling reunion for most families.

Since Ben was barely home from deployment he had lots of time during the work days to come hang out with all of us. If you click on the picture you can see that's Ashton circled in red. The text says, "this is my son who is afraid to ride on splash mountain." Because he is afraid of most stuff I gladly encouraged his climb. Then I panicked when he got about 30 feet up and told him to come right back down.

And boy did we cook and bake. It seems there was a never ending supply of cinnamon rolls and cookies coming out of the oven.  I would cook and Mandy would follow me around doing all the dishes. I've decided I could make awesome meals every single night for 12 if I have a dish washer. It was an awesome combo!

We only had one rainy day/muggy so we took the kids to the museum.

The Hafens and Jacobsons lined up in age order. The kids are almost all born within the same year and they are exactly opposite genders.

Outside of the museum.

This was a classic. Ben decided to entertain the kids by knocking off the little furry balls off our tree. The kids kept saying it was raining furries.

Ashton was in heaven to have Jack and Kimball his buddies over for a week and a half!

And this picture of Mallie is on the couch is from the day we tried to skip naps so the babysitters could put them to bed early and we could all go out and let Ben treat us to dinner.

We had lots of trips to the pool, parks, celebrating birthdays and family dinner. It was a great 10 days. We played so many games and tore up our hands playing Egyptian Rat Screw. Mallie woke up on Tuesday morning and asked where everyone was. Apparently 10 days is long enough to convince a 2 year old that someone has officially moved in. Thanks for coming to our neck of the woods Hafens!

Easter 2013

I walked around for almost the entire month of March thinking Easter was on March 24th. So last Thursday when I realized Easter wasn't happening in 2 days I relaxed big time and as a result our normal Easter traditions were thrown together hastily. We went to St. Louis to go to the temple on Saturday just like we did last year. As always it was a perfect start to our Easter weekend. While we were there I realized that I still hadn't gotten Easter dresses for the girls. Thank you Costco for carrying the Hannah Anderson line for so very cheap... so throwing dresses into a cart with strawberries and meat I felt like I was going to pull things off after all. Then on the way home I ran into the commissary throwing a few bags of candy in my cart for a hunt and looked around at the slim pickings for a basket and decided to skip baskets this year. We kept it simple and it was wonderful. The kids and I watched Finding Faith in Chris before church while David did his hometeaching. I fast forwarded to all the miracles and the kids were very into it. On holidays it makes me thinking 1 o'clock church isn't so bad at all. We even took pictures out front and weren't late.

 

This picture makes me melt with happiness. I love these 4 little ones. Sometimes I can't believe they're all my offspring.

We couldn't figure out where to set the timer to get a group shot so David and I used Lucy to prove that we're still part of the fam.

I love her little ears. She doesn't have much hair so the ears compensate giving her serious spunk.

This is my one picture of the Easter hunt. Remember how I said I was underprepared for the day? Well, had a grill full of London Broil (enough to feed 20) when our propane ran out. So I took the steaks down the street to Ben and Emily's only to realize I was not skilled enough to light the grill with a paper towel like Ben and he wasn't home yet. So I unhooked their tank and brought it home. I'm so glad to live next to family who believe in the law of consecration and don't think twice about me walking away with their stuff. We color coded the egg hunt this year. It was a success.

The kids shoved as much candy in their mouths as they could in ten minutes before we took it all away and got the house ready for dinner.

We had a big pot luck and lots of friends over. It was amazing. The Lopez kids played with all the little kids outside and we actually had 9 adults sitting around the table for an entire hour by ourselves with almost no interruption. It was awesome.

We didn't dye eggs again this year because I am a slacker and don't even like hard boiled eggs but one tradition that lived on was the bunny cake. I couldn't get any of my kids to stop playing to come over for a picture so I was glad I caught James swiping a jelly bean. As I looked around the table on Sunday at the mix of friends some without their wives and children and the Lopez family with a deployed Dad and thought there is nowhere else I'd rather be. This is an incredible area to be apart of. It was definitely a Happy Easter!