New Year's Eve - the end of 2017

New Year's Eve was on Sunday this year and the couple who lived next door to us in Samoa, Kathy and Cliff Vellingas gave their homecoming talks in Las Vegas.  Theron and I and Callahans went to Vegas and stayed with Ellsworths overnight and attended Church to hear Vellingas and meet them again.

We left shortly afterward and drove to St. George where we had another rousing party with our friends - Duerdens, Christensens, and Woods.  Eat, cards and put on a silly hat for a picture.  We made it to midnight.  Another year finished; they are going by too fast.

Christmas 2017

It was north for Christmas.  We stayed at Adrian's - this is such a nice basement and comfortable bedroom; just don't tell anyone else (Larue) family joke.

It was our Spendlove family party on December 16 and we took several family and sibling pictures.  It's good to keep up on how much we change from year to year.  It is so difficult to get all of us to stand together.  This is the best we could come up with.  Linda was in charge and planned a brunch - this was a great idea.  All the kids loved the waffles, strawberries and whipped cream.  I liked having it early in the day so we could travel in the light.  Maybe a new tradition has been born.

Theron did a family history book for our family and one of the stories was about my mom playing softball.  She found her uniform, which none of us had ever seen, and modeled it for us.  The Henefer Shmoos!

 

Lisa, Christian, Thomas and Heather were down from Washington and it was so good to see them again.  With Lisa here, it was time to talk with mom about sealing Inez and Herschel.  I know she told us all not to do this, but she needs these blessings and I know that the atonement will make everything work out right.  So, on December 20, Lisa, mom, Theron, Adrian and I met at the Ogden Temple and did an endowment session.  Dawain met us around 1:00 for lunch at the Temple and at 2:00 we went to the sealing room.  Dawain and I were proxies for Inez and Herschel.  Mom was then sealed to her parents and Lisa was the proxy for Freida.  It was peaceful and was the right thing to do.

It wasn't just three days later that I started bleeding in my bowels and had to go to the hospital for bleeding ulcers.  I went to the U of U emergency center near Adrian's.  They transported me by ambulance to the U of U Hospital.  I stayed over night and the next morning had a scope - yup two bleeding ulcers.  The drugs they had given me stopped the bleeding.  After talking with the doctor on Christmas eve, he let me go home.  We stopped at Marc's to tell him Happy Birthday and then spent Christmas Day just lounging around at Adrian's.

All the kids came and visited - I love my family!  It was so fun to see Lauren, Brookie and Jesse open presents.  The train set was the hit as were the new earbuds we gave to Cameron and Taylor.

 Adrian and Todd enjoyed the boys earbuds.

The Backsplashes

We told the builder not to put in a kitchen and master bath backsplash.  First, we couldn't decide on a tile and next, we wanted to do this at a reduced cost.

After going to every tile and Home Depot in St. George and bringing tile sample after tile sample home, we finally hit on one we both liked and that looked good against our granite.  It was a Lowe's special.  Who would guess rather than a tile store with hundreds of samples.

Here are the finished pictures.  The dividers in the drawers remain to be done and the inside will be pretty well finished.

A Family Thanksgiving

We are in the new house in St. George and it was a good time to try out a family Thanksgiving.  We haven't been together for Thanksgiving for a number of years.  All the kids were able to come, stay for four days and renew our family ties.  It was wonderful chaos!!

Adrian's family came a day early and Taylor and Cameron had some one-on-one time with the RZR.  We prepared the pies and figured out where everyone was going to sleep.  Our new wallbed was installed just the day before Thanksgiving, also, which gave us that extra bed we needed.  I thought all in all we had enough room and enough activities.

It was so wonderful to get re-acquainted with the grandchildren.  Tyce and Ali helped Aunt Adrian make rolls.  We played games with the kids.  Mason and I had a couple of good talks and he was so helpful.  Ali told me she wants to come stay this summer and I hope she does.  Kacy started to sit on our laps and Tyce, well he was just so darn cute.  Marc and Brittney were able to take them to the swimming pool a few times - until someone from the area pooped in the pool which required it to be closed for a full day.  And, of course, we made Thanksgiving hats.

One of the fun activities was teaching the grandkids to eat whipped cream and pumpkin pie.

 Lauren got her first braids.

Curt and Mel came down Thanksgiving Day and the full chaos was here - now we had four 2-year olds.  The Thanksgiving meal was delicious and leftovers were abundant.

A plus for us was that we were able to get a 'family picture'.

Thanksgiving evening the stores were open late and Adrian, Brittney and me were able to go shopping.  To have the mothers' there to direct my buying was so wonderful.  Yea, the lines were long, especially at Target, but being with Adrian and Brittney was great.

One of the fun trips was to Tocquerville Falls.

Our hope is that we can do this again and again.  To have everyone here, together was definitely a memorable Thanksgiving!

As always, the taillights are the last things we see when the party is over!