Family Dinner

Now that my parents are on a mission, we've had to come up with a schedule as to when we can all get together for family dinners. It used to be that my parents would have us over on Sunday's several times a month. We decided with them being gone that we would get together once a month for an official family dinner and take turns hosting. This month was my turn. I wanted to hurry and get a turn so we could use our big back yard that we don't get to use very often. So even though my birthday was one of the 4 we were celebrating this month, I hosted.

The 4 birthday girls: Jennifer, Ashlee, Me, Kayla


We had such a good time. We had chicken tacos, rice, chips and salsa, fruit and yummy cake. The bad part was my neighbor decided that the perfect time to seal his driveway and cement was 3o minutes before everyone came over. So it kind of stunk a little but we still had a good time.

We sat under the gazebo, the boys played soccer for a long time, and then bacci balls (is that the name of it?) and then sang and opened presents.





There was 2 things that happened that made me realize just how often we used to get together.
1 - Lori's 2 girls were both shy towards us when they first got there. Aubrey insisted she didn't remember anyone's name!
2 - Even though Ashlee's birthday is only 8 days after her mom's, she was a little insulted that we were making her share her birthday dinner with 3 other family members. Have we really always had a separate dinner for her? Jennifer told her that she had to do it her whole life since Jennifer and my birthday's are just 3 days apart. Ashlee handled it well and is so excited to be turning 12 and going into Young Women's this year.

We haven't finished one corner of our yard yet. We plan to put a small basketball 1/2 court but haven't done it yet. We have a big pile of dirt there to use if any part of our yard sinks. Well when Collin (Michelle's 2 year old) saw this dirt pile he yelled 'Mountain' and ran over to it, climbed up it, and spent at least 30 minutes on top throwing dirt off of his mountain. It was seriously so cute and so funny and he had dust coming off of him the rest of the night.





This last picture is just crazy. Apparently one of Jeff's friends got this Laker Poncho for him in Mexico. Jeff can hardly wait to go to the next Jazz/Laker game and wear this. How embarrassing! :)