Whirlwind Weekend

The past few days have been super busy, so I'm enjoying a relaxing Sunday afternoon. Some of the memorable moments:

• I free-handed the lettering on some large posters that were put on our float in the parade. While I was making the posters, Brenda wanted to help with one of my many other projects, so I put her to work making a triple batch of peanut butter cookies (for the Cookiefest . . .more on that in a minute). I got out all the ingredients she would need and she began mixing and pouring. When the batter was ready to roll into cookies, she popped some dough in her mouth and started laughing. I had given her a bag of semi-wet sand (for one of Brevan's science homeschool science experiments) in place of the brown sugar! The sand had been put in a gallon sized ziploc baggie, just like I put the brown sugar, and they looked amazingly similar! We've been laughing about it ever since!
• Ryan was in Utah all week, where he spent a day working at PMI and then headed out on a fun golf trip with my Dad, Dan Porter and Dave Yancey (Tiff and Kara's husbands). While staying at a nice hotel in Park City, they watched a bunch of movies, ate delicious food, had weight-lifting contests and spent many hours on the golf course. We women all wanted to be flies on the wall to watch how they interacted, because I'm sure it was much different from our girl trips, where we all share beds (even if there are plenty of beds for everyone), have therapy sessions with each other where we express our deepest feelings, and spend most of our time giggling and laughing harder than we do at any other time in our lives. They refused to even take one picture, so my Mom drove up to Park City yesterday to force them to smile for the camera. I hear the golf trip was great fun, and all the men returned home to their amazing, beautiful and perfect wives last night.
• Friday was Lindsey's real birthday, so I got up extra early to make homemade Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins. The morning did not end up going completely as planned, but Lindsey only cried 3 times before getting on the bus. That's a successful morning at our house! After school I took my four kids, Sophie, Megan and Jorja to "Golden Corral" (Lindsey's choice) for dinner. We had a bunch of fun and filled up on greasy food.
• The Primary Program was today, which meant I was busy the past few days making final preparations. I stayed up until 2:30 in the morning on Friday night to make 100 cookies (without sand this time) for our Primary Cookiefest that was held after the final Program Practice on Saturday afternoon. The practice went fairly well, but there's always the "Primary Miracle" that makes the program come together at the last minute and be perfect. I'm getting teary-eyed just typing this. The children did so well singing and reciting their parts. I may be a bit prejudice, but it was honestly the best Primary Program I have ever seen. I was a big old bawl-baby through most of it, because the Spirit was so strong as we listened to the children sing and talk about their Savior. I had to do the introduction at the beginning of the program, which made me very nervous but allowed me the opportunity to publicly acknowledge all the wonderful children, teachers and music leaders we have in our Primary. I just love them all so much.
• I drove Ryan's truck in the Jesse James Parade yesterday, which was pulling a trailer holding Brenda and all her choir kids. We had spent time preparing to make the float look good, and it turned out so cute! The craziest part was getting myself and 7 kids (Megan and Sophie slept over) out the door by 7:45 am so we could line up. The kids sang their hearts out for the first 45 minutes of the parade, but then burned out towards the end. Brevan had made 300 tags with the name of the choir attached to candy, so we had him walk in front of the truck and throw the candy to the kids in the crowd. I will get more pictures later, but these are the ones I have so far. Doesn't Ryan's truck look great all "girly-ed up?"
  
  
  
  These three girls, Brynlie, Sophie and Megan, are completely inseparable. As in they literally spend every second of the day either together or talking to each other on the phone. I LOVE these girls. I could not hand-pick better friends for Brynlie. Megan and Sophie even came to our church today so they could watch Brynlie perform in the Primary Program.
  

And this is what we woke up to today, after a bad rainstorm all night. But I will be keeping a positive attitude about the WALL in our backyard COLLAPSING because at least it chose to fall over at night instead of during the day when it could have crushed one of my kids. I'm just choosing to ignore the angry little demon on my shoulder that is telling me how EXPENSIVE this will be to fix properly.