You've Had a Birthday, Shout Hurray!!

Birthday shout outs to Laurie, Clint, Seth and Glen this month at the family dinner party.

Glen's gift to himself was to readjust the paper chain that has decorated our home for the past many months.

The birthday boy is very happy that the countdown-to-Ben-coming-home-from-his-mission chain is now able to hang over just the fireplace and no other piece of furniture.

I guess we all know what that means...

Our missionary son will be he home in 9 weeks and 2 days, but who's counting?!? I can hardly wait until we receive his flight plans and then Glen will be sure to have the exact week/day/hour/second calendar running in his head at all times of the day or night.

Mother's Day Riddle

QUESTION: How does a mother get to talk to all 5 of her children (plus a couple of her in-laws) at the same time without ever seeing any of them in person?

ANSWER: Have them all join in on a family conference call on the Mother's Day calling home day for missionaries.

It was so great for all of us to talk to our missionary Ben at 8 p.m. in the evening. What a superb way to end an already wonderful Mother's Day!

NOTE: The most common theme mentioned over and over again throughout the conversation was how much Ben now sounds like Abe on the phone.

The Golden Name Lives On

Spencer Adam Golden was blessed in church on Sunday by his father, Dallas Golden.

Rebecca put together a lovely brunch, following the meeting, in their condo clubhouse.

After such a long, cold spring, it was wonderful to see blue sky and have the temperature warm up a little bit--long enough to go outside and take some family photos.

It was a beautiful blessing day of our 8th grandchild!

Moving To a New House and Making a Shingle Repair

It does seem hard to believe that Jeff and Sarah (and Eli, of course) lived with us three months while finding a home to buy. We got kind of attached to the three of them.

With the move, it means there will no longer be any cooking messes made by Sarah. Of course that means there will also be no more delicious cinnamon rolls and other yummy things for me to eat.

All the Excell stuff is now relocated from our house to their new home.

We'll miss Eli and the sink shower he needed to take after every messy meal. Note there's only one scab on his nose in the second picture--the rest of the stuff on his face is food.

Moving day went very well with Jeff's parents driving the trailer up from Cedar City and our family members joining in to help move all the stuff into the home. We had some great helpers!

We went back out to the house another day to make some shingle repairs on their roof. Sam had noticed the problem and had offered to take a big ladder out and help with the job.

Kathy, Wes and I got a tour of the home with everything put away and some of the decorations put up. We were impressed with all they had gotten done in a short amount of time.

I was never so happy to see all three guys back safely on the ground with the job completed in a relatively short amount of time.

Now Jeff and Sarah can rest assured that they will have no leaks in their roof.

The reward for the roof repair effort was going to Golden Corral--which turned out to be Wes's favorite restaurant.