Friday, April 12, 2024

Whirlwind of a week (eclipse and such)

Has it really been a week-technically Grama and Grampa were here for a week but it doesn’t feel like it! 
Soccer Saturday—no pics of Tan cuz it was too cold! Oh and it was awful as hard as our league tries to make the teams even…they’re not, then the other guy had his two older (better) players gone. Ug we spent the whole time trying not to murder the other team. 
But I still want them to be aggressive —just not score a million goals. Oh and I put Tanner in with our weaker players and boy did I hear about it after. 
I dont know what I’m going to do tomorrow! 
Colt had a goal last week! That was fun!! 

Sis got to ride her horse—she loved that! 



The day was mostly conference though. But we did bust out Grampa’s birthday present (he had to come get it) and taught what an orbi gun was. Presumably they all had fun!! 



Oh and my glasses came. (Sissy’s are just blanks for fun) but as young as I feel πŸ˜‰ my eyes are trying to convince me otherwise! 

The best part was I have the kids pictures on the wall and I’ve just not liked them this go around. I took them, I picked and printed them, I  put them up, but I haven’t really liked them, I put those glasses on and it cleared them right up! They are pretty good pics! I still want to update them and make sure I have matching backgrounds next time but…they are pretty good of each kid individually! 
But I still don’t wear the glasses much. Last time I went to the eye Dr he said my prescription would likely only help driving at night…this time he didn’t say that but that’s when I’ve worn and noticed a difference with them, so I’m a step behind (sounds about right) and working my way into it. 
Grandmas made cinnamon rolls for Gen Conf πŸ˜‹πŸ˜‹πŸ˜‹
She’s kinda made a lengend of herself with our neighbors so it’s kindof a thing now. 
Actually my dentist made the best comment he said “ya know…it’s really hard to eat them all in a single setting but…it can be done!” πŸ˜‚ it was pretty funny! 
Sticker earrings from a craft…

They tried blabket fights instead of pillow fights with Grampa this time! 



He’s under that pile somewhere! 
Monday morning early we took Cannon to weights and then Isaac Tanner Addi and I headed to “totality” to see the eclipse. In StL we hit traffic and it was awful! 
Miles (a few) and HOURS of this: 

I 100% went to be a good wife. My parents were in town and Isaac wanted to go to it-so my mom said “oh we’ll do whatever” my dad—slightly more honest said “I don’t want to see no damn eclipse” 🀣 boy am I grateful for his honest bluntness!! Can you image if he was in that line of traffic to see something he didn’t want to see. Actually I kept being relieved Cannon wasn’t with us-I don’t thing Mr almost a teenager would have been very pleasant to be around. But how it worked out was we had to take Addi but the boys were invited but got to choose -go with mom and dad or stay with Grama and Grampa. Tanner wanted to go…he had moments and little glimmers of fun but overall…I don’t know if he was happy he went…
Anyway
Back to that traffic, after an hour or so of that Isaac decided we needed to be on little back roads (like every other traveler didn’t have Google maps and think of that?!) that went well for about 10 min. Then he got into this crazy time warp where it was like he thought he was going to miss it. If traffic was backed up to go right he went left (but he didn’t always wait his turn, he’d just go by all the waiting people) oh it was awful! Then we got to this town where I swear to you we drove in circles at least twice Isaac looking at his phone. Finally I made him stop-so I could go to the bathroom. He said “are you good with just running into Sherwin Williams?” No!!!!! But there was a little diner burger joint on the corner so we went there and I took the kids in to the restroom and to buy an ice cream while he looked at the map. Finally he came in and talked to a local who said “this is the little back road” pointed to the street that looked exactly like I55 as far a as the traffic. He told us we could skip 10 minutes of it by driving behind a row of businesses, we did, and there were a few more eyebrow raising decisions but we ended up on 61 headed south—and actually moving so, good enough! Once we got to St Genevieve we were in totality and going to grab something to eat while we watched…but we didn’t. So we stopped at the next town (actually he drove up to a closed down bar and grill or something like that he’d looked up) but  we were there, the eclipse was happening and there was a cute little church on the hill so, that’s were we went to watch it! We liked it better when we had to place to ourselves but some people came  (from Nebraska! -they’d done 23 miles of I55 in 3 hours) and it was fine. 
So here you have it! 
Cool? Yes-definitely







Worth it? No way, but hopefully it was to Isaac. I had fun being with him. I really only went for him  (he would never want me to go if I didn’t want to…but I think it’s important to not only do whatever I want so I chose to go with him) plus I knew our kids would love being spoiled by Grama and Grampa and NOT having me around. 🀷‍♀️
Anyway after that 2 minutes…
It got light again we figured we’d seen enough and we jumped back in the car and headed back up the road…with MILLIONS of other people. We were on 61…but got back on 55–mistake! Eventually we got back off. Ended up in the same town we’d stopped before (but we didn’t stop hallelujah for my snack bag!) finally I was like “I don’t care what but you better feed me!” And it still took forever but we were moving and eventually found a little road side place to get a burger! We dilly dallied and that was our best move traffic cleared out!!! Oh and Isaac found us a hotel…an art hotel pretty close to downtown St Louis. We also found out the cardinals had a home game! 
So the art hotel had different colored rooms, Tanner picked Yellow because it was supposed to peak your curiosity…oh my! 
Everything was yellow, Isaac figured it was bright enough in there to wear his eclipse glasses and Tanner wasn’t amused at all!! Boy can that kid get ornery…wonder where he gets that from???…



After dropping our stuff and a pillow fight or two we headed to the ball game. 


Tanner liked the home runs (there were 2) but not much else. That new (last year) pitch clock does keep the moving, it went quick but we still left after the 8th inning…the Cards tied it in the 9th but we missed it😏 but they lost in the 10th anyway. I was fine with leaving early as I was scheduled for an early morning temple trip! It was actually pretty awesome our friends from Mississippi’s parents are the temple President and Matron, that was cool to meet them! And I’ve never (that I can remember) been to a session where the men overflowed onto the women’s side, always the other way around so…good job men! 

Anyway I got back to the yellow hotel room about 8 we just basically packed up and headed for the zoo. I did see a few stores that caught my attention but they weren’t open anyway—and I don’t need anything—I just like to shop! 
Isaac offered (multiple times) to let me just drop them at the zoo and go shopping I stuck with’m! 
I’m not a zoo person…probably stems from not being an animal person, but it was easily the best trip I’ve ever had to a zoo. The animals were out and playing or eating, there were 3 cute little tiger cubs (Tan loves big cats and here in Kirksville were tigers, so it was fun to watch them.) The jaguar was pace’n around with a hunk of meat in its mouth,  the Lions were even awake! 









The polar bear gave him high 5 it was awesome! I tried and tried to get a movie of Isaac asking animals if they wanted to be his friend, but I was never successful. πŸ˜‚ oh, and there was a zookeeper in I think it was the leopards area, but he was putting some food out and Isaac said “oh look at that one look how he moves” well, Isaac didn’t even see the other spectator or whatever you call him the guy looking at animals come over to see what he was talking about, but Isaac just though he was funny and started laughing, and I was trying not to laugh AT the poor guy who felt stupid but Isaac couldn’t stop and me trying not to laugh didn’t help. It was so funny and we couldn’t stop laughing, but I was so frustrated with Isaac because I thought it was so mean to keep laughing at that guy, but Isaac can’t even seen the guy. He just thought he was funny. We figured it out at a totally different exhibit. I was like “oh be nice there’s a guy you faked out” and Isaac was said “what what are you talking about?” The other thing that had us cracking up was some teenagers telling Isaac they went to a Jesus high school… I’ll spare you the details on that πŸ˜‰

Oh and did I mention Addster took a header in the hotel parking lot😏 bummer 
After the zoo we headed home! 

These guys had fun without us too! 



We got great reports! 
Dandelion hair! 



Poor Grampa’s going to be poor if he has to pay for a hug😏
She wasn’t quite as game for those birthday spank’ns. The rest of them count on’m! 







They took off Wednesday morning, man that seemed fast but Grama had to get back to working the temple! She left my house spotless—it’s amazing…it’s like she almost makes me think it can be done but na she’s just magic. It was immaculate! By time I picked kids up from school…it wasn’t any more! Poor Grampa was pretty bored we didn’t have any projects for him and didn’t even bust out my new mower. But we’re thankful he came too it was awesome having him here too and being here for Tan’s baptism and in the circle for his confirmation! 
Yesterday and today just normal life…Rizzy’s tulip garden did better this year but it’s still a work in progress…

Colt had his music program yesterday but he got pretty sick—look how pale—he toughed it out though! He probably wouldn’t have gone to school today but he didn’t want to miss their field trip to the literacy fair.  

And she’s a pretty good helper! I don’t know what he’s working on right now—maybe the air conditioning?? But it’s not going as well as the other day. Bummer. 
I think that’s about it…








Friday, April 5, 2024

It’s GREAT to be 8–Happy Birthday Tanner!!

It’s 10:30 I’m barely starting the blog…
I’ll have to add more later but today has been a busy busy great day—in fact “the best day of his life” Tanner told me. 😊
But I guess I better go in order…
Soccer Saturday 



And the Easter Bunny comes here on Saturday… (Sis is just shooting one of the boys squirt guns in the further down pictures she got a squirt bottle to help us try to tame that hairπŸ˜‰—but said bunny coughed up Orbi guns…and might regret it.) 







The Golden Goose is running! 



And I have some great helpers! We were making “Easter cookies”
I think we’ll stick to resurrection rolls in the future but it was worth a shot! 
Easter Sunday!! 









Grama and Grampa got here Wednesday! 



How tired Cannon is  on the days he gets up for weights:

Me: no more blankets we have tons
Grama: it’s what he wants for his birthday
Me: (shrug) ok
If you count throws (or whatever those little blankets are called) she came with 5!!!
But look at those grins…(well one has a peep in it but he loved all the treats Grama brought too!) 



Snuggles! And More blank fun—he’s so happy and we got him a new mattress (finally) he’s in bed heaven! 

Birthday cake was a volcano this go around…



And the big day!! (Tan picked Addi’s dress cuz it’s white and that’s what ya wear when you get baptized so she might as well match. Pretty cute.) 





Tanner and Haven had a combined baptism it was pretty neat. 
Tanner specifically invited Mrs Totta who we adore from when he had her last year, and Mrs Pasa came. It was a Friday evening so kinda weird time we had plenty of church planned with Gen Conf the next two days so we went for it! Plus getting baptized on your birthday is pretty cool!! (We’re 3 for 3 but I’m not sure keeping that streak going will be possible…but cool for Cann, Colt, and Tanner) We did have a zoom Haven’s dad set but when we looked into recording it (because it was in the middle of the night in Bulgaria where Grandma Ison is serving) we got this reminder: 
Whoops ok guess not—so we didn’t. 



But it was a beautiful service! Tanners buddy Terron who got baptized last summer did the talk on baptism. He picked his last years and this years primary teachers to be the witnesses, we sang his favorite song (Dear to the heart of the shepherd)  And Grama said the prayer. 
It was awesome! 
After we’d talked about going out to dinner but Colt and I ended up with soccer practice and Tan picked KFC, finished off the day with that picking treats off of that volcano cake and of course it was the best day of his life! 
Oh and Grampa gave him his birthday spank’ns…and caught up on Seth-who reminded him he needed 5 πŸ˜‚




We watched a little slideshow video of Haven and Tanner that I made while we were waiting for them to get changed then some of the churches Easter videos. 
I did YouTube it but I always get busted in the copyright claims because I put primary songs on there…but I bought the song so I don’t know….
I’ll only post the one of just Tanner here: 

And a quick 2 min taste of the week…