Family time

We have had so much fun having James' family around lately for Sam's wedding. It started with Neil and Megan coming into town, and megan giving me and the boys a ride up to the cabin in their new mini-VAN. What a step up in life!  It was just a girls trip, with the kids, but it was so fun to get out of the heat, and let the kids just play. All the cousins played so nice together, and I hardly did any cooking or cleaning. So wonderful! Tommie and I weren't feeling the best towards the end of the week, but turns out my sickness was from lack of sleep, and Tommie's was a strange reaction to whole milk.

We came home saturday night, and spent time with James and Neil. James had a whole feast prepared for us with carne-asada tacos, homemade salsa and guacamole, strawberry lemonade, and perfectly cut mangoes and pineapple. What a man!

I spent the next few days preparing the house for all the wedding festivities. Becca came over and helped get all the wedding dinner decorations ready, and the food going. We had 6 crockpots cooking tuesday night! :) Clayton and Amber, Wilford and Kathleen, Matt, Grandma and Grandpa Bennion, and Sam all had flights in Wednesday morning. We took some fun family pictures (to come later) and enjoyed a nice little dinner. There were sure a lot of us Andersens compared to Julie Willis' family that came. It was just her mom, brother, and 3 sisters. The younger grandkids sang the famous "love and marriage" and talked a little about the lovebirds.

The sealing was thursday. Wilford was able to seal them and it was a neat experience to all be in there together. Wilford gave such a sweet talk on how important covenants are, and how no matter what, we just need to stick to our covenants. Sam was sweet to sit there and hold Julie's hands, and kathleen's. Ha! cute! They had a nice wedding luncheon at the beverly building (thanks to a lot of ladies' in the ward) and then we headed to the reception for more pictures and a long night of fun. I was so proud of my boys for making it the whole night and it was fun to be back in regency (where our wedding reception was).

The whole family left the next morning for Utah--the Bennion reunion and family time. We were sad we couldn't make it work and really feel like we missed out! But, we stuck around because my brother matt was leaving on his mission. Saturday night Uncle Matt, spencer, and Jeff, and a few of there kids made it down from utah. It was fun to see them again. I really do miss hanging out with the matthews more. SUnday morning was his farewell talk. He did a great job...kept trying to crack a few jokes that no-one really laughed at. But, he did bear a strong testimony and had TONS of friends there. He had an open house sunday night, with a lot of his friends and extended family.  Monday night, he was set apart an elder by President Burnham. I actually started feeling really sad, especially when he started crying. I did pretty good at not crying until it came time for Jackson to say goodbye and he didn't want too. Jackson didn't understand why he couldn't spend the night with Matt and play super smash bro's on the Wii, or watch a dumb youtube movie with a dancing gummi bear (which always gets my boys laughing). Anyways, the more I tried to explain he was leaving the more mad Jackson got and I got pretty sad. But, Tuesday morning I came back over and helped Matt pack up his room while my mom ran errands. We had him all packed up and room cleaned out and then they left to drive him to provo. (His visa still hasn't come so who knows if he'll make it to the columbia mtc). And, now he's gone and we haven't heard anything yet. But, how exciting for him. Funny how 2 years really seems like a long time.

We then left on thursday for Prescott. Jared was hosting a work party for James' company over the weekend there. It was busy and fun. We went to the big rodeo and left Tommie with a babysitter. Jackson loved the bucking horses, but I was all about the half time show of the "one-armed bandit" who steered his horse with his feet and trained buffalo. They even got the 2 buffalo up on top of the trailer. What a hit! The next day we went to the fourth of july parade, and walked around the booths at the courthouse. They were honoring the 19 firefighters from prescott who just died fighting the forest fire. They had their families ride on top of a fire truck in the parade and it was actually kind of sad to see all the little kids. After the parade, Jared  had a big barbeque ready and the kids all played outside. It was interesting to get to know all the ladies James works with better. He has a lot of patience! :) He was ready to come home last night though and spend a little bit of time with his parents, who came back from utah while we were gone.  They are leaving in the morning for the cabin, and we aren't sure if we'll be able to make it yet or not.

James also had another HOA work party he was the DJ for. They had the fire department come spray everyone with their hoses. It was a major heat wave day with the temperature 119. It was so hot, and that water was actually really cold. Boys had a lot of fun, and shaela and i stuck around that party for quite a while.  What else do you do when it's so hot?

Whew! how's that for the past few weeks? I am pretty tired, and the boys are definitely more cranky than normal, but it has been so fun to see everyone. James is so bummed thinking he can't really get more time off work to be more involved. It is hard to have his parents gone so much, but what a blessing they are to us. And any time they come around, EVERYONE just flocks to them! Did I mention that Jackson can now go cross-eyed? Gram Cracker asked me if he has a problem with his eyes... he does it all the time! :) And he really is just hard to get good pictures of lately! What a poser.

Tommie also had his first hair cut. However, he still gets really crazy hair after sleeping. Doesn't he look a lot like grandpa bennion? Actually, I get a lot of comments lately that he looks like the baby on the movie "How the Grinch Stole Christmas".  Notice the 2 bottom teeth getting bigger? the top 2 cut through this week too.