For Spring Holiday from school today, the girls all invited friends over to play with. They had such a fun time playing, swimming (in the freeeeeeezing water), and even getting their hair done. This was a very fun day at our house.
Ashlyn played with her friend Kamrie. Katelyn played with her friend Becca. Lauryn played with her friend Macey. Lauryn and Macey could be twins with those hair do's and t-shirts! Amazing. Ashlyn and Kamrie did such a cute job on their hair!
These are some of the fish we adopted from my cousin's wedding reception. The Bride gave each child a glass fishbowl for wonderful dancing during the dance. So with lots of help, we managed to pack up these 3 fishbowls and haul them all the way across the valley as a gift for the girls. We were happy to see that all of the fish survived the trip. However, since we do not have a fish tank, we knew that eventually (and sooner than later) the fish would die. They only stayed alive for a few days and it was fun for the girls to "take care of them" during this short time. In the last picture, Brynlyn decided she wanted to hold one of the fish and promptly scooping her hand in the water to try and catch one. Long live the legacy of the goldfish...
Here are some fun pictures from my cousin Alan's wedding reception in Peoria last weekend. The top picture is Aunt Connie, my brother Mike who DJ'd the dance, my Grandma Ann, Katelyn, Lauryn, me, sister Janelle, Grandpa Anderson, brother Ricky and Barbie and Holly.
Here is Grandma Ann holding Holly. Brynlyn is named after this Grandma. Her name is Anna Anderson and Brynlyn Anna. Kindred spirits...
Here is Grandma and Grandpa hanging out with Holly. This is the first time they are meeting Holly.
We had the wonderful opportunity of going through the temple with Marlin and Chris Posvar and then being with their family and their children, Kyleigh, Zachary and Katelyn (baby boy due in September) as they were all sealed together. This was such a wonderful event for their family and it was our privilege to be with them during this time. They are dear friends of ours. We are so grateful for the temple and for the wonderful blessings that come from being worthy to attend.
Mike went up to the north country to scout out the location of our stake trek. He went with the Stake Young Mens Presidency, Treven Rawlins, John Bigler, and George Miller. Mike is the High Council member over the trek and so he has had the opportunity to plan this with the Young Men. They have done a fantastic job in their planning. It's going to be a wonderful stake trek in June. Mike and I are both going and so we are excited to have this opportunity.
Top pictures: the girls fell asleep watching TV and this is how they slept. It was so cute I had to grab my camera to capture the moment.
Then, on General Conference Sunday our good friends the Pickles invited us over for yummy french toast to start the day off right. The top picture is Lauryn and Brooke and the next picture is Katelyn, Ashlyn, and Camryn. It was so much fun and great food!
We had the most fun night tonight. About 4:00 p.m. this afternoon, our friend Stephen Brower called and said he had 6 extra tickets to "Disney on Ice: Finding Nemo." He was hoping we could take them so they wouldn't go to waste. Since we are HUGE Disney fans, we dropped what we were doing and said, "Absolutely!" We even took Brynlyn to her first event at the US Airways Arena. The show was so well done in true Disney fashion. My favorite part was the "Australian turtle." He's such a crack up, "Like, No way, Dude!" Brynlyn did fairly well. She didn't like being confined in the seat and wanted to move around, so we had to take her for the occasional walk, but then we could distract her for a moment or two with the fun music and lights from the show. The girls had a GREAT time and we are so glad we went. Thank you Stepen and Melinda, soooo much for a wonderful night. You guys are great!
These are some cute pictures of the cousins holding their new cousin Holly. Katelyn, then Lauryn, then Emilee got the chance to hold Holly for the first time. They were so excited and privileged to hold her. They were all very good at it and were very sweet and gentle with her. And she was a good sport to put up with them oogling over her.
So this is my sweetest new baby niece, Hollyn Nicole (Holly.) Her Mom Barbie is holding her (Ricky's wife). They are just loving every moment with their new baby. We have loved having her in our family so far. She's just the cutest thing!
A fun tradition we have is to do a Girls Birthday Lunch for Birthdays. We have so much fun, and laugh alot and wayyyy too loudly in a restaurant. We ate at Gecko Grill in Gilbert for this lunch. Yummmm...
Then following the lunch, I treated myself to a real day out and went to the salon for a pedicure. One of my favorite things about summer is wearing flip flops!!! And you can't wear flip flops without cute toes. So I try to go atleast once a month for a pamper and a pedicure. Aahhh...it's a good day...
I wish you could see the close up faces on these photos. They are full of a bunch of really, really tired and jetlagged people. We flew home through the night and arrived about 5:30 a.m. It was late or early or whatever...it was long and tiring. SO...we didn't have that super of an Easter Sunday, sadly. The Easter Bunny did come and so that was nice, but I was too tired to actually take any pictures of the occasion. hee hee We did some post Easter follow up so we could focus our thoughts on the meaning of Easter which is our Savior and his Atonement, which we are very grateful for. But as for this day, I think he would understand the jetlag...
We love to attend the Lahaina 1st Ward whenever we come to Maui. It was great to show the girls that the church really is the same no matter where you are in the world. We were amazed to see how full the church was, with about 50% of them being visitors. We were able to meet a really cute family from Alberta, Canada that had 4 boys about the same ages as our girls.
Hawaii is absolutely beautiful and we were so very lucky to take the girls over to Maui for Spring Break from March 15 through March 22. They really are tremendous little travelers, I was really proud of how well they did throughout this entire trip. They really appreciated the beauty of these islands and when it was time to go home, Katelyn cried and said, "But Mom, I want to live here!" Katelyn, I know exactly how you feel..... Aloha!
