The Best Month Ever

July 2011 was the best month ever!! My friend, Anne, came to visit the last part of June and stayed for a few days. We had a lot of fun hanging out together, playing tennis, going to the beach, etc. It was soooo nice to have her here.

We did one thing that I had wanted to do for a long time here in Wilmington. We went to a concert at Airlie Gardens. We brought a picnic dinner and just relaxed as we listened to the music. It was a lot of fun, the park was beautiful and MVP found lots of new friends. There was a family playing with a beach ball and he just jumped right in and took over. Fortunately, they all thought he was cute and they let him play.

MVP loved playing with Anne too. He has learned how to rough house and she was a good sport and let him tackle her and crawl all over her--much to his delight.

Anne left on July 3rd, so she missed out on our 4th of July celebrations. We were thinking about going down to the Battleship in downtown Wilmington where they have an elaborate fireworks show, but we knew that it would be close to 11pm before we could extract ourselves from the traffic and get MVP to bed. So we decided to stay home and we're glad we did. One of our neighbors put on a fabulous fireworks show with aerial fireworks and all kinds of stuff!! They must have spent about $1,000 because it went on for quite a while. I was so glad we stayed home!! MVP has also discovered Pop Its (or Snappers). Here's some video of him celebrating the 4th of July.

About a week later, we went on vacation to Utah and Idaho for some family reunions. We went to Brian Head, Utah for a Pearson family reunion. Andy organized the reunion and it was a lot of fun.

We all stayed in a large "cabin" (it was HUGE) complete with video games, air hockey, a fire pit and board games. Each family did a "spotlight" so we could get to know everyone better and we also had lots of activities including Pac-Man and four wheeling. MVP thought the ATVs were pretty cool, but when he was actually riding on them, he would get really quiet and serious.

We also had a family reunion for my immediate family, which is no small feat these days. I have five siblings from Washington to Tennessee, so when we are all able to get together at the same place at the same time, it's a miracle. We spent the better part of a week at Yellowstone. We camped out and ate wonderful food (thanks to Stephen) and had fun hanging out together. MVP thought it was pretty exciting to try and chop wood for the fire just like his uncles. There were lots of bison, but I was a little disappointed that we didn't see more bears, eagles and moosen.

MVP had lots of fun with his cousins. He is very much a people person and couldn't get enough attention. He has one cousin who is about 6 weeks older than he is and they had a lot of fun together hugging and getting tossed into the air. We stopped by the Tetons (my dad's favorite destination) on the way to Pocatello to see more relatives before going to Utah for a reunion on my mom's side of the family.

From there, Andy went down to Mesquite to play golf with his cousins and a friend in the Deserted Souls Classic. They try to get together once a year to play as much golf as possible in two days in the hottest place possible. This ensures that they are all sufficiently loopy and can have as much fun as possible talking smack. I stayed a few extra days in Utah to help my parents prepare to move. They will be moving from the home they owned when I was born and into a nice, new home in Lehi, Utah in August. One of the things I helped with was installing wood floors in the new home with my brother Stephen and sister Paula. Here are some before and after shots of the Kitchen and living room area. I was a bit surprised that it took the better part of three days to install the floors because, frankly, I watch way too much HGTV where flooring takes about five minutes to install.

By the time I returned home to Wilmington, Andy had already been there for a few days and his mom had arrived the day before for a visit. We have a brother in law who works for an airline and has been very generous in sharing his buddy passes so Grandma can come visit MVP. Andy's sister, Melanie, joined us a couple days later and we had a lot of fun together. Her daughter is sooo mellow and easy going and MVP is just the opposite. It's hard to imagine having such a placid child!! It was pretty hot, so one of the things we did was play in MVP's little pool in the backyard. MVP splashed a lot while his cousin got very wet.

 So aside from the reprieve I got from working during most of the month, being able to spend so much time around family and friends made July the best month EVER!!!

Tennessee

A couple weeks ago, I went to Nashville, Tennessee to attend the National Guardianship Association's annual Conference. It just so happened to be that my brother and his family and my sister also live there. I went out a couple days early so I could spend some time with them and I had a blast!!

It's no secret that I have the cutest nieces and nephews on the planet. Brianna is smart, beautiful and very level headed. I shared a room with her and one night, before we went to sleep, she read me the beginning of a story she was writing. It was really good. When I told her that thee was a middle school-aged girl from Florida who recently published a book she wrote which made it to the NY Times Best Seller's List, Brianna asked, "You mean I could sell this book and make a profit?" She very much liked that idea. Look out world.

Arick is a ham and loved giving others bunny ears in the pictures I took. Ty is such a sweetheart. He is full of hugs and I spent a good 20 minutes or more telling him what time it was whenever his digital watch changed numbers..."One, Zero, One, Six...One, Zero, One, Seven!" Ella is a typical toddler and loves learning about her surroundings and trying to take on the world by saying "I do it". She was also good for a laugh when we read scriptures one night. Someone would read a phase and wait for her to repeat. She would only pick up on part of the phrase and would often change words to things that made sense to her...which we all found to be very entertaining.

We watched the BYU/Utah State game. It's an understatement to say the Andrew gets into the games. He wears a helmet and Ella needs little encouragement to break out into a Touchdown dance.


On Saturday, we went out on a boat ride. It was very cold, but it was also very beautiful. We even saw Johnny Cash's old, burned down house. There is something to be said for living in the south. The weather is temperate, it rains enough so that it is very green and the people are very nice. If only we could do something about all the bugs!!