Utah fer Real

Did you notice the "fer" in the title. Yeah, I thought that was funny too!

Well, I'm back from my snowy-spring-in-Utah adventures. Brent left a week before me so that he could watch NCAA March Madness...his absolute favorite thing in the world. And, it happened to work out, not that it was great that it did work out, but it did work out, that Brent's Grandma's funeral was during his time there as well. Our newest nephew, Jackson, had his blessing too. I missed much, but if you are at all interested you could go here or here or here or here to see a little more about those things. They also dug up his Grandma's dog...quite the interesting story. I missed a lot! (I did send Brent with the old camera, but he didn't come home with any pictures.)

Then, I got there and the real fun started. Just kidding, but it was a good time.

We spent some time with my parents

This was at a real fancy - ok, not so fancy - bbq place that my dad LOVES. I can't remember the name, but it was definitely man-type food.
We spent some time with Brent's mom and the family that was still in town.
This is Jackson, our newest nephew!
Jayson playing with Brent.
Me and Tay - we share a name you know...
Rylee is quite the singer, and she also knows all the words. She was singing a Taylor Swift song and a couple of times I thought, "Oh, that's what she says..."
Brent is not a fan of babies. He doesn't mean any offense, he just doesn't want to hold them, or touch them, or really even talk to them. Once they start walking and talking, he's much more friendly. So this is Jess chasing him around with Jackson trying to get him to hold the baby. He never did. I did. I like babies.
Why do all kids like to hang over the edge of something and say hi?

The next few pictures need an explanation. When Brent's family was together, they thought they would devise a catapult system so they could throw things. Because you really need to throw things. So, what did they decide to throw - among other things, a flaming match. And who did they get to catch said flaming match? Jared - the youngest. Can't you just see it? (I'm pretty sure had I been there, they wouldn't have done this because I am a FREAK about things catching on fire.) Anyway, after the others left, Brent built another catapult to show Tay, Rylee and Jayson what the fun was all about.




We also got to go to my youngest cousin's wedding. Let me explain my cousin situation for all of you from HUGE families. Brent has 30+ cousins on each side - so he has like 60 cousins. I have 6. All together. That's it. Two on one side and four on the other. I'm closest to the four on my mom's side. (Although Facebook is helping me get to know my other side cousins too!) We're a lot more like siblings than cousins because we grew up together at my Grandma and Grandpa's house. So I really wanted to be there for James' wedding.
Here's the happy couple. James and Chelcie.
Here's my cousin Jennifer and her husband Danny.
Jennifer, me and my other cousin Jenny
My Uncle Joe. I am embarrassed to say that I never noticed that Joe had such blue eyes before. Weird.
Me and my Aunt Linn - Joe's wife. James, the groom, is Joe and Linn's son.
Me and my little - I mean, younger cousin James. I love being short.

I'm the oldest out of my cousins and everyone was always so excited when they got to be taller than me. Why? I'm not that tall so if you don't get to be taller than me, it's just sad. (Sorry Jen - she's quite a few inches shorter than me.)
Me and Jenny
This is me and Sarah, Jennifer and Danny's daughter. She got to be the flower girl. She did a great job!
Mom, Adrian - Jen and Danny's son - Dad, and me.
And here's my family, minus Brent whose taking the picture, my Aunt Jackie, who couldn't make it, and my cousin Adam and his family - he wife Cherise's dad passed away suddenly.

When I figured out that James' wedding was going to be the same weekend as Conference, I decided to try to get tickets to Conference since I've never gone. Luckily we did get tickets, pretty good tickets too. It was AWESOME to be in the same room with a Prophet of God. Too cool.
Here we are waiting in line. Sadly even at the Conference Center, you have to go through security.
Look at all those people. The Conference Center holds 21,000 people. Amazing!
A nice way to end the post, don't you think? (If you would like to see some more pictures from the Salt Lake Temple, go to my Made by the Sea page.)

Utah was fun, snowy, cold and tiring. We had another adventure trying to get home, but it turned out well in the end. The short story is that our plane was coming from Las Vegas where there was a HUGE windstorm and they couldn't take off. So our flight kept getting pushed back and pushed back, it looked like we were going to be in the airport for a while...then they cancelled a flight going into Spokane because of weather and we got to take that plane to Seattle - leaving on time. Woho! A much better time than the last time we flew out of Salt Lake. (There was much running in Spokane. Wait, maybe it's Spokane that's the unlucky airport.)