Special Visits

This summer we were lucky enough to have two special visitors - first up was Elder Benson! Of course it's been awhile since he was officially a missionary but he'll always be Elder Benson to us. He and his girlfriend were in New York for a wedding and decided to drive down to Baltimore to see his old stomping grounds. Thank goodness that included a quick visit with us! We made some dessert since no dessert was always the running joke when he served in our area...

talked a lot about what he was up to and about their life and future plans and then took plenty of pictures.

Of course the kids fell right back into their comfortable relationship with him...

especially Noah. These two could always get goofy with each other.

While Elder Benson was visiting I sent pictures to Elder Anderson, teasing him a bit about Elder Benson making sure he came to see us. Well, about a week later Elder Anderson contacted me about a possible visit in August...and lo and behold, we got a visit from him too! What a fun time we had catching up with him. (And apparently I wore the same shirt for each visit, haha!)

Savannah always says that Elder Anderson looks like he could be one of my kids. They all do kinda go together, don't they?

Quite the talent these two have!

I don't know if there will ever be another Elder Benson/Elder Anderson duo in our life but these next two have probably come the closest...Elder Mitchell and Elder Clayton. These two missionaries were another wonderful pair and we always had so much fun when they visited with us.

Unfortunately we had to say goodbye to them mid-August but hopefully we'll see them again.

Missionaries are absolutely the best!

Our July 2018

Summer...we love all the big adventures as well as the many fun small things we do to fill in the rest of our days. Trips to Ritas...

celebrating National Mac and Cheese day...

and playing board games...

including some new ones we checked out of the library.

Each summer we inevitable say goodbye to someone and this year it was to the Richards, my Maryland parents. We had a big party with church friends to send them off with love!

They are some of my favorite people in the whole world and I will miss them tremendously.

Noah spent Monday afternoons with one of his best buds, Marty, at Lego Club at the library. They loved it!

Dates with my cute kids. Panera...

and a hike.

Noah likes to be the photographer as well.

He was entangled in a bunch of branches but it didn't turn out looking as cool on the photo.

Our cool selfie...

and the beautiful scenery we were in.

A week of football camp for the boys, which they absolutely loved despite the torrential downpour one day and the extreme heat and humidity the other days.

Football evaluations...

trip to the Phili temple...

and David continued his travels for work and would always send me cool pictures of where he was.

July was packed full of good memories!

A YW Pioneer Day Celebration

For some reason we never really celebrate Pioneer Day. I remember when I was growing up that we always seemed to have some fun primary activity to commemorate the day but that is not something I see much of anymore outside of Utah. Well, young women activity night fell on the actual Pioneer Day this year so I suggested we do an activity all about pioneer fun. We did some games that would have been played at that time, like the 3-legged race. Some of the partnerships...

and the races!

Despite efforts by some of the Beehives to slow others down, Carolyn and Savannah pretty much won every race!

Stick pulling!

Most of the girls tried it but we quickly found that Grace was putting everyone away!

So Melissa challenged her...

with the same results!

Grace went undefeated!

While some of the girls continued stick pulling, others went into the kitchen to try their hand at making butter.

Lots of shaking going on!

It actually turned out really good and we all got to enjoy our butter with cornbread.

Lastly we played pioneer bingo. Each of the girls had been asked to bring a pioneer story, either from their own family history or one that they'd read about, and as the stories were read the girls looked for items that were mentioned on their bingo cards. It was a lot of fun!

I'd definitely call it a Pioneer Day celebration success!