Overwhelmed at the thought

You know those times when you've neglected your blog for a really long time and you know it's time to bite the bullet and update it? Then  you decide that  putting it off for one more day is the most brilliant idea you've ever had. Of course one more day turns into one more week and then two. By this point you are so overwhelmed with the thought of doing the blog that it reminds you of the time you bought a house, site unseen, walked in and knew the paint had to change. You also knew that you were leaving town in three days and would be gone for two weeks, but the paint HAD to be done before you left. Thankfully you were able to pound out the unpacking and cleaning and still had two days before you were leaving. You pull out all your painting supplies and go to town. Only to find out that your calling in life was not to be a painter. There's paint running in streams down the walls and pooling on the drop cloth where small children have then stepped because they were trying to help by painting their own little section of the wall. Said paint is slippery so they put their hand on the wall to catch themselves, so now your freshly painted wall has a small two year old hand print on it. You go to paint over it and the paint starts to peel off the walls. Now is the time that you throw in the towel and call in the professionals. They come with their painting gear on and tell you the small fee they will charge since you have all the supplies. You happily hand over the money because it is well worth the sanity of every member of your house. As you are thinking about that long story you are reminded that you should update your blog and just like the paint, you just have to bite the bullet and do it. So, here we are, updating the blog. Let's see, what is there to tell? We made it across the country so B could start his new job. We got here in time to unpack, go boating once and then high tail it out of here to go on an amazing vacation! I'll try not to give you a picture overload, but let's be honest. We all know that I have a picture taking problem. I'd like to put pictures of our house on here, but I haven't taken pictures of it yet. I know I know, but we really want to knock out a wall and it'll look so much better with the wall gone. The jury's still out on if said wall is load bearing or not, so I'm waiting to put pictures on until we know what's going on with the wall. Let's see here, before we left on vacation, we went boating with the Bartschi's and the Steik's. We were on Bartschi's boat. Can I just say that his boat is the closest thing to a Yacht that I've ever been on?! It. Was. Amazing!

 Here are a bunch of hooligans that had a great time on the tube. They were bouncing around and little L in the back wanted to go faster and faster.

T Bartschi was driving and stopped the boat so that those crazy enough could jump in the water if they wanted to. Before these three took the plunge, we snapped this picture. It's one of my favorite of the night. Whilst they were paddling around in the freezing cold water, I got to hang out with K. 

To say that I miss living next to beautiful K would be a gross understatement. We thought that we would live next to them here, but Heavenly Father had a different plan for them. I love that we got to go boating with them before they moved on to their next adventure.

Of course I had to take a picture of B skiing. I could watch him do this forever and it doesn't matter how many times I've seen him do it, which is a lot,  it never ceases to amaze me!

We left here and went to Utah to be with family for two weeks.

We started out with my family. For the amount of family that I have, this is such a small group! My younger brother and his wife had their sixth baby while we were there. Little A is one of two nephew's that just couldn't wait to be born so they came in the car on the way to the hospital! We packed so much into the week we were with my side of the family. It was so swell because we had only planned the camping trip, the rest was just planned day to day. Let's start with camping.

I think this is such an adorable picture of my parents. My dad's cancer has metastasized. His cancer pills were giving him seizures, so the doctor took him off his cancer pills to stop the seizures, but now he doesn't take his cancer medication. His short term memory is shot. As we were driving from North Carolina to here, I called my parents. I talked to him and he asked where we were going. I told him we were hoping to make it to Nauvoo that night. He asked if we were going on vacation. I told him no, that we were in the process of moving. He got all excited about the news. He acted like that was the first time he had heard about it. He was so happy that we were going to be so much closer. I held it together until I got off the phone, then I fell apart. I know that I tease my dad and tell him things like his social security number is one and that Noah is in his high school year book because he's so old, but to be perfectly honest, watching him act his age is truly heartbreaking. Anyway, we were all so happy that even though grandpa and grandma couldn't camp, they came to the lake for the day.

 The lake was so fun! I especially loved that there were so many people there to help watch young ones, that I didn't have to get in the water! I wanted to try this here paddle board, but there were a whole lot of people in line in front of me. By the time it would have been my turn, the rain had come to stay. Before the rain hit, there was plenty of time to play.

 M loved this kayak. I love that Payson lakes is small enough that she could have gone almost anywhere and we still would have been able to see her. It's big enough that the little kids felt pretty awesome to be able to paddle so far away from shore.

He tried the kayak and liked it ok, but he really liked the tubes. 

 We ate lunch and then the rains came down and the floods came up! Thankfully J was there to act as our pack mule. I had gone to put kids in the car and watched in amazement as J came up the hill loaded with almost everything we had taken to the lake.

We were told that we needed to make a treat flag. Each family brought a treat and if you got a treat in your tent, you wrapped the treat you had brought in the treat flag and snuck said treat into someone else's tent. We loved it and I must admit that K was so sneaky sneaking the treat into the Jensen family tent. He did it in the middle of the day when everyone was around. I even knew he was doing it and he was so stealthy, that I was shocked when I saw him standing next to me. I asked if he had done it, he smiled a mischievous smile and said," Yeah, I just did!"  It was awesome! We also felt like we needed to put a picture of the tent on here because that's where we spent a lot of time. It rained and rained and rained. We stuck it out for a few hours hoping that it would clear up. It would stop for a few minutes and then it would start again. We finally had a family huddle. We decided to throw in the towel, or rather, all the soggy camping gear, and call it quits. We relocated to my sister's house to finish out the camping trip.

Sleeping on the floor surrounded by cousins is way better! 

 The rest of the week was so laid back and relaxing. K loved playing ping pong while we waited for our lane to be ready for bowling.

The cousins loved bowling together and I loved when the game ended. It was a whole lot of fun, don't misunderstand. But, to have this many young ones bowling took a really long time.

We played at parks,

and splash pads,

and back yards.

There was an amazing slip n' slide that actually worked because it was homemade. All three of the kiddos loved it and I would have even gotten a picture of M playing on it, but the neighbor turned on the splash pad that they have in their backyard and M and the girl cousins ran over to play in there. M came back and told me that the splash pad shot up warm water. When I heard that I was tempted to go play in it too! Your own personal splash pad that has warm water?! That's amazing! We had a blast with my family 

We played hard and were totally pooped when we left Utah to fly to California to be with B's family for a week. This young one lasted until he sat down before he fell asleep. Truth, he didn't make it to feel the plane start to move. We met family in San Diego where we had rented the most amazing house we had ever been in. It was big enough to sleep 32 people in beds. Not bunk beds mind you, no sir. We all had beds. The coolest part of the house was the water slide. We took pictures, but it just doesn't do it justice.

I was really worried about staying in this house because of the pool, but there were alarms on every door that lead out to the pool. The buttons that had to be pushed to bypass the alarms were too high for little people to reach. If one kid was in the pool, every kid in the house wanted to join. I think we could have stayed at the house all week and no one would have complained. I love that the water slide slowed down enough at the end that little B was able to go down by himself. He wouldn't sit up and go, he always went down backwards.

The pool was awesome too. There was a hot tub in the pool and enough space that the whole family could go swimming and you never felt like you were in a crowded pool

 Once we got done with the pool,

There were ping pong tournaments to win

and pool games to be played. I truly suck at pool. Truth.

The young one's loved to watch movies in the theater room. One night B wanted to watch a movie in there. We put children to bed, gathered adults that wanted to and settled in to watch Mission Impossible 2 or maybe it was 3. I don't remember, but it doesn't matter. I lasted long enough to eat most of the popcorn and then I slept through the whole thing. Maybe if we had watched an interesting movie like, Troop Beverly Hills, I would have been able to stay awake! Since we were in San Diego, of course we didn't just hang out at the house.

There was a day spent at Legoland. We were really worried that it was going to be dumb. We had only heard bad reviews by the folks we knew that had been there. Maybe it's because we went with really low expectations, or maybe it really was good. Either way, the offspring would tell you that going was a raging success!

M is totally 100% crazy and this was her favorite ride. She and her cousin, A, could have gone on this thing for most of the day. I could hardly watch it. It picks you up and flips you around like your a limp noodle. They died laughing every time they went on it.

This is one is more like the ones I like. Little B got too hot and got a fever, so he wasn't his normal happy self. We tried crushing a Tylenol up in applesauce. He got the taste of the pill and threw up. Not great! I went to the first aid station to see if they had children's Tylenol. They did, but they charged money for it. I hadn't brought any money with me so I couldn't get him any. Instead, we tried to keep him in the shade and pump him full of water.

 This is the whole gang! Well, the ones that could come. There was one family that couldn't make it and we were all really sad that M and R and their kids couldn't make it.

Of course we had to go to the beach. The water was freezing, and the waves were big. It was exactly how the beach should be. Other than the fiasco of being separated while parking so one car of family members parked miles and miles away from the rest of us and as we were walking towards each other to hopefully meet in the middle, we ended up walking past each other so they ended up where we started so we had to turn around and go back. Once we were all together again, we sang, We're all together again, and ran off to play in the sea life toilet. Ok not really, we didn't sing.

These two played on the boogie boards almost the whole time and the amount of sand that their bodies collected was truly amazing.

Little B loved playing in the waves and the sand but playing in the sand in the waves was not something he likes. He didn't like sitting down and being pushed over by the water.

Of course we went to SeaWorld. I will say that although it was amazing, we liked SeaWorld Orlando better. Everything in Orlando is covered. In San Diego, you are in the sun all day and to say it was hot would be putting it lightly. The poor cousins from Alaska were miserable all day.

Killer whales are huge! They are amazing to watch.

I think this picture should be on a post card. It's so cool!

We loved the dolphins too. They can jump so high!

Maybe the highlight of the entire trip was the wonderful and amazing karaoke night. Soon to be brother-in-law, M, had this magical device that he plugged into the computer and we could search any song in the whole world and it would pull up the words on the TV. I. Was. In. Heaven! I'll be the first to admit that I have the voice of a dying cat, but I love karaoke! I got to sing some Bon Jovi and Crash Test Dummies and  Frozen. Oh! And the Fight Song song. I love that one! Oh what joy Karaoke brings to me!  

B's younger sister is getting married and so when we got back to Utah from California, we stayed for a couple days so that I could go wedding dress shopping with her.

We got to spend time with the amazing T family. Oh how we love them! We have lived apart from each other longer than we lived next to each other, but going to Utah wouldn't be complete without spending time with them. Our kids love each other and I love to hang out with R. Our trip wouldn't have been complete without spending time with them.

 B really wanted to go boating. BJ didn't have to go back to work for a couple days after we got back from California, so boating we went! A moment of pure insanity overtook me and I did a handstand. It was so cool until I flipped off the tube and landed in the FREEZING water. Deer Creek is always so cold! When I say cold I mean cold enough that if one were to jump into the water to pee, it would take a minute because your body goes into almost instant shock from the sub zero temperatures.

Oh how I love the beautiful S! She is so funny and I love that our relationship has gone from me cleaning her teeth to her being part of our crazy bunch forever!

Isn't she beautiful?! I love this young little lass!

We ended our out west extravaganza by going wedding dress shopping with J. I love that M came with us and I loved to watch her face as J came out in dress after dress. The problem J had with finding a dress is that she is absolutely beautiful and looked truly amazing in every dress she put on. She was able to narrow it down to two dresses. She put on one, studied it for a minute and then put the other one on. She just couldn't decide. I was sitting in the chair thinking about how I would love to be a wedding dress model and wear wedding dresses all day. J's little helper lady must be able to read minds. She looked at me and asked if I would come hold the other dress up to myself so J could see the dresses side by side. I ran  walked very calmly up on the little stage thing, took the dress and held it up to myself. I was so happy! Then the little helper lady put the veil on my head and I almost cried! Truth. S took a picture of J and I standing side by side, but I can't put it on here because J isn't married yet. I can hardly wait for J's wedding so that I can see her in her beautiful dress again! Our trip was amazing and I cried when it was time to come home. No matter how long we live away from family, saying good bye is never easy. We love that we live so much closer and hope that we can go visit family so much that they'll wish we would move far away again!