oh where have I been??

Where have I been? Right here, basically. sort of. well, not really! :P

Last weekend, the 5 of us, plus Nanny and PawPaw....set off for Independence, Missouri for our church's World Conference. It was a great weekend out there. Perfect weather! We left here early Saturday morning and got into the Kansas city area around lunchtime. Ate at one of our fave BBQ places, then headed down to the Temple complex.

We took the kids to the Children's Peace Pavillion. It's such a fun little place for kids to play and learn a lot of good principles like sharing, caring, peace, etc....I highly recommend it! We played there for over an hour and then my friend Kerri picked up Alaina to take her to her daughter Tatum's pool party. We were going to meet them all there later....


Karl and I had received an invitation in the mail to attend a 'young professionals' reception with the First Presidency of our church. VERY exciting for us....so of COURSE we accepted said invitation! :D We were totally psyched to be asked to attend.....it's not every day you get the opportunity to meet the church President/Prophet.....and we made sure to get a picture with President Veazey before we had to duck out early:


Then we changed back into some more casual clothes, went and picked up the boys (who were with my parents at the hotel) and headed to the pool party:

and for the record....I promised Sarah that I wouldn't post any pictures of her on Facebook....and I didn't! So I'll post them here.....here's my fave....of her thoughts on me taking such pictures:


but it was a super-fun party for the kids...they all had a BLAST! Happy Birthday, Tatum!!! After the party we went over to their house for some good ol' catching up with my friend Kerri, her hubby Dan, and a houseful of 3rd-grade girls having a sleepover! :D we had a glow-in-the-dark easter egg hunt, which was a huge hit with all the kids, and then they just ran around and played while we talked.

The next day, Sunday, we went to Communion services at the Auditorium. It always amazes me how they serve communion to thousands of people in like 15 minutes. It's orchestrated like a dance. one picture hardly does it justice. And to give credit to these people that chose to serve.......we walked through their practice on Saturday afternoon.....they put in the hours for this "routine"....well done ladies and gents! It was a great service....the kids were well-behaved and we even got compliments on how good they were during the service from the people sitting behind us. That's saying a lot! :D

I NEVER get tired of staring at the ceiling of the Temple sanctuary....it's just mesmerizing....

and here we all are....all dressed up at the Temple:


Sunday afternoon, after a yummy lunch at Cracker Barrel (a family fave), everybody but me and Zach ended up taking naps. I read a magazine and finished a book I was reading on my ereader (for those of you that haven't joined the e-book revolution....you'll become an addict if you do, i swear it! so cool!). Then we went for a quick fast-food dinner and back to the Auditorium for the main evening service.

It's always awesome to hear the prophet/president of the church give a sermon. This night was no exception. He said what needed to be said to those of us that were willing to hear it. I can only hope that those that may NOT have wanted to hear it, heard the message anyway! :D (cryptic enough for ya?) I'll just say that there are 'certain issues' our church (and every church really) is facing......and we're struggling as a group to come to terms with how we should proceed....there are those who think one way.....and those that think the opposite way. And we've been butting heads over said issues for YEARS.....it was nice to hear (however implied and cryptically) our president/prophet give his thoughts on the issues. He received a standing ovation for his words.....and I would've gladly stood and applauded as well, had Zach not dumped a bottle of water down my back! (didn't want that many people seeing my wet arse, kwim? LOL so i stayed seated!!!!)

We left for home early Monday morning....and back to work/school the rest of this week. We're DYING with allergies here......poor me and Alaina seem to have it worse than the guys.......I'm constantly popping allergy meds....she's up there with bloodshot eyes, sneezing/etc constantly.....I'm about ready to give her adult doses of stuff to see if it helps. I'll be glad when whatever is in the air has settled down!!! bah!!!! I love spring, but HATE all this junk in the air!

oooooh, exciting breaking news....hubby won an ebay auction for a remote control! yes, this is as pathetic as it sounds. Apparently, we (I suppose as the woman I share the brunt of this blame????? but since it's 2010 and all, I refuse to carry such burden solely) have lost the remote control to our TiVo satellite receiver in our family room. We've been looking for the darned thing for WEEKS now, and it never has turned up in the usual places that we usually find remote controls (toybox, couch cushions, etc)...... So finally.....we admitted defeat.....the kids have done SOMETHING to it (I will assume that it ended up in a trashcan somewhere and is now in the nearby landfill unbeknownst to us)....and caved in and decided to get a new one. ah well....such is life....we've had to spend way more than 10 bucks for dumber things than that before.....

so anyways...the rest of this week was just the usual....ball practice for alaina.....matthew's should be starting soon, then i'll REALLY be meeting myself coming/going to ballfields!

Friday night was the big cubscout family campout at Beaver Dam state park. Great park...beautiful lake and all....i just do NOT. LIKE. CAMPING. period. end of story. BAH! it's SOOOOOO much work, it just sucks the fun right out of it for me! you have to pack along soooo much crap.....what fun is that? and if you DON'T take along all that crap....then you're roughing it far beyond what is acceptable to persons like myself (yes, i like something to sleep on something besides the grass and i prefer something to cover myself with besides dried leaves.....shoot me for not being a true scout-type person!) I know there are people that spend every weekend in the semi-fair-weather months going camping, and kudos to them and all.....it's just not my idea of a good time for the most part. once a year, and i'm good. i've had my camping experience for 2010. moving on! so our car was completely loaded down with all that camping crap: the tent, the sleeping bags, the lawn chairs, the cooler, the lantern, the flashlights, the clothing, the food.....blah blah blah blah......oh yeah, and the kids and the 2 dogs. happy camping! :D

But compared to past camping experiences, this one was probably the best. We've had everything from emergency room visits (long story!) to flash floods (another long story) to loud drunken campers keeping us up ALL night (yep, another LONG story) on our camping trips....they've just always ended SOOOOOOO badly, i'd completely lost faith in the camping experience ever being anything but a disaster in the making. but this time it was pretty fun actually. my only complaint was that it got WAY colder than any of us thought it would. BAH on that! the boys has a blast though...we grilled burgers/dogs for dinner, made smores...they recieved some patches from their Cubmaster (karl), and had a pretty fun time.



Saturday, we got up and went to breakfast at the park restaurant (now THAT'S what i'm talking about! none of this eggs over an open fire crap!) and then went out on some rented boats fishing. fishing. yeah. my joy for fishing ranks right up there with camping in general. thank GOD for my iPod or i'd have gone completely insane those 2 1/2 hours watching karl trying to maneuver our boat around that lake. (for the record.....I took caneoing class like 10 years in a row....heck, i even TAUGHT caneoing class at camp.....and karl....doesn't know DIDDLY about how to maneuver a small boat. sorry dear.....hate to chip away at your manhood there, but you don't.) i kept all comments to myself though, as it was just easier that way. :D

we DID however, catch a fish....a teeny tiny little thing...but i'm glad we caught it, as Zach had never been fishing before, so this was his first experience....and since nobody believed us (since nobody else caught anything), I have the pictures (of course, did you expect anything less?) to prove it:


ate lunch at the restaurant again....and then packed up camp and dispersed to home. end o' camping experience. fine by me......

i spent the rest of saturday night in a fog.....I'll attribute it to taking too many allergy and pain pills too close together. I was just OUT of it. oops. Sunday, woke up with a serious headache (probably from the combination of the zyrtec/benedryl/sudafed/vicodin cocktail i had the night before?) and i basically slept right through what should've been our church services. oops. the rest of today has just been getting stuff back in order here after being gone last weekend and being gone and taking half the house with us for ONE NIGHT out in the wilderness. did LOTS of laundry....cleaned some stuff....exciting day really.

then this afternoon was the girls' turn. Nature hike for my girl scout troop at a different state park. Now THIS is how it's done....no camping.....no pitching tents and junk! we hiked up the cliffs for about an hour....made some smores and headed home. good enough for a hiking/nature badge for my troop!! :P bravo ladies! we did a nature scavenger hunt along the way, so it wasn't completely idle time....and I made the mistake of letting the oldest girl lead the way.....so instead of the lazy, out-of-shape-person's 1/2 mile hike I'd planned.......she picked the 1 1/2 mile jaunt straight up the side of the cliff! :D hahahahahahaha....you should've heard the parents griping (Karl the loudest of them all i might add!)....it was great. i love that trail personally, so i didn't object to her picking that one at all........it was a good workout at least!

and now here we are, ending another weekend....ready to start another week of work. oh yay fun.

and so now......what few scrapbook pages i have to post....

The kids dyeing Easter eggs:


Zach and Darcy....he insisted on taking Darcy for multiple rides in the back of his dump truck:


Easter Sunday.....I went through all the effort to orchestrate a big group photo at church, and then when it was all over, I found Matthew asleep on the playroom floor! How brilliant to not notice my own kid missing from a group photo? :P



And my only plug for this post...."Happy Birthday To You" by Haynay Designs....I also used her Chronicling Life Photo Clusters for this....Alaina's birthday dinner last year at one of our favorite Disney restaurants: Liberty Tree Tavern......can't believe that's been over a year ago now!