A Sunday Afternoon with Nana and her Fuzzband!

We were invited to spend the afternoon at my mom and husbands house for some bbq and some family. We headed over there at about 2:30pm after Tyler woke up from his nap. The kids were so excited to go and see Nana, but that apparently wore off after a couple minutes of driving because Tyler and Brooke both fell asleep!

The kids were sadly surprised when we arrived and they realized that it wasn't the same house they remembered from the last time we visited. She moved just before she was married, and this was our first trip over to her new house. It's really cute! She's not that far away from Greece in Irondequiot, I think it only took us about 15 minutes or so to get there.

We could smell the bonfire when we pulled up. That smell always reminds me of my mom. She loves to be outside and cook on the fire. The kids were a little concerned at first because they smelled fire, but we explained and it was o.k. Both Brooke and Seth had recently done fire safety in school, so they were talking about that a bit. At one point Brooke wouldn't go through the smoke in the air from the fire pit, she walked all the way around to get back to her spot at the table. I explained to her that's it's a different kind of smoke and she's ok and doesn't have to crawl under it, and a little later she came up to me with a huge grin and said "I didn't crawl under the smoke, I walked through it!" I was glad she wasn't afraid, but hopefully she'll be able to keep it straight if she ever needs to!

I was able to give my mom and Doug their wedding gift today. I made them a wedding album scrapbook. I really like the way it turned out, and they seemed to also! Mom was so excited to get her pictures and I think seeing them in an album with beautiful decorations was a nice surprise! I was able to transcribe her wedding ceremony and a poem that she read during the ceremony and print it out and used that in her album as the journaling. She liked that too! I was so excited to give her such a special gift! I like giving people things I make and I hope they enjoy them as much as I enjoy making them. Here's mom and Doug looking at the album just after they opened it.

Here's a slideshow of the album. I took pictures of the pages so I would have a "copy" of her wedding album.

Mom made a cake for my birthday, and my brother Brent's birthday is next week on the 22nd, so she put both of our names on there.

My mom gave me a beautiful necklace and earrings set as a gift. That was so nice of her. She also offered to babysit one night in the next couple weeks so Mike and I can go out for a while. Stay tuned for a post featuring me looking good wearing my new jewelry.
The kids had a great time playing outside. Doug has a fenced in area around his garden, and the kids were having a blast playing in there. They were also playing football, and soccer and then went on a little hike right before we left. There is a huge hill at the end of the property that's all wooded and the kids were begging to hike down there. I really couldn't this time because I'm still fighting off my neck pain, but Mike was a good sport and took the kids down there. I'm looking forward to feeling better so I can hike around down there too.

Tyler hung out in his stroller for a bit, but also had a chance to run around and throw a couple balls too. We were a little nervous with him and the fire pit. Tyler had his very first marshmallow. He loved it!


Hanging out with my family is always fun and crazy. Michael, my second youngest brother, was having a difficult time with his chair! I also learned that he has to work a 24 hour shift tomorrow! I was jokingly asking him if he could babysit for me tomorrow since it's my birthday and he said he had to work. And I said, in the morning?, and he said all day. I said you have to work for 24 hours? So that was kind of an ongoing joke all day. Michael taught Tyler how to do the fist pound. It was pretty cute.


Seth at one point jumped up on Brent and wouldn't get off. That boy is a monkey and a leech all rolled into one! It was pretty funny. Mom was having a little trouble spelling too. So we spent most of the afternoon picking on her about her marmallowsh. (I guess you had to be there!)

We had a great time visiting. The kids were pretty worn out and hopefully they will sleep in for me in the morning. I'm rooting for at least 7am! When we were getting ready to say family prayers tonight someone asked if we could pray about being grateful we went to Nana's and Fuzzy's house (Fuzzy is Doug's nickname). And Seth, who loves to play with words said "yeah Nana's Fuzzband. It was hilarious! As soon as I got the kids to bed I called my mom to tell her. She thought that was cute. When we were telling them that Nana got married and his nickname was Fuzzy, Seth started calling him Fuzzy-G! When I'm not wanting to strangle him, he's making me laugh!