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.

Flaming Fun Family Fling

Mom threw another monthly family dinner party.

Spencer was the main attraction as everyone got a glimpse of him for the first time. Maggie enjoyed holding him...a lot!

She let her mom and Nani have a short turn holding him.

Brooke was sad there were no birthdays in the month of April, which meant no birthday song and no candles and that was a little more than she could bear. So, Rebecca requested a candle be put on a dessert so we could sing and Brooke could blow out the candle.

Mom did better than a candle--she pulled out the candle bowl and Brooke and Rachel went to town helping Mom position many candles in between the Rice Krispie squares.

When the girls discovered other things in that bowl, they started putting those on the dessert as well. They saw that the yellow, corn-on-the-cob holders had pointed ends and they were much easier than the candles to push into the dessert and they stuck as many of those as they could find on the dessert as well.

It got a little exciting when the half dozen candles that were standing side-by-side all caught on fire and made a big flame. The good news is no corn-on-the-cob holders were harmed in the burning of the candles.

There was one little girl who was getting too many hugs from her mother to get involved in the candle incident.

This just goes to show that there doesn't need to be an actual birthday for us to celebrate. Kids can make their own fun with whatever is just sitting around.

The Ever-Watchful Grandmother

The other day, I took care of Eli while Jeff and Sarah went off to a movie. As they were leaving, Sarah admonished over her shoulder to me, "Be sure and watch Eli by the stairs...!!"

Well, of course I'm going to watch him by the stairs because I know he can only climb up stairs and hasn't quite caught on to how he can go down the stairs safely, without falling.

I did have my eagle eye on the dear little boy when we were entering the house after enjoying some fresh air on the front porch. I walked in and let Eli crawl up the one step into the house and there he sat trying to decide whether he wanted to come all the way in the house to where I was or go back outside where he had been enjoying himself just a minute before.

He sat right on the threshold for a few minutes trying to make his decision. I watched him very closely as he thought about which way he was going to go. He wavered back and forth until all of a sudden he chose going back outside and down he went right off the step and landed on his little nose. OUCH!

He got scraped up pretty good for just one stair. I have been afraid he's going to have a crooked nose the rest of his life because of my inability to react quickly enough to save him from the nose dive off the stoop.

Unfortunately, today his nose looks even more red and scabby. I like to think it makes him look more like a boy.

And, I did point out to Sarah that I did exactly as she had asked. I watched Eli by the stairs. I watched him tumble right down that one step to land face-first on the welcome mat.

Perhaps Jeff and Sarah are going to think twice about me watching their son in the future.

Grandchildren On General Conference Weekend

Brooke loves to check out the seasonal decorations when she comes to visit and she got a happy surprise when Jeff secretly filled some of the plastic Easter eggs with her favorite treat--marshmallows!

Caroline's treat was eating Cheetos--messy!

Eli's treat was being wheeled around the house in his stroller so he'd relax and fall asleep--Zzzzzzz!

Spencer seemed to have no trouble sleeping through all the commotion that was going on around here.

Dallas marked Caroline's face to look like a cat which looked cute peering out between the legs of her bear that she wrapped around her neck with the bear's body hanging down her back. She loved walking around the house like that wearing my high heel shoes.

Brooke was transformed into a puppy.

Eli's favorite "toy" these days is his diapers. He sat and rearranged them for a long time while Brooke and Caroline ran around and through his play area.

After getting in her pajamas, Caroline pulled on a pair of Brooke's panties and was so happy strutting around in them.

It may be just me, but I felt like I saw a slight resemblance to her and BYU's mascot, Cosmo...

...just minus the tail.