Utaaaaaaaaaaah!

Our first drive to Utah from Sammamish was a loooooong one. It was the kid's Spring Break and we were needing a change of scenery. It took us 8 hours to get to Boise...sometimes a bit treacherous through a couple of mountain passes, we didn't think to bring our snow chains in April. We stayed the night with the Steadman family...our great friends from when we lived in Lake Forest, CA. They have 7 kids and are some of the neatest people we know. We traveled 6 hours the next day getting to Utah at 4:00 pm, just in time to hug, change clothes and for Jeff to leave with "the guys" for the Priesthood session of conference.

The girls loved having a "girl's night" eating Cafe Rio salads, talking, watching Enchanted and painting fingernails. Heather and her girls and Rachel were able to join us too. Sunday was so relaxing and nice watching General Conference and having a big family dinner together. Monday we were supposed to hike the "Y" but look what happened on Monday...we went and saw "Horton Hears a Who" instead.

Kaden found his special t.v. watching spot at Grandma's house.

Merrill was around a lot this visit and really knew how to put Maryn in her place during this "write a letter to Grandma" session.

The girls always love to play with Caitlyn Halliday across the street when go to Utah. It's so fun to have a friend so close and Caitlyn especially is always so sad when we have to leave.

We went an visited Stephanie and Melissa Madsen too. Such special friends they are. Emmy was caught "shopping" in their pantry, a habit she developed at their parent's house in Redding...and Kaden loved wearing Stephanie's high heeled pumps. Stephanie has pictures of Kaden all over her apartment and tells friends he's her boyfriend.

Spencer is growing so big! Kaden was so gentle with him and hoping they could play ball together.

Grandma finished sewing the girl's Hawaiian dresses. Adyson is posing in hers. The other dresses are yellow and pink. So cute. We need a Luau!
Ady and Marianne making a huge mess with their cookies. I think we made cookies 3 times while we were there. YUM!
We made a list of things we wanted to do while we were in Utah. We had fun crossing them off as we did them...sliding down the stairs in a sleeping bag was something I added to the list. The stairs are so wide and perfect for sliding down. We loved doing it when we were younger. The Slichta kids could not believe that the older kids were sliding down too, McKay, Danielle, James, Marianne, Marc and Merrill, Jeff and I...even Grandpa went down! Yoo Hoo!

A super highlight of the trip was participating in the "Rock Paper Scissors" Guinness book of world records tournament. It was put together by a guy that Melissa Madsen was dating as his Senior Project...they were trying to beat the record of 800 participants. We payed $5 and got a t-shirt and food. They did the best out of 3 with the winners moving on and the losers standing back to watch. We don't know if they beat the record but we do know that it was super fun. Ady went 4 rounds, Maryn and I went 3 and everyone else got out in the 1st or 2nd round. So...we weren't that great, but it was so fun.

Melissa Madsen was there too and she actually made it to the top 20...amazing. Here she is going against Adyson with the judge watching on.

The most amazing thing was that the winner of the whole event was Kenny Matthews...a friend of ours from Naperville, IL. He won $3,000. He said there was a strategy to the whole thing, but I don't believe it! It was just a lot of fun to be apart of such a crazy event...nothing like having some good, clean fun! Way to go Kenny!

After lots of game nights, a homemade Sushi night, watching Merrill perform in a play at BYU, holding lots of Spencer, lots of sleepovers at James' and Marianne's and a family photo session we left Saturday afternoon for the trek back to Boise. We got there at 9:30, played some Guitar Hero and went to bed exhausted. They had church at 9:00, so we went with them and left straight after for home. A good and non eventful journey home. It was actually a nice trip, reading out loud with the kids, watching some "Little House on the Prairie" and taking some naps, weary from 14 hours of driving and having a super fun Spring Break!

April Fools!

I usually am too tired or uncreative to ever do anything for April Fools Day...so I really threw the family for a good one when they woke up as usual to get ready for school and smelled the aroma of spaghetti in the air. I was off getting my hair done (yes, at 6:00 am.). I left the table set, a salad on the table, sauce in the crockpot and noodles ready with brownies for dessert. I got a call from Maryn wondering what is she supposed to eat for breakfast. I told her to eat what she saw. Then later when she called I asked her what she had for breakfast and she told me spaghetti and "it was hard. It was hard to eat spaghetti that early in the morning." The story goes that Jeff and the kids had a super fun time eating breakfast together. They woke Emmy up and tricked her into thinking that she had just taken a nap and it was dinner time. Too bad I missed out on the fun but it was worth it to hear them sharing the story over and over all day long with their friends. Kaden loved eating his "breakfast" too and ate tons of salad. Who would ever think a 2 year old would love salad for breakfast??

First WA Easter...rainy

It's been a long time since we had Easter at our house. Amazingly enough the Easter Bunny found us. He even left his footprints like he always does and nibbled the carrotts.It was a cold and rainy Seattle day...big surprise, so we had a hard time putting on our Spring dresses but we did anyway just to prove that it was Easter.

Emmy

We couldn't get Kaden to leave his basket the whole day. Yummy for him.

Maryn

Adyson We pulled out a turkey from the freezer and had the Debenhams over for dinner. Their house was still filled with boxes since they moved in 3 days before. We are so grateful that they are here so we can have some sort of "family" nearby. Jeff sang a solo at church with me accompanying. It was his first solo since being in this ward and it went over really great. Everyone loved it. We finally feel like we are getting known in the ward. I hate that it takes so long to feel that, especially here since the ward is big and there are lots of new people anyway. But, all in all it was a relaxing Easter for us.