Pool

The pool is open and has been used a TON already this year. If the weather stays nice like it has been we might just have to put up a tent at the pool so we can move in there.
This is how the weather was the day Mike took the pool cover off. HA! It made me chuckle a little bit. I promise the sun was out (kind of) when he started the project, but it sure didn't last.

The sun did find it's way to our neck of the woods and has been spoiling us rotten so far. I LOVE it. Here are the first jumps of the season. The water was cold at first, but hasn't lasted. The water temp is already up to 80 degrees. YEA!

Jake is a WIMP. Aren't labs supposed to like to swim? He is scared to jump in. He chases the boys around the pool and wants so badly to get in but just doesn't dare or he will stand on the stairs and get his whole body in except one leg. Goof ball. He's been pushed or pulled in a few times so he at least knows how to swim.

One time last week, he did jump in and must have enjoyed it, because after that he and I went next door to visit our neighbors who were swimming in their pool. They weren't planning on swimming long so they had only pulled the solar cover off of half the pool. Well Jake walks into their pool and feeling pretty confident, jumps into their pool right onto the solar cover. UGH! We called him to come to us , he tried to come but the more he swam the deeper into the mess of the solar cover he went. It all happened quickly but he seemed to be all tangled up in the solar cover and it didn't seem to be getting better. So "HERE I COME TO SAVE THE DAY" - sung in my best super hero voice, I jumped in after him, fully clothed with my bandaged ankle (from my sprang) and my running shoes too. I know I'm crazy, but the dog lives on. :-)

Trumpet

I'm so sad, I don't have any pictures to share for this post, but I'll add it anyway. Last week, Ben had two trumpet performances. Earlier in the year he was asked to be in a trumpet ensemble. They performed Monday night and did a great job. Ben was in a duet, playing "Swing Low" the group of 6 kids played the Olympic Theme song (my favorite), Star wars and the 007 theme song. It was a lot of fun.

He also had the privilege of playing Taps at the memorial day assembly on Friday. That was extra cool. Sometimes when that song is played, it is played once, and then played again as an echo. The echo honors the fallen solider. Ben played the echo and did it beautifully.

In stead of taking pictures, I recorded these two performances. Somehow, I managed to record it in super speed, I have no sound, and the performance is played back so quickly, you barely know it's begun. So sad to say, you just have to imagine, how great of a job he did.

House

We've needed to have our house painted for a long time but it's not cheap, so we haven't been in a rush to get it done. Finally, we couldn't put it off any longer so we took the plunge. Picking colors was hard. I used Amelia (my aunt) as my consultant. She's good with colors, poor thing she got many emails and phone calls trying to help me. Right up until they were putting the colors on the house I wasn't convinced that the colors we had picked were the right ones. In fact, when they started adding the body color, it really did look like we were painting our house black. I was worried about it being to dark, and the white trim being to white and then black shutters on top of that? I probably would have changed the colors at the last minute but Mike said NOPE we're done, this is what we've picked and we're sticking to it. I'm SOOOOO GLAD he said that because

I LOVE IT!
It looks much better in person, so all of you better come and see it! :-)

Crockett

I don't even know where to begin with this little adventure, but here we go. Mike grew up with Dalmatians, he loves them and has always wanted another one. When we were looking to buy a dog, we looked at Dalmatians, but they average in price at about $1500 and neither one of us wanted to pay that for a dog so we have remained dalmatianless.
The Thursday before Mother's day Mike see's on craigslist that a guy is getting a divorce and is giving his Dalmatian away for free. His name is Davy Crockett, Crockett for short. He's a 3 year old pure bread, registered, with all of his shots etc and he really did seem like a good dog. I personally don't want two dogs, but Mike really wanted to look into it. Long story short, several phone calls, emails, a video of the dog showing off his great temperament, a trip out to see him with the boys later and we now have TWO dogs. My greatest fear and the reason of all my anxiety since he even showed me the listing. I never wanted him, but Mike wanted him SO BAD so what do you do.
Thursday night, for the exception of the HUGE amount of dog hair that he left everywhere he went (that drove me CRAZY) but, Nate had bought us a great comb when we got Jake, to get rid of the dog hair, so we were able to get that under control. Oh and except for the fact that he's not fixed and tried to mate with Jake every chance he got, he was a great dog.
By Friday he was learning about the mating thing, then there was Saturday. When the kids are home, life is a little hectic at our house, add two bigger dogs to the mix and hectic becomes insane. So with neighbor kids in and out, painters coming to paint our house, scout masters coming to meet with Ben, plus the regular day to day stuff. We were both realizing "insane" was sometimes an understatement. Then Crockett started to get comfortable in his new home, I was talking to my neighbor on the back porch, who had just brought us cookies, and I see Crockett through the window, put his paws up on the table and eat the entire plate of cookies. Over the next two days he managed to grab off the counter or table, banana bread, wheat bread, cookies, and the last straw for me was 2 boxes worth of mac and cheese in a tuperware that was SUPPOSED to be my kids lunch at school that day.
I tried really hard to play the role of good wife, and keep the dog, but I guess that isn't a strength that I have. Mike quickly realized that my sanity was probably more important, and that our timing probably isn't right to have two dogs right now, so he listed the dog on craigslist and he was gone to a new home by Tuesday. AHHHHH, LIFE IS GOOD!

Baseball

We are immersed in baseball (again) at our house. Even though Luke decided to take a year off this year, we still seem to have some form of the sport almost every night of the week. Josh started pitching this year and is having a ball. He is currently playing coach pitch, which means, the kids will pitch the first 2 or 3 pitches to the batter and then the coach will pitch until the kid hits the ball. They do that over and over again until everyone bats. Normally, very few kids hit a ball off the child pitcher. The balls are so out of control it's easier to just wait for the coach. Saturday was Josh's second time pitching and all but 2 kids hit off of his pitches. Everytime someone would hit the ball Josh would look at me and give me this reaction (below). He was so excited. Although, Ben and my Dad are having a little anxiety over him being excited that they are hitting balls off of his pitches. They are trying to explain to him that that's not always the best thing in baseball. I'm still a proud mama.

Ben is also loving the game. We have a really good friend who is just a few years older then Ben and is an awesome pitcher. He comes over to our house probably 3-4 times a week so they can pitch to each other. Ben has learned a lot from him. I love more then anything, just watching my kids put their mind to something, watch them as they are learning it and trying to succeed.

Art on display

Luke had one of his art pieces displayed at the Shrewsbury Art show. This piece is called "Faces" it isn't one of his favorites, he says, but somebody must like it, because it's now being hung in the school superintendents office through the summer. GREAT JOB LUKE!

Welcome Home

We came back to a sick dog, he had a target rash which is a sign of lyme disease from a tick bite, which he had before we left. We assumed the sickness was from that, but dogs don't get target rashes from ticks just humans. His target rash was from another bug bite, the sickness was the stress from us being gone. It was not lovely.

Before we left, Josh had poison ivy. He managed to pass it on to Mike, who passed it to me. I had a few spots on my arms and face and one on my leg. The morning after we got home, I went out to water my garden. I guess I stayed bent over to long because my back would straighten. OUCH! Long story short, that took me a few days to recover from. The poison ivy, after a week of it, it continued to spread and ended up covering about 85% of my body. YUK! I finally broke down and got some drugs from the doctor and within a few days started to recover. I am MUCH MUCH better but still have a few spots on my arms, hand and leg. Will it ever go away?

I found the picture I took of the poison ivy on my leg. GROSS!!! It actually got worse then what you see in the picture. YUCK!

Niagra Falls

The 23 hour drive home was a long one. But I have to admit it was nice to be able to sit still and just hang out with my fam. Although, I think I was in and out of consciousness that first day of the drive. On the second day we stopped at Niagra Falls on the way home. It's pretty amazing.

I forgot to add on the way TO Omaha, we stopped at Notre Dame in South Bend, IN. It was a quick stop, drove around campus, saw the football stadium (we had just watched Rudy not to long before) so that made it extra cool. :-) We even saw the football team practicing on their own "special" field.

I have to admit, the history surrounding the stadium was pretty cool.




A GLORIOUS sight!

Goodbye

That morning we loaded up and headed out. We got the Von Trapp family "So Long, Farewell" as we were driving away. I LOVE MY FAMILY they make me smile!

Last hurrah

I'm sorry to be dragging this trip out for so long, there is just to much going on around the house/yard/boys schedule, to be able to sit for a long period of time to update. But, I twisted my ankle last night (not a big deal, just walked off a step wrong) the benefit of that is I'm forced to stay down right now, so there is hope that I can get caught up. :-)

After Winter Quarters and Davis Camp, we came home and James cooked us T Bone steaks on the grill while the girls made the side dishes and then celebrated Marshalls bday with a divine chocolate cake and ice cream. It was YUM! After, we gathered for a little family get together before we all started going our separate ways.

The evening started with Spencer entertaining us all with a couple of songs that he played on his electric guitar. He started playing awhile back, and is now pretty good. He's played for EFY a couple of times and some other church functions. He surprised us all with his first song being a dedication to my mom. It was "Tears in Heaven" by Eric Clapton there wasn't a dry eye in the room by the time he was done. To me, it showed how much of an impact my mom had with those two kids, here we are 4 1/2 years later, the tenderness could still be seen in a now 15 year old boy. It was a sweet moment.

Afterwords, we watched a slide show that I had put together. We had over 400 pictures (no worries it was only a 20minute slide show) that showed our family life. In the pictures we welcomed the new additions - spouses and babies and highlighted the memories weddings, vacations, babies, eagle scout awards, army days, moves, reunions, missinary farewells and homecomings etc and also the more challenging times - my sisters heart attack, my mom's cancer, Josh's birth. It was good to see it all.
We then (on tape for family history purposes) had James tell us the story of Laura's heart attack. Leading up to it, the during and some of the after. There was a lot of good that came out of hearing that for everyone, but for all of your sakes I won't go into detail. But one thing that impressed me the most was towards the end he talked about Laura and how much he admired her for so gracefully going through this challenge in her life. I hadn't ever really thought of that before. In my mind it's been about James and the "saint" that he is for doing all that he does each day for my sister and the kids. Because of my sisters lack of memory, I hadn't thought about how she realizes the challenges that she is facing, but isn't well enough to fix it. It was touching to see him realize that, speak so highly of her and with so much love, I truely admire them both.


The evening went on with a lot of discussion, we found some of my mom's journal entries that were priceless, we shared memories of our families time in Omaha, and spoke words of appreciation towards each other. It was a great evening. We talked until late 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning I can't remember. But I loved every minute of it.

Davis Camp

After the temple, we made one more stop. Davis Camp.
Many of the saints were not able to get all the way to Winter Quarter's. Because of this, several camps were settled in the surrounding area for people to stay for the winter. Recently, in the past few years an effort has been made to locate all of these camps. Around the time when Spencer had decided to put together his Eagle project, the newest camp "Davis Camp" had been recently located. He had heard about some of the stories that had taken place there, and really felt that he wanted to make a sign, marking this particular camp. So that's what he did for his eagle project. While he was doing this, my dad did some resarch on his own.

At Spencer's eagle court of honor, my dad let him know that the camp that he felt so closely connected to, to inspire him to mark it with this sign, was actually settled by his 6th Great Grandfather William Davis (on my mom's, dad's side).

An attachment to the sign is in the process of being made that will say
Eagle Project by
Spencer Anderson
6th Great Grandson of
William Davis

Winter Quarters

Nobody was up very early the next morning. There was a lot of relaxing, sleeping in. James and Ben, with Laura entertaining, made everyone breakfast, while everyone else played pool (my children were playing pool every chance they got the entire time we were there), hung out, and my clan was also getting ready to leave the next day. Not a whole lot happened until around 2ish that afternoon, in fact, if we had anything to do with it, I don't think any of us would have gone anywhere, but my Dad felt it was important for us to go over to see the temple and to the visitors center that is there by the temple. I'm glad he did, it ended up being a highlight for me.

(I think this is one of my favorite pictures that I've taken)
The Winter Quarters temple is currently built where the saints had built a town called Winter Quarters. This is where many saints would stop and stay for the winter (or longer if necessary) until they could move forward to the Salt LakeValley. At one point there were more then 500 small one room cabins built along the bank of the Missouri river. They would welcome as many people as they could fit in the cabins, generally 10-15 people, they always wanted to make sure that everyone had a place to live, but also with all the bodies, it would help keep each other warmer in the cabins. Many people also died while they were there, because of cold and sickness. The temple is built right next to the Mormon Pioneer cemetery. To me it's a reminder of the sacrifice that was paid for some of the privileges that we cherish now.

In the trail center (vistor's center) there is a room that has floor to ceiling glass windows over looking the temple, with a statue of this man in the corner. I have been here many times with my mom, but had forgotten all about it until I walked in that room. I could feel my mom so strongly it was almost overwhelming. Last time I was there, her and I had taken the tour and the guide mentioned that the man in this statue (I can't remember his name) lost his wife and all 9 of his children on the trek west. He endured his trials had amazing faith and kept going. He made it to Salt Lake on his own, where he continued on to help build the Salt Lake temple. My mom was so inspired by that. At the time, she had cancer, her daughter was not well, she was fighting a lot of battle's that seemed to be a steeper hill then she thought she had strength for. I remember as she felt the strength from this man, she just cried "She said what he went through was so much worse, if he can find the strength, surely I can too."
I'm so thankful for that memory. As I walked around the Mormon pioneer cemetery and the temple grounds, I felt very strongly that she still receives strength from the examples that the pioneers have set, especially those that lived and struggled there at Winter Quarters.

Another highlight for me, was during this part of the tour. But the highlight didn't come until we were on our way back to MA. We were talking about some things that we learned on our trip, and Luke said "I learned that to pull those handcarts alone you had to be really strong, but the pioneers didn't have to be strong alone, because they were strong together, they were strong like families, I'm glad I have a family." What a great thing to learn, I hope he will remember that forever, that we are a family and we can be stronger together through the good and the bad.

5th (and final) stop - Adam ondi Ahman

Back to updating the trip. Our last stop on our little rendezvous was to Adam-ondi-Ahman. This is a beautiful place. Our church owns a lot of land here, some that is used for growing food for our storehouses. Some of the early saints had settled in this area in the 1800's. Also, the exact locations are unknown, but there is record of the people from the time of the Book of Mormon that lived in this area as well.

The drive home was long. I'm still not sure how we all made it. We had 3 cars and 3 very tired drivers with 13 very tired passengers. I think we arrived back to Omaha, at around midnight. It was one very fun but very long day. Although, it was safe to say that the passengers although tired, probably had the most energy of all. We played Old Maid, listened to all sorts of music, danced ( I even taught Mike a few "driving" dance moves), we joked and laughed a lot of the way home. We all wish we lived closer to Spencer and Meghan, we would have so much fun together.