Kelley and I went over to the airport to greet Bronson coming home from his mission.

Waiting, waiting...plane is delayed

Heather's cute family was there too and they were all so excited!

Here he comes!

Happy mom

Happy family

It was good to see him again.  He has been through a lot  (much sickness...Typhoid fever, parasites..etc)  I was super proud of him for sticking it out and staying the whole mission.  There were several times throughout the two years that he was really depressed ( no sleep, sick, heat,  discouragement, Satan working overtime on him) that I thought he would come home. (Thanks to Dan and Brenda for sharing some of his emails with us) 

He was really sick when he got off the plane, but put on a happy face.

We went out to his homecoming talk yesterday and it was just so good.  There were two return missionaries speaking and the building was packed.  They both gave great talks and had some pretty amazing experiences.  The Spirit was strong.  Anyone in that room that didn't believe in the power of missionary work after that must have been asleep.

We went over to Northrups after for a nice luncheon.  It was great to have a chance to visit with our dear friends.  Love these people and feel so blessed to have them in my life.

 

We were in charge of the combined last week and I so appreciate Bonnie taking charge of this one.  She had this idea of doing a talent show or little skits...but we would provide props and music to do their talent with. We all brought a bag full of silly things from home and the kids got to use that in their skit.  We divided the kids into four groups and sent them off to make up their little show. All the leaders got together and made up a dance to "crazy little thing called love"  We laughed a lot and found out that Lance has some great dance moves!

The kids did a great job!  I didn't know if they would really do it, but they really got into it and really hammed it up.  It turned out to be a fun night. 

 We had a few of the new beehives show up and I was glad all the girls made them feel welcome.

This was our girls playing their last basketball game.  I saw the best and the worst of sportsmanship that day.  I got there early because I was the only leader that could make it that day. As soon as I got there, the stake sports director said she needed to talk to me.  So I went out in the hall and her and her assistant  came out there too.  They said they had noticed we had a man helping coach the girls ( Tori's dad)  They said region rules say that we have to have  woman coach the girls.  I didn't know, but it makes sense.  So I said OK, we will talk to him.
Tori showed up right before 11:00.  I could tell when she walked in the door that she was not in a good mood.  She said she felt awful cause she had a sinus headache and didn't get to bed till late the night before. Her dad came in right after her and said he was going to help coach the girls.  I had to tell him what the stake lady had said.  Him and Tori were both kind of upset about that.  I told him he could still help coach that day, but just not for region games.
Well the game started and Tori was out there playing.  She made a wild pass to one of the girls and the ball was picked up by the other team.  Her dad hollered at her to get the ball back and she got really mad at him.  She called for a sub, then came and grabbed her purse and coat and left.  Her dad and I were just sitting there with our mouths hanging open.  The other girls came in out at the quarter and said "where is Tori?"  (they really counted on her to help the team...she is definitely the best player on the team) I told them she wasn't feeling well.  I think her dad was pretty embarrassed by the way she had acted and said he was going to go see what was wrong with her.
The girls were behind by quite a bit at this point but were playing their guts out.  Abbi and Brielle both made a couple of baskets but the other team had a couple of real good players that just ran circles around us.
Elizabeth was just so excited to play and I had been subbing her in for the girls when they got tired.  This is when it got good. The girls kept passing her the ball, then opening up a clear path for her to dribble in and shoot the ball.  The girls on the other team caught on and were leaving it wide open for her.  Everyone was cheering her on.  She just doesn't have the strength to get the ball to the rim, but she was having a pretty good time trying.  It really ended the game on a happy note.  I was so proud of my girls.  On the way out, Lorna (Elizabeth's mom) told me how much that meant to her that the girls would be so kind to Elizabeth.  Those are the kind of things that make basketball worth playing...I mean really...who cares if you win or lose...this is what I will remember.
(Tori text me later that day and apologized for leaving the game...said we probably better get someone else to coach.   I was sad to hear that...I hate to see her end on that note.)

 The other day, Kelley was over at the little house working and he went out to check on the bees.  He said the two hives on the far end were buzzing and looking lively, but the two on the other side had no signs of life.  He took off the lid and the bees were not moving.  He thought maybe they were just kind of dormant, but when he touched them, he could see they were dead.  He was pretty bummed.

He didn't have time to deal with them then, so he just left them.  He talked to Tommy about it and he said they may have run out of food.  So Kelley went and got this stuff that looks like peanut butter cookie dough to feed to the rest of the bees.  I wanted to see what was going on, so I went over with him. 

 These are the happy hives...

These...not so much

So anyway, he spread out this sweet sticky stuff into a big pancake, then took off the lid of the happy hive and set it right in there on top of the bees.  I was like "isn't that going to smash them?" and he said no, that they would crawl out from underneath the newspaper it was sitting on and eat it.

The bees were getting pretty fired up and buzzing all around us so he decided to wait till they settled down to put the food in the other hive.

 So then he decided to look in to the dead hives and try to figure out why they died.  He took the slats out and looked at them and the bees had eaten all of the honey out of the honeycomb.  We looked at all of them, and they were all the same...the honey completely cleaned out and the bees had burrowed down into the  honeycomb and died.  We felt so sad that this had happened.  There were about a zillion dead bees.  Kelley had left a lot of honey in there for them to eat over the winter, but it wasn't enough.  We were thinking it may have been a combination of that and the very cold winter. 

 You can see how they burrowed down into the honeycomb here.  It still amazes me how they make this perfect honeycomb on each slat.  Bees are cool.

We still have so much to learn about raising bees, but are wanting to get more and do better with them.  I guess it's a live and learn sort of thing.

 By this time, the other hive had settled down, and Kelley gave them a big pancake of food too.

 

This is a picture of the back of the little house.  It's all finished and they put a for sale sign in the window.  It turned out really nice.  It has a lot of unique  really cute features...I took a video of it, but my videos aren't posting very well. 

 While Kelley and I were there, a lady came to the door and said she had been driving by the house  for months watching the progress they were making on it. She said she really liked it and wanted to look through it.  We walked through it with her and she sure liked everything about it.  She said she had moved here  from Texas a while back to be with her mother who was ill.  She was living in an apartment but wanted a house for her and her daughter.  The only problem was that she wanted to lease to own it.  I think Kelley and Dan wanted to sell it outright.  Oh well, I guess we will see what happens.  They have had several other people call on it too. 

  Kelley has put so much work into this place...I've grown pretty attached to it.

 I got to spend a really fun day with my sisters on Saturday.  We met at Teina's house and it was  great to see her new kitchen.  They have remodeled the whole thing with new cupboards, pretty granite counter top, and new stove.  They put new wood flooring in too that really looks great. I wish  I would have taken some pictures of everything.  I'm so happy for her.  She's waited a long time for this! She has the secretary all fixed up so nice too and filled with all her pretty things.  It made me want to get busy and do something with the furniture we got from mum and daddy and from Kelley's folks.  It's just sitting out there in the garage waiting for us.

We went up to Tai Pan...(just down the street from Teina's house) and shopped around there for a while.  I was looking for a mirror for the living room and it was sure nice to have my sisters there to help me decided.   ( I kind of have a problem that way)  I found a pretty one that I think will go real nice in there. 

After we finished there, we went over to Chile's for lunch.  It was sure good to have that time to  visit and catch up on each other's lives.  After lunch, we went back to Teina's house for a little birthday party for me!  Teina had made a yummy cake and they all spoiled me with such sweet thoughtful presents.  I'm just the luckiest girl ever to have such wonderful sisters!  

Brenda was getting a new journal to copy and it just happened to start on the day I was born.  She read what daddy had written that day.  It sounded like mum had had some trouble with the pregnancy (she was 40 when I was born) but came through it like a trooper.  Brenda had sent us a little piece from the journal earlier that same year that talked about mum getting up there on the roof and helping daddy put the shingles on it.  (she must have been 5 months pregnant at the time)  Daddy said she would nail them down as fast as he could put them in place.  Ha!  mum was the best! I love how Mum and daddy would work side by side on most everything they did.

Anyway, daddy told how he took her to the hospital in the middle of the night, but then had to leave her to go do the milk route.  It was a Sunday, so he came home and told the older kids they had better skip Sunday school that day because mum was having the baby.  After the milk route, he went back to the hospital and I came soon after that.  He said I looked just like Teina when she was born (I remember him saying in the journal when Teina was born that she was kind of unfortunate looking...Ha!)  He was really grateful that mum and I were both doing fine.  He said they had thought all along that I was going to be a boy so they hadn't thought of any names for a girl. I remember mum telling me it took them about two weeks to come up with my name!  

Candice and I watched the old home movies Larry had put on DVD the other day.  It went from the time Bruce was about 1 to when I was 4.  They were so great.  It just brings this whole journal to life.  It's so interesting to see how mum had made so many darling little matching dresses for us and always had our hair fixed in perfect ringlets. She was an amazing mother!   Those movies are a hoot to watch and sure filled my heart with love and gratitude for my good family.  We sure did have a fun time...from being pulled on the sled to rolling Easter eggs down the hill, to playing in the irrigation water.  It didn't take anything to entertain us...there was always something fun to do.  Kind of makes me feel sad for kids these days.  Life is so different now.

 After our little party, we headed over to the antique show at the Weber county fairgrounds.  I love looking at that old stuff.  I took a picture of this cute table just in case Kelley wanted to make me something purty. (hint hint)

It's interesting to see so many of the things that we remember having as a child or things that mum and daddy had had.  I guess  that means we are getting to be antiques too.

Glad to be able to grow old with my dear sisters.  Love them to pieces.

Fun on the boat...

 It was pretty much a non stop feeding fest...I didn't get any pictures inside the buffet, but that's where we spent most of our time.  The food was really excellent...I didn't have anything I didn't really like.

There has been a couple of Royal Caribbean ships that have had an outbreak of Norovirus recently so they were over the top careful making sure everything was clean and sanitized...including us.  We had to use hand sanitizer before entering any eating area.  There were a few incidents of sickness on our floor, but I think it was people that had drank too much.

 We had a game of miniature golf our first day out to sea.  It was really windy but fun.  Another night we all went out and played shuffleboard after dinner.  Ha!  its harder than it looks!

Kelley and I played ping pong one day and I about peed my pants cause I was laughing so hard.  The ball kept flying over by this old couple and about landed in her hair, but they didn't even notice.

 We had a real sweet gal that took care of our room.  She kept everything so nice and tidy and saved Kelley when he didn't get his shirt turned in to be ironed in time for the first formal night.  He was going to just wear a different shirt, but she came running up with his ironed shirt just as we were heading up to dinner.

We had a great head waitress too.  She was from Chile and was quite the talker.  She spent a lot of time with us and we got to be good friends.

 I didn't get any pictures in Jamaica.  I'll have to get the ones that Kelley took with his phone.  We got off the boat and were trying to decide what to do.  All at once, a whole herd of people came flooding into the shopping area.  The gigantic Oasis ship had just came into dock too and they had about 5000 people on board.  We decided instead of going to one of the beaches, we would take a little tour of the area.  It was kind of sad to see how many guys were just standing around as we drove around the town.  I guess there isn't that many jobs to be had around there if they aren't in the tourist business.
 

 This was on Grand Cayman.  We had to take a tender boat into the island, then we took a taxi bus to a pretty beach there.

 After we had had enough sun, ( it was really warm there!) we went back into the town and went to Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville for lunch

 The entertainment on the ship was really good.  The first night they had a singer that did a lot of songs from our era.  The next night they had this ventriloquist that was really talented and funny.  He put on a really good show.  They had a comedian another night that was funny too.  One night they did a newly wed game that was pretty funny too.  I don't usually love the ship singers and dancers but they put on a pretty extraordinary show.  The last night they had these gymnasts that did a pretty amazing show too.

 This was in Cozumel.  I think this was my favorite place of the three islands.  We found a taxi guy that would take us where ever we wanted to go and show us around the island too.  He took us to a shopping area that was nice.  I found some cute little dresses for Olivia and Emily and a superman cape and mask for Sam.

 It was funny when we were walking around  the city there...this big bus was trying to turn the corner and he totally bashed into this red truck.  There was a guy asleep in the back of the truck and he hopped out of there like he'd felt an earthquake.  The bus backed up, then tried to go again.  The owner of the truck came running up and pulled over a little farther...not really upset about the scrape along the side of his truck.  The bus just went on like nothing happened.  Ha!  There were police all over the place there...driving around in jeeps with their guns slung over their shoulders...they saw the whole thing happen, but didn't even blink an eye at it.

  The driver took us to a beautiful beach where we could snorkel.  We went out a little ways and only saw a few tiny fish, but the farther we went out, we saw more and more fish.  It was kind of funny cause when we got to the edge of the roped off area where they wanted us to stay inside to snorkel...that's where all the fish were!  We would hold out our hands and they would swim up to us like they thought they were going to be fed.  I guess beyond the rope is where they take the tours for snorkeling and they give them food to feed the fish.  There were big schools of fish out there that were so pretty and colorful.  It was really neat to see.

Putting out the vibe...Dan and Kelley were killing me

This is our boat up against the Oasis of the Sea.  It's kind of mind boggling to see a ship this big....it's more like a small island. They were going around to the same islands we were so we got to see it up close a few times.

Well that's all my pictures...kind of hard to sum up this wonderful week...it flies by so quick.  I could have stayed another week and would have been very happy.  Besides all the pampering you get on the ship, Kelley sure does spoil me and treats me like a queen.  It was so great to get to spend that time with him.  And getting to go with this bunch of people was just the best.  They are so fun to be with and just the dearest of friends.  I'm so grateful for them and the many years of  friendship we have enjoyed.