Deep In The Heart - Day 3

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

The big day! Sam and Teresa's Wedding!

We woke up to a very rainy day. Now, one might expect after reading useless fact #2, that I would be happy to be in Texas and have it raining. But this was just not a good day for rain. However, we decided to make the most of it. There really was no other alternative. We had Bart's famous Breakfast Burritos and we all sat around the table talking until my mom said, "Does anyone think it's strange that we are all sitting here in our pajamas like we have nothing to do and we are about to have to be at the Temple for a wedding?" We took that as our cue to go and ready ourselves.

Sam and Teresa were sealed for time and all eternity in the Dallas Texas Temple. Here they are outside the Temple with the kids.

(click on time and all eternity to find out what we believe about eternal marriage)
The paparazzi, led by Big Lou himself
(click on his name to see his pictures of the wedding)
Teresa, Sam and Kay. My mom is crying, but what's new?

Zac, Lauren, Aubrey, Emily, Addy and Kay

The Groomsmen with Zac as Best Man

Bart and Farrah

Zac and Steve

After leaving the temple we all went to Amigos for lunch.

That night was the reception. It was beautiful. Here's Coren and Gordon and a few of my kiddos.

Addy and Emily with their Great Grandma

The cleanup

Allyson, Zac and Farrah

Can you tell she's excited for this day to be done and over? Poor Bart and Farrah. Their anniversary was kinda skipped over as they were hosting the lot of us at their house and making wedding decorations and such.

It was a great day. A beautiful reception. A happy new Bride and Groom. I am glad we were able to be there. The only sad part was that we had 2 people missing that day. My dad, although I'm sure he was there. And my sister Kristy and her family. Kristy was supposed to come but she was snowed in at the Moscow airport for a few days and couldn't make it. We missed her terribly.

Deep In The Heart - Day 2

Monday, December 27, 2010

The Mission? Take this:

And turn it into this:

Thankfully we had some good help. This is Big Lou (it's always been a mystery to me where that nickname came from). He is my dad's best friend. And he and my parents grew up together their whole lives. He was there at the church to help before any of the rest of us even showed up.

Farrah has the BEST friends. Aside from the many late and early hours they spent at her house helping her get ready for the wedding, Coren and Tonia spent this entire day doing the flowers. They turned out beautiful!


Forget Krispy Kreme. Dallas has the best Doughnuts. Just another thing to miss about Texas. They didn't even have doughnut shops in Utah until Krispy Kreme came along. Like, what's up with that? I remember when I first moved up here and I couldn't find a place to buy doughnuts. I asked someone where they bought their doughnuts and they said the grocery store. Uhmmm, nasty. Needless to say, I stopped eating doughnuts. Which really is probably a good thing.

Addy had fun helping

We found the manliest job for Steve and Big Lou to do. Hang the pom poms. Don't forget to fluff them boys!

Josh and Gabe

This is why we gave the job to Steve. Because his brain could figure out arranging them with a broom when ours couldn't.

That night Bart, Steve and Sam went out to dinner. Then they brought home more Blue Bell and we all sat around and talked. About how glad we would be when tomorrow was over. Just kidding! Kind of.

Deep In The Heart - Day 1

Sunday, December 26, 2010

We woke up in a hotel room in St. Louis early the morning of December 26th. We loaded ourselves up and hit the road. Jack. Destination: Dallas Texas. My hometown. Originally we were planning on going to St. Louis for Thanksgiving because, frankly, I'm sick and tired of being there in the dead of winter. Do you know how much fun it is to travel with 4 kids in the dead of winter? Coats everywhere. Boots. Potty Breaks. In and out of the dirty slushy snow of the gas station parking lot. The last few times we went to St. L, it was at Christmas. I thought if we went in November, it would be a little warmer. But then my brother Sam had to go off and get engaged and plan the wedding in Dallas 3 days after Christmas. I figured, heck, if we're doin' a road trip, we might as well do it all at once. So plans changed. Christmas in St. Louis it was.

It's about 12 hours from St. Louis to the Big D. So we drove all day long. It cost us a fortune to make it through Oklahoma. Who knew, toll road the whole dang way? That evening, the calls started coming in. Not calls of, "Allyson! We are so excited to see you and your cute little family! When will you be here?". Um, mm. No. They were more like this, "When in the heck are you going to get here so you can help us with these wedding decorations?" Feels so good to be loved. We pulled in around 9:30 pm and I was immediately put to work making silver and purple pom poms. I don't even think they let me potty first.

Farrah's house was wedding central
She did let the kids open their Christmas presents from her. I think she might have yelled at me to get back to work when I stopped to take this picture.
Yep. There I am after 12 hours in a car with four kids who wouldn't let me sleep. And that's my sister Farrah, the creative mastermind who pulled off a beautiful wedding reception.
Teresa and Emily. Emily who has decided we will be decorating her room in pom poms. They were pretty dang cute. Just wait.
Bart who as soon as we walked in the door began preparing us a super delicious feast from his new smoker he got for Christmas.

Aubrey, wasting no time getting started on the Blue Bell. That's my girl!

Bart, Sam and Steve, wasting no time getting started on the air soft guns. Until I yelled this, "SAM! THIS IS YOUR WEDDING! GET OVER HERE AND HELP US MAKE THESE DANG POM POMS!!!!" It's our family's language of love, what can I say?

Gabe and Emily checking out Uncle Sam's Christmas present. An X Box Kinect. Hello. Can I just tell you how much I want one of these? We played the dance game on New Years Eve. It was so much fun. Only problem is I live in a fishbowl. Lots of windows, no window coverings. A heavily traveled jogging trail right down the side of my house that has a perfect view right through my huge picture window into the room the Kinect would be in. And I look extra super stupid trying to play this.

Monday Morning Musings - Sweet Home Alabama

HOME AT LAST!

We have been gone from home for 17 days. SEVENTEEN DAYS! Do you hear me?! That is a long dang time to be away! We had a fabulous trip! We were so blessed to be able to go to St. Louis and spend time with Steve's family, and then to Dallas to spend time with mine. Minus my sister Kristy who was not able to get a flight out of the Moscow airport :( We made so many fun memories that we will cherish forever. I finally finished my St. Louis posts, now I gotta get the Dallas ones done.

We pulled in last night around 10:30 PM exhausted. But alas, there is no rest for the weary. Steve being gone for 17 days from his business, he has a lot of catching up to do. And a lot of money collecting to do, 'cause I'm tellin' you right now, we are FLAT BROKE! And it's almost time for him to pay his guys again. I wouldn't mind a little cash comin' my way either, you know what I'm sayin'?

The kids begged me to let them stay home from school today and let them rest. Yeah. Right. I am sending them TO school so I can rest. Not really. Like I said before, no rest for the weary. I have 17 days of mail to open. Bills to pay (oh wait, there is no money for that, never mind). Toilets to clean (toilets sitting for 17 days, not so pretty). Suitcases to unpack. Clothes to wash. A nasty disgusting van to clean out. Groceries to buy. Food to make (please no fast food for the next 2 months. At least!) . Christmas decorations to take down. A house to clean. A wedding reception. In my house. In 5 days. Holy smokers, what was I thinking!?! I gotta figure out where we left off with everything. I know we have dentist appointments and ortho appointments and Ski Club starting this week. Homework to figure out. We literally stuck the kids in the car on Friday the 17th of Dec. when they got out of school and started driving and got home just in time for them to go right on back.

I have come to the realization that I love being able to go to Steve's hometown and my hometown to visit, but I could never ever live in either one of those places. I love where I live and I wouldn't change it for anything. For one thing, I could never drive in either one of those places. Especially Dallas. Steve did have fun driving in Dallas. He said it was like driving in a video game. A bunch of people in cars traveling at high speeds with no particual rhyme or reason to what they are doing. And the roads there. Really. I don't know how you people do it. I just looked at Steve and said, "Now does my driving make sense to you? This is where I learned to drive!" Thank you Salt Lake City for you nice big wide clean orderly streets, your turn lanes, and I will never complain about your drivers again! I don't know what I was complaining about in the first place. My eyes have been opened.

Out of the whole 17 days we were gone, 5 entire days were spent driving. Some more pleasant driving memories?

Addy kept wanting to get to our hotel when we were driving. Only she called it a Show-n-Tell. Not a hotel. Are we almost at the show-n-tell?

Realizing I am raising full fledged Utahans when we stop for dinner the first night and my kids are complaining because they don't have fry sauce. And they complained at every place we went thereafter. I remember when I first moved to Utah, how weird I thought Utahan's were about their fry sauce. And now, here I am, 19 years later, raising weirdos.

We were sitting at the dang longest red light when we were in Nebraska. I'm serious. We sat there for at least 10 minutes. I said, "Why is this light so long?" And Zac said, "Because we are in Nebraska, the place where people have nothing better to do. Oh wait, that's Kansas."

On the way out we were singing Christmas songs, trying to keep the troops entertained. We were singing the 12 Days of Christmas. This is how Addy sang it: Two turtle butts, and a partridge in a pear tree.

Why can't a four year old go into a stinky bathroom without announcing to everyone how it smells? I was like, "Addy! Shhhh! The people who made it smell this way are probably still in here!" We walked into one really stinky bathroom and she said, "OH GROSS! IT STINKS IN HERE! MOM! A BOY WENT INTO THE GIRLS BATHROOM! THAT'S NOT COOL!" Apparently boys are the only ones who can be stinky in a bathroom.

Why is it that when mom decides to sleep in the car, that is the time everyone decides they need to talk to her? Seriously! I fall asleep and every two seconds it's mom this, and mom that. I finally give up on sleep and then all of the sudden, no one needs me anymore.

Steve and I read The Book Thief on our drive. Or more like I read The Book Thief to Steve. It was fabulous. An absolutely gorgeously written book. If you haven't read it, you should. We finished it Saturday night and started The Hunger Games. Not so beautifully written, but a book you can't put down never the less. We are almost done with it. All day yesterday while I was reading it, the kids were listening too. They never wanted me to stop reading. Yes kids, why don't you listen to mom read a book about a bunch of kids being forced to fight each other to the death. Really, it is a juvenile book, made for kids. And even though they are being forced to fight to the death, it's not as bad as it sounds. I can't wait to finish it. And then read the other two in the series.

OK, enough babble. Like I said, I have work to do. Happy back to the grindstone day everyone!

Meet Me In St. Louis - Day Seven

Saturday, December 25, 2010

Christmas Day

On Christmas Day, everyone in Steve's family goes to their other in-laws homes. So we took advantage and slept until noon. We ate "breakfast" and started packing things up since we would be heading out the next day. We also watched A Christmas Story about a bajillion times. OK, really it was 1 and 3 halves. 1/2 the night before, 1/2 Christmas day then the whole way through and then 1/2 before we decided we needed to journey out of our hotel room and find some type of nourishment. I don't know if you can call what we found "nourishment", but by the time we found it, we didn't care. We drove around for about 40 minutes and all we could find open was Hooters and Jack-n-the Box. We opted to have our Christmas dinner with Jack. Go figure. It does kinda make you wonder why Hooters is open on Christmas day though, doesn't it...

By the time we finished everyone was starting to converge on Grandpa's house. We decided to join the convergence. It was another night of hanging out, playing games, stuffing our faces, watching home movies, dressing up and playing with weapons.

We had a little hat hoopla, but those details are for another post...

Fun with cameras

Fun with weapons.

Fun with cousins. And umbrellas.

And then the goodbyes start. This would be our last time to see everyone for who knows how long. And Mike and Sheila and their family were also leaving the next day to go back to Kentucky. It makes me sad that these kids don't get to see each other more often. They have SO MUCH FUN together. They are getting older and I just wished we all lived closer.

And that's the end of our trip in St. Louis. It was hard to say goodbye. We had the BEST time. Every second was super charged with fun. We were always laughing. We were always busy making fun memories. And most of all we were just enjoying being together.