We LOVE Grandparents

My grandparents came to visit last week. They came for my cousin's wedding and traveled all over the place visiting their numerous children/grandchildren in the valley. How sweet of them to come to us even after we offered to meet them somewhere! We loved having them here. They are amazing! Of course they experience the regular aches and pains that are the trade-off for wisdom. But you will not find that stopping these two! They are always busy. They get honey from their own bees, Grandma makes a stained-glass lamp, from scratch, for every grandchild for their wedding, and Grandpa has been digging out under their house to put support beams and a food storage space under there. What? When I asked him how he does that he said, "One bucket full at a time". They are such an example to me of working hard and enjoying life. As you can see, Grandma even rode ponies with McKenzie and Ethan (yes, they like to pretend our swim noodles are ponies. It's an FHE family favorite, if you're looking for ideas. Jason always remembers to close the blinds after a few minutes of vigorous galloping. A few minutes too late, if you ask me. Perhaps too soon, if you ask our neighbors who are seated with buckets of popcorn and binoculars on Monday nights, 7 p.m. sharp). Anyway, back to Grandma galloping on her pony which she named "Jumper" of all things. I think I would have named mine "Sleeper". You can see that even when McKenzie and Ethan needed "a break" Grandma was still riding.

Go, Kenzie, go! And please remember to incorporate that into our next show.

Petting the horses

"Just need a little break." What? Are you joking? Where did this come from? Where were my overabundance of unfinished projects when this occurred? When do 2 and 4-year-olds EVER stop to catch their breaths? (We're pulling out the ponies tomorrow and I'm naming mine Jumper).

If you have not recieved a hug from Grandma, you simply have not recieved a hug.

Grandma and Grandpa, thank you so much for coming! We love you!

This post leaves me feeling so thankful to Heavenly Father for blessing us with families: people of all ages, stages, experiences and personalities put together with a commonality that can't be ignored - even in the rare and fleeting occurance that you would want to ignore it. Families teach us how to love, laugh, forgive, love, be stronger, be kinder, not judge and love. So to all my family out there - I love you! I love that this blogging is keeping me in touch with those of you I'm not able to see much. I'm grateful for the insights and examples I gain from peeking into your worlds. I love that we're all together on life's journey just doing the best we can and then picking ourselves up and trying to do better. Yes it's late (11:46 p.m. in attempt #1432 to quit blogging when my children are awake) and I'm getting sappy. Sappy, but sincere. Because, really, what's better than a group of people that were forced together on this earth to be eachother's fan club ... and comic relief ... and target for destruction on a particularly bad day? Nothing. And coming in close second to that are friends: people that you admire enough to hope they will join your fan club and perhaps provide a little comic relief...and forgive you of your bad days. LOVE TO ALL!