St. George

Excerpts from another great letter Manon wrote to Dan....

I think your mom told you that we all went to St. George. It was fun but she left out some of the funniest details. I guess she did tell you about the bike thing that was totally crappy. So some of the fun or funny things were:

Entertainment of Leiden.- the first day we were there Dad took us on a tour of the facilities and on the way we found I gigantic stink bug. Everyone was so entertained watching Leidy talk and look at the bug. As we walked away she kept saying bye buggie, bye buggie.

Sleeping arrangements – Sara wanted to make a deal with Rob. She wanted to sleep on the pull out (probably because Dad just got done saying how it was the coveted bed and you got it a lot of the time) and have Jenn sleep on the sofa. Then Rob could have a room all to himself. Needless to say Jenn wasn’t having that.

Hand Pong – They made you buy the ping pong balls and check out the paddle from the club house which is a ways away from the games so Jake came up with a new game where you play with your palms instead of paddles. There were a few rule alterations but we had a competition with Rob and Jenn. It was a tight match but we came out victorious.

Kiddy Pool – We bought Leidy a new swim suit that has a built in floater. She looks kind of like the Hulk when she wears it only it’s pink. Anyway the kiddy pool is only 2 feet deep so she was just bobbing around like crazy.

Now it’s back to real life I guess.

Attached?

I know it happens to all of us. You get some "thing" that your like or that has sentimental value to you for some reason and you hang on to it way past it's useful life. In my family it's more then just a fear of letting go - it's a downright syndrome. My Grandma Irene was the first I knew who really showed how bad this attached syndrome could be. When she died her house was stacked floor to ceiling with what must have been every paper she ever received. Magazines, Notes, Newspapers, there literally was just a path between the mess from her front door to the bathroom then another path to the kitchen. It was outrageous.

Then there is me. When Manon and I got married I had boxes and boxes of momentos. Manon was nice enough to find ways to help me overcome my problem. She even made me take pictures with my momentos before throwing them away. Everything from old Far Side Calendars to an old cast (that one really grossed Manon out).

Then there is my Grandpa. A picture says a thousand words so enjoy this picture of his daily sitter for the past 30+ years....

The BBQ

Jake and Dad went up to the old house in Sandy this morning (Saturday) to pick up the BBQ and remove the tree that was planted in honor of Grandpa Nye. Jake said your mom was laying the pressure on big time to ask where the tether ball because they didn’t get it when they got the poll. Both Dad and Jake felt too stupid to really ask for it back after over 2 years. Ha ha! Oh that is funny, lol. We are going to have a BBQ tonight with the newly recovered BBQ. Your Mom and Dad took Jake and I to Café Rio last night with a gift card your mom won. I finally found something I like there. So that was awesome. While we were eating your dad said that he wanted someone to plan a party for him next weekend. He said I will just do it myself if no one will take charge for me. We all asked why do think you deserve a party? And he reminded us that he is going to bike ride a marathon. I thought that was a good enough reason for a party so I volunteered.

A while ago Jenn made Leiden a little book about Leiden for Leiden and it has a photo of you in it. We read it just about every night lately and I always ask her, who is that? She says Dan and then sometimes you get a kiss. It’s super funny. Tomorrow your family is going up to grandpas again maybe we will go too.
We didn’t go to grandpas but we did have that BBQ. Dad went grocery shopping for it so we were missing a few things like cheese for the burgers, ketcup, drinks. Your dad did get a new tether ball though.


Today we went to the Icecream place to pick up 3,000 ice creams for the BYU party thing (I think I told you about that) but in case I didn’t. We got a referral from our friend that owns ICECREAMMAN.com. He was asked to do an event for BYU but was not going to be able to so he recommended us. We charged then cost for ice cream and then a flat fee on top of that to have us come out. So anyway we bought a new freezer thinking that might fit the ice cream but we were wrong. We picked up half the order and both freezers were full all the way. Jake ran to a neighbors to borrow another chest freezer to fit the rest of the spidermans.

The party is Tuesday night from 7-11:30 or something so Jake figured we are going to have to hand out 1 ice cream every 4 seconds. We are scrambling today for helpers because we don’t know if we can give out that much ice cream just the two of us. Where are you when we need you?

Anit-MormAn?

For those of you who can't quite read this sign I saw at General Conference Priesthood session it reads "Official Anti-Morman Literature". Oh the irony.

Conference Weekend

The following is taken from a letter Manon wrote to Dan.

So last week we had some fun. Jake and I had part of the day off on Friday so we invited your family to go Disc Golfing. Jenn, Rob, Dad, Sarah, Leiden, Jake and I went to the Taylorsville course. Jenn didn’t want to play so she and Leiden just walked around the park. Your dad came armed with two new discs and “Special Gloves” he’s always taunting me and trying to get a rise out of my competitiveness. So I was really going to let him have it right out of the gate for this seasons golfing. I was throwing awesome. No one put their disc into the stream so that was disappointing. I guess we need you for that to happen. At the last basket we made a deal like we always do. Right after we were going to have nitty gritty dinner so I proposed that the winner of just that basket gets to change an item from the 2nd course with any one of the loosers. My goal was to get your dads second course to be water, a fork and a knife. I was really psyching your dad out I guess because he put it over that fence twice. It was so so funny.

The meal was super messy and I ended up not trading with anyone on the 2nd course because I liked what I got. Oh, I guess I forgot to say that I won the disc golf with zero handicap. I even beat Jake by a stroke. I was on fire. The meal was fun as always. Your mom tried a new recipe that no one really like called chilled blueberry soup. Sarah was in charge of bringing people their courses but she wasn’t so good at monitoring people’s silverware so I had to keep my eye out for cheaters. One of the funny things was that Sarah got to choose the order of who got their food. Jake pointed out that she was choosing the order according to who she liked, so of course Jess was at the top Jake was somewhere in the middle and I was second to last followed only by Jess’s friend Melissa. I have made it a goal to move myself up in the ranks. Jake said it was going to take at least a year, but I think I am moving up way faster than expected. It’s funny to see how quickly you can change her mind into thinking your cool.

We had a guest this weekend that was kind of fun. It was one of Jakes employees named Mike.
Conference was way fun at your parents’ house. Your dad had printed off these little kids play packets that went along with conference and one of the things was a word bingo. So all the kids listened downstairs and were really intense about the bingo. We all had cheating barriers up and little mints to mark our progress. There were prizes for the winner and of course I was the first to get bingo and then we went for black out but the dang speakers wouldn’t say Hymns or a few other words so no one won that. Jenn was in charge of handing out the prizes and she did an awesome job of finding cool prizes. I won a wind up swimming toy and a Reeses candy bar.

That’s if for now, hopefully I will have some fun things to tell you about this next week because we are going to BYU with the Pirate Bus to give out ice cream to 6,000 students.

Cruising

The following post is from an awesome letter Manon wrote to Dan. I thought I'd post it here because it has some great stories:

So we just got back from a sweet vacation with the Kennards. They invited us to go on a 3 day cruise with them to the Bahamas. We left Leiden with our parents and she had so much fun. We have some crazy miracles happen on our vacation.

The papers we got said the cruise check in was between 1 and 4 pm so we go off the plane and decided it would be cheaper to rent a car for the 4 of us to ride to the cruise place. Well our plane was late and the Kennards plane was an hour late so I was freaking out. It was 3 when they got in the car and we had an hour drive to drop the car off and then we had to catch a shuttle from the rental place to the ship. I called the rental place while we were on the road and told them of our predicament and they were nice enough to offer to drive us in the car we rented right to the ship. When we go there it was about 4:10 pm and the gates were locked. There were police guarding the dates and not letting anyone in that came after 4. I almost started to cry but decided to fight instead. (not physically but verbally although I wanted to punch the guards) I just couldn’t imagine myself standing there watching that ship pull away with out us on it. Luckily there were a few other people there with the same problem so we all fought and fought till finally we got them to call the captain. They captains response to the officers was “Tell those people they have 5 minutes to get up here” Most of the people had their cars with them so they were freaking trying to figure out what to do and some decided just to run and leave their cars. Nan and I grabs our bags and started running as fast as we could. Nan is prego and she booked it past me. I was carrying a huge bag and running so hard I peed my pants, laterally peed my pants. We were the first ones to get to the ship and get all forms filled out but as we started to board a guard grabbed Jake and told him “ I need your keys” Jake was freaked and said I don’t have any but the guy insisted he needed his key. The guard said I know you left your car sitting out there and we need to move it. So Jake figured it out and said oh I got a ride here I don’t have a car. They asked if anyone was coming after us and Jake just said the Kennards. So he really hosed the other people. (I think they still got on though) We were so happy to be on the ship.

We went to every meal available on the ship. Jake made sure we didn’t miss a single change to eat. We defiantly got our money's worth in food. We went to Nasssau the first day. We shopped around and went snorkeling at the beach where I dropped my glasses in the sand right on the shore line. I started screaming when I realized they were missing and Jake started to search. I was ticked at the Kennards because they didn’t seem concerned about helping me, just then Aaron started to scream and fish around with his hands in his pants. He was screaming there something in my shorts its biting me. Jake found my glasses and Aaron found a bee like creature in his shorts. The glasses must have washed in the ocean and then popped back out further down the shore. It was a miracle.

The next day we had a day a sea because the waters were too rough to ferry everyone over to the Island. We signed up for a dodge ball tournament on against the crew of the ship. They put us in teams of 6. so it was me, Jake, Aaron and 3 other guys. Each team played the crew and then those that win played each other. Out of about 8 teams only 2 of us beat the crew so then they had us play each other. The previous day Aaron had bought a broken in cowboy hat to wear around and wore it during the tournament. There was a drunk lady that stared chanting Cowboy! Cowboy! Every joined in and it was awesome. Needless to say we were victorious and won gold metal which we were proud to wear the rest of the day.

So those are the highlights of our cruise. I will include some photos for you. I have more to say about Easter weekend but I will wait for all the events to unfold before I give you the recap.

4th of July

Our first 4th of July with Leiden was great. We got up early to go to the flag raising ceremony and then were off on the Tour de Riverton. We missed the F16 fly by, but Leiden got to ride her first pony. We went swimming at Omas and Opas and of course we saw fireworks to cap off the day.

Leidens First Birthday

Leidens birthday was so fun. She had pizza and Backyardigans cake till she was sick. Anyone who is anyone was there. She even got a few happy birthday phone calls. Thanks to all who came to help her celebrate.