Wedding road trip part three (Hooper Springs)

 Because keeping small (/medium/large) children entertained and happy and out of the way while the church cultural hall was transformed for the wedding reception sounded m-i-s-e-r-a-b-l-e, Grandma and Pops offered to lead an expedition into Soda Springs to check out some local attractions. We happily tagged along!

 First stop was to a grocery store for kool-aid and other supplies; we sent Chuck in and took pictures while he was gone :). Isn't my niece Courtney darling? I miss her.

 Then it was off to Hooper Springs (after discovering the cool local geyser was out of order. Lame.) As we drove through Soda Springs, I jokingly played the part of tour guide and pointed out funny things and made up 'fun facts' about houses and such.

And (unbeknownst to me) Courtney took pictures of everything I pointed out, hahaha! These were some of my favorites - the turquoise shade of one roof, the awesome gated area on another :). I love that we have this aspect of the trip recorded!

And then we pulled in to Hooper Springs Park:

 

 The first order of business was to dip our cups into the spring of natural soda water so everyone could have a taste of it in its original form.

 It basically tastes like tonic water and most of us spit it back out - some unfortunately back into the spring itself (cough, Mallory, cough, Will).

 Pops easily guzzled down a cup; he grew up on the stuff :). And we liked the sign that clarified it was for drinking, not swimming... hopefully everyone else who visits follows that rule!

 Thennnn things got delicious; Pops mixed the water with kool-aid for a slightly fizzy concoction that went over muuuuch better with me the kids.

 It's blurry, but I love Jack's little red kool-aid moustache.

 After a few more minutes of running around and kool-aid drinking time, we piled back into the van for the drive back to the church for the reception.

Such cute little apple slice eaters!

Wedding road trip part two (the wedding!)

Saturday we spent the morning running around the hotel grounds like we owned the place - back and forth to Grandma and Grandpa's 'house' meeting up with whatever other family wandered in and out; the boys had a great time. After lunch we drove to the church in Grace for the blessed event:

Rachel and Taylor's wedding! 

(pictures straight-up stolen from Jared's facebook. Thanks buddy!!)

The ceremony was so beautiful, even from my vantage point of off to the side, bouncing Jack on my hip :).

Then it was time for visiting, pictures, and a luncheon!

Jack threw one of his classic, on-the-floor-despondent fits about George's cookie, so his sweet cousin went and got him one of his own. Jack popped up off the floor (and into a chair) SO fast!

We realized that we had 10 out of 11 of Grandma Thomas' great-grandchildren in attendance, so we herded them all together for a picture:

(left to right): Clyde, Eli, Will, George, Lily, Bri, Grandma Thomas, Mallory holding Jack, and Courtney holding Raelyn. Just missing Anna.

It's fun to think about how big this group will grow in coming years - right now Chuck and his siblings contribute all but one of the great-grandkids, but I'm sure there are plenty to come from the Thomas cousins and Gray cousins!

At this point I let Courtney have the camera and get some awesome candid shots for me:

Cousin Nickie, cuuuute Clyde, Aunt Sue holding baby Raelyn, cousin Lehi and his wife Brei, and the gorgeous Rachel with her mom and aunt.

We still had a couple of hours before the reception, so a few of us packed up the kids for an adventure in nearby Soda Springs, but before we exposed the kids to water/dirt/etc, we sneaked into the primary room to get some quick pictures:

On the one hand, it's probably a little ridiculous that my boys' wedding attire is less formal than their regular Sunday attire, but they just look SO cute in shorts! And the crocs made the cut because packing them multiple pairs of shoes sounded like a lot of work ;).

Still to come: drinking water out of the ground in Soda Springs, the reception, and spending Sunday traipsing around Chuck's family's land in Thatcher...

Wedding road trip part one

A couple of weeks ago, we packed up into the van and headed to the wild, exotic openness of southeastern Idaho to be in attendance at the wedding of these two awesome people:

Chuck's darling cousin Rachel and her Taylor! Rachel is one of the 'Pennsylvania cousins' (although she's in Rexburg for school right now) that we don't get to see very often. We missed Lehi's wedding last summer in Portland, so we made it an extra priority to be able to be at this one - and we're so glad we did!

We left Friday late morning (despite our best intentions to leave Friday earlier-morning, you know how that goes) and were delighted to get to the hotel at the same time as Grandpa and the Blues. We sent Pops, Melissa, and Chuck inside to get us all checked in and the kiddos (and me...) had a fun reunion in the van!

Clyde and George were especially happy to see each other again :). Also, sometimes when I see pictures like that one in the bottom left, I understand why people (myself included) have a hard time telling Clyde and Will apart, hahaha! In the meantime, more and more family arrived (Great-Grandma Thomas, Aunt Sue, Cousin Nickie, etc) and we all congregated in the living room area of the little 'house' that Chuck's parents were staying in.

Once everyone was settled in, we walked down the block to the hot springs pools, wooo! This was the main draw for our hotel and the little town we stayed in - coincidentally called Lava Hot Springs :).

The kids were all in heaven - especially Jack, which surprised me. I stayed near the edge, but he happily went much further in with Chuck and loved it.

Next it was time to hold hands, walk the opposite way down the street a bit (love small towns!), and meet up with even more family for dinner.

We ended up taking over the banquet room of the local diner:

Top picture (in no particular order): Grandma Thomas, Mom and Pops (holding cousin Jared's sweet baby Raelyn), cousin Rebekah with her cousins, cousin Lehi and his wife Brei, cousin Jared and his wife Amanda, me and Chuck, our boys (in a booth corner), George (ditto), Courtney, Lily.

Bottom picture: the booth on the left is Aunt Gina's family - stepmom, dad, brother, brother-in-law, sister; Uncle Bill and Aunt Gina are at the table on the right, and then it's an overlap of the previous picture.

Whew! After dinner we went back to the hot springs for a little bit longer and then took our tiiiiired boys back to the hotel, where the two older boys fell asleep pretty quickly and Jack reminded us why our carefree road trip days ended so abruptly when he joined our family, haha. I sneaked out and let Chuck get him to sleep while I hung out with Courtney in their hotel room for a bit instead (thanks again honey!).

What the world needs now: love, [brotherly] love

Holy moly, it's been an intense few days for the country. I've never been to Boston and I've never run a marathon but Monday's bombings have remained pretty central in my mind and I've found myself closely following the news all week, even more so than usual. This was especially true today; I spent all morning/afternoon listening to NPR (in the car and then online) and all evening watching NBC (Brian Williams rarely fails to make me feel better). 

I too often avoid 'feel-good'/inspirational/emotional stories because I'm cynical and I don't like to cry, but tonight as I watched the citizens of Watertown applaud the law enforcement after 'suspect 2' was taken into custody and as I watched a story about a mother-daughter duo who were both seriously injured on Monday and are now recovering side-by-side in a hospital room and as I watched press conferences where law enforcement and government officials repeatedly lauded the cooperation and human spirit and bravery and determination and brother/sisterhood that have emerged as recurring themes in Boston and beyond, I absolutely got choked up. 

(And of course, that's not even mentioning the devastating factory fire/explosion in West, Texas that has left so many dead and injured there. So, so sad).

In an effort to distract myself and focus on the genuine goodness that can be found in life, I've spent some time the last couple of days compiling recent silly/sweet/darling pictures of my boys. And since they made me feel better, I figured they might make you feel better too:

I came out of my room one day to find all three boys congregated right outside my door. (We were having one of those days where they prefer not to get more than a foot or two away from me. Oh wait, that's every day.) I just love how much the older boys love and dote on Jack.

I don't know if I should laugh at these pictures or roll my eyes - apparently personal space boundaries don't exist when there's a screen (usually featuring Plants vs. Zombies) to be shared...

Sometimes I feel like the cuter my boys are dressed, the less photogenic they become.

OH, man. One evening [a tired/emotional/grumpy] Clyde got upset about something while I was taking care of Jack and stormed out of the room. When I came out a couple of minutes later, I couldn't find the child. Anywhere. Even after calling for him in my serious/I-mean-business/Mom voice... which is when I slightly started to panic. I did a really thorough look (I thought) of the whole house and was debating with myself whether he would have gone out front when I glanced again at the pile of blankets by the couch and realized they didn't look quite as flat as they usually do - so I pulled one back, and there he was: completely zonked out. PILL!

This darling photo set is from way back in January when Jackers learned how to give high fives.

This slightly less darling pictures is from last month when Jack learned how to put his toes in his mouth. He's building up quite the resume...

Of course, in order to keep up his strength in the midst of all that skill-developing, Jack relies on spinach smoothies, about 10% of which actually makes it into his mouth!

Exhibit A of how much Jack's older brothers love making him laugh: Clyde built this little blanket/pillow fortress for Jack and was rewarded with all sorts of cute giggles.

Exhibit B of how much Jack's older brothers love making him laugh: Will blowing raspberries on Jack's belly and likewise being rewarded with all sorts of cute giggles :).

I'm grateful for the perspective/distraction/amusement/unconditional love/pure joy that my little boys bring to me, especially when there are hard and sad and overwhelming situations in the world. And since I can't actually hug anyone in Boston or Texas today, I figure I'll give my boys an extra hug instead and keep praying for all of those who have been affected. 

Love, sweet love - it's the only thing that there's just too little of...

March on, March forth, March OUT

I don't even know what to say about March... but luckily I have forty-three (not really!) pictures to help me in the endeavor, which I have helpfully shlepped together in groupings for a little bit of organization.

A. OUTDOOR goodness: 

One of the best things about March was the lovely warm-ish weather! We happily opened windows and cleaned out the garage and brought out the bikes and spent lots and lots of time outside.

One of our Chuck's ongoing projects is to get Clyde to focus enough to ride his bike without training wheels. Bless his little Jedi heart, he just gets so caught up imagining things or pretending he's on a pod racer dodging... lasers?... that he forgets to keep his balance. Soooo we'll see what happens there.

 

 Clyde's enthusiasm for basketball hasn't waned in the post-season, but thanks to a ball from Grandpa Braden and a big white bucket (the poor boy's hoop) he's keeping his skills sharp.

 

 Jack's had a good time discovering the great outdoors... of the front yard. And also stealing other people's water bottles. But mostly just being cute!

 

 More fun. Clyde is finally old enough to be allowed to walk across the street to fetch errant balls, and sometimes Will gets to go with him provided they hold hands, haha.

 

 One day Jack just randomly pulled up his shirt, rubbed his belly and then pulled it down again. I just honestly can't get enough of how cute this kid is. Except in the middle of the night, then I can and do get enough of it....

 B. Kick-A babysitters:

I'm not entirely sure how my mom will feel about that label, but it makes me laugh sooo we'll go with it :). As I've referenced a couple of times now, March brought some difficult situations within our ward and a lot of opportunities for service. Chuck and I were grateful to be able to help out and a lot of that was due to my mom's and Cody's willingness to watch our kids several different days. 

This day I came home from attending a funeral and then helping at the luncheon to find my mom and the boys completely engrossed in the movie UP, which somehow Grandma Pam had never seen. Jackers was just happily wandering around the house, haha.

 Cody came over a few different Tuesdays and Thursdays so Chuck and/or I could help at an on-going service project and also help in Clyde's classroom. Cody took care of Will and Jack, got Will ready for preschool and on the bus, and even texted me cute pictures!!

One day the boys spent the afternoon at my mom's house and the ever-indulgent Grandma Pam helped them have a Teddy Bear Picnic - complete with ALL FIFTY BEARS that they could find in her house. She even had the actual book and record (!!) that they listened to as they gathered. 

 

 Okay, this wasn't a babysitting adventure, just a fun meet-up with Uncle Cody while we happened to be in Boise one day. Jack was pretty determined to climb up into the play structure, but very happily for me and my claustrophobia, he was unable to get past the first entryway.

 C. SCHOOL fun:

We had a meeting at Will's preschool early in the month to go over his IEP goals and progress and discuss his transition to kindergarten. We are so, so happy with how well he's done this year and we're so grateful for the preschool staff and especially his teacher and aide Ms. Brittany and Ms. Kim.

 This is Ms. Brittany's first year teaching and she's sooo wonderful. She's been so enthusiastic and fun while at the same time encouraging Will and pushing him to work through some of his issues. We love her!

 

 Clyde's school had a Literacy Night that we had fun attending, so we got a quick picture with Mrs. Blume. Clyde has done so well having two teachers this year; Mrs. Blume does the first half of the week. She's really kept Clyde on top of things with his reading and AR progress; he met his goal a while back and tried to use that as an excuse to slack off a bit (definitely my child!) so she challenged him to a new goal to get him motivated again :).

 

 Mrs. Holman was also there - in costume as Miss Viola Swamp from the Miss Nelson books. Awesome right?? Mrs. Holman teaches the second half of each week, and since Chuck and I go in on Thursdays or Fridays, I've gotten to know her well and it's been really fun. Clyde especially loves when it's her turn to be the playground duty during recess because she plays football with the kids.

 D. St. Patrick's DAY!:

 Okay, well the pictures on the left were actually from a date night the day before St. Patrick's Day but we managed to accidentally (well, on Chuck's part; I did it purposefully) coordinate with each other AND the holiday so it works. Our buddy Jared was in his high school's performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream and it was INCREDIBLE. So glad we went.

And the other pictures are from St. Patrick's Day of course. I may have been called a leprechaun at church a few times, which is most definitely what I was going for :).

E. the REST:

The boys did a little Saturday morning class at the Rec Center to bridge the gap between basketball and soccer. It was cute and the boys had loads of fun, but keeping Jack contained and entertained for an hour those mornings was pretty dreadful.

 We borrowed some McCall kids... okay, all five McCall kids... one day during Spring Break. All eight kids stayed very busy and happy - Star Wars battles, Avengers battles, coloring, swinging, play doh, video games, and a LONG walk followed by Otter Pops :).

Clyde's only request for Spring Break was to play RISK with Chuck, and it finally happened on Friday afternoon.

 I don't know who won... I think Chuck? Buuuut the point is they had a blast, which isn't a big surprise. That morning I asked Clyde what he would respond at school on Monday if someone asked what his favorite part of spring break was and he said, "RISK with Daddy." Before they'd actually played, mind you.

 And now, your reward for making it through that looooong recap of miscellaneous March moments is THIS:

 AHHH, sooo cute! You're welcome.

Girls' night/s/afternoon

 I'm a big believer in the importance of 'girl time' and its necessity for my personal sanity, and luckily Chuck is likewise a believer :). And March brought a few different opportunities to sneak away from my [cute/smelly/crazy] boys:

 Starting with a girls' night to celebrate Paulina's birthday! We opted for the traditional Shari's where we paired off to share pie shakes - Paulina and I got a sour cream lemon shake and it was a-mazing (minus the part where I almost swallowed a huge chunk of lemon because I thought Paulina had - long story...). As always, we laughed and talked and laughed some more and unlike always, we were treated to an awesome musical performance by the drama kids from Columbia High who were celebrating the end of their run of "Grease".

Some more girl time came a couple of weeks later at Tami's baby shower! Grace and Cassandra co-hosted the party, and it was super cute/fun/delicious; I'm craving the caramel popcorn sooo much right now as I look at the picture!!

And Holly and Ella came! With me, actually, which meant an hour of talking in the car to and from Nampa... and another forty-five minutes parked outside their house, haha. I just really love my Holly time.

And whenever I curse the unfair nature of calories being so easy to consume and SO hard to burn, I just remember that it allows me to have a girls' night four times a week - aka running!!

This is our core group of me, Paulina, and Kautri - we've been at it the longest (two months, wooo!) but we've added a lot of other awesome girls into the mix over the last few weeks. Kara, Emily, Nicole, Kristen, Jessica, Nycole, Tasha, and Lara have all come (some just once or twice, others more frequently) and it's so fun to have a rotating group each night. We're up to three miles, which is SO amazing to me - such a testament to the power of positive peer pressure, on my own I'm hard-pressed to do 2 miles! I still always want to quit right at the beginning, but then we start talking or listening to Kautri's music or some guys whistle at us or I mistake a cow for a horse and before I know it, we're back at my house and I can mostly still feel my legs :).

Finally, I couldn't survive without my BFSC's Courtney and Heidi. My ongoing email conversations with each of them, fun texts, and loooong phone calls are so wonderful and important to me.

                   (picture unremorsefully stolen from Court's blog).
Love you both. Buckets and buckets.

Yay for girl time!

Easter

Family picture after church:

(you probably wouldn't guess this from the stellar quality, but this picture is courtesy of the self-timer on the camera and the [uneven] hood of the van...)

It was Easter recently! And since I am an 'Easter Grinch' (Chuck's words, haha), my dear husband took it upon himself to rally the troops for some egg dyeing the day before:

 He even did the necessary hard boiling of said eggs. Oh, funny story: we obviously had the boys strip down to just their shorts for the festivity, so when I came to sit down Will asked if I wanted to dye eggs too. When I said yes, he instructed, "Okay, Mom, take off you shirt!" (Don't worry, I didn't.)

 Easter itself was really nice; the boys got special pictures of the temple for their rooms (special = I tried my hand at modpodge and managed not to do well with it, despite everyone saying how easy it is to use...) and then we went to church and then came home and did a little Easter Egg hunt before going over to my mom's house and having another one.

The boys also helped my mom decorate her traditional Easter cupcakes (my favorite!!) for her visiting teachees and her students. Cody sneaked a couple, which he totally deserved since he spoke in sacrament meeting that morning to very moved/touched/appreciative/rave reviews.

I love these pictures - Jack was VERY frustrated at having cupcakes so close but unattainable. In the first picture, Cody starts to smile at Jack's pouty face, but in the second one Jack has progressed to almost crying and Cody has progressed to his normal 'uncle' face, which basically says, "Oh no, I'm so sorry, please don't cry, I'll do anything, really, anything, do you want a cupcake? I'll give you one! I'll give you five! Don't cry, little nephew!!" Haha, love it :).

Quick last shot of my cute pastel-clad boys. Despite Chuck's teasing, I really do love Easter. When I look at my sons and think about what things I want to teach them, the incredible message of the Atonement and the Resurrection is at the top of the list. I don't harbor any illusions that my children are perfect or will never make mistakes in their lives; they certainly will. And that's okay. That's why we're here, to gain a body and experiences and be tested and try every day to be better. And the atoning sacrifice of the Savior and His Resurrection allows us to do all of that. Easter is such a beautiful day of hope and promise and love and peace and comfort; no matter what we're going through or facing, Jesus has gone through it and faced it and triumphed and He will help us do the same. 

As I said, Cody spoke in church that morning. I wasn't able to be there, but I read it afterwards and wanted to share this particular excerpt:

Even when my faith has been at its lowest ebb, I have nearly always had a desire to believe, barring a few times when I had hardened my heart. I testify that in the absence of all else, if we have but a desire to believe, that it is enough to cling to and build on, and that if we continue to strive, asking God’s help, it doesn’t matter how many times we stumble, we are promised that the rest will come.(Cody Braden, 3/31/13)

Good stuff. Happy [belated] Easter!