Visit from friends and April Fool's day

 Our wonderful friends (who used to be neighbors, but are now our neighbors up north in Canada), the Deans, came for a visit. They were on their way down to Utah for spring break. We had a wonderful, happy Sunday evening visit. We had dinner and a lot of laughing, talking and games. It was so great to see that the kids picked right where they left off and were instant friends once again.

 Here are the "girls" and Augie... he's the only boy in this age group. Emma and her mom Heather came to visit the Deans as well. So from left, Emma, Abby, Emily, Shelby, and Augie.

 Playing games on the floor. Jimmy, Sammy, Chad and Riley (Emma in background).

 So sweet! I love this picture. Such good friends still! They played dress up and watched a movie.

 The moms: Me, Jessica holding Hailey, and Heather. We had a good chat... just what moms  need!

 Shelby looking like a rock star!

 More talking and having fun.

I miss you! Thanks for the visit, Jessica, and all your family. We'll meet again....sometime!

For April Fool's Day I had this "great" idea. I was looking up St. Patrick's day dinners (we had corned beef and cabbage and irish soda bread) when I saw this "cake." It's two meatloaves, cooked in layer cake pans, and frosted with mashed potatoes. I had leftover potatoes so I added them as scoops of "ice cream". So we had dessert for dinner...the potatoes look slightly purple because my comedic kids decided to color the milk blue, then another one decided to color it red. So we had purple milk that day.

Our "layer cake" from the side. It tasted okay, but the potatoes got cold quickly and needed some gravy.

And then we had dinner for dessert. I made a "pizza" out of a sugar cookie, some cream cheese frosting, and strawberries. My kids thought this was quite the treat. I hardly ever make homemade cookies, so they thought this was out of the norm. And to turn a cookie into their favorite food, pizza, well that was the bomb. I had lots of leftover dough so we cutout the letters of their names with alphabet cookie cutters. 

The next day the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile came to town. Abby and Augie went to see it. It is about 11 feet high. The people who drive it work for a year taking it all across the country. The next Monday we saw it pulling up to a red light, just like a normal car... hilarious looking car, of course.

Another look at the weinermobile. The sign in front shows there are several still in service.

 

I haven't posted a blog update for a very long time... so I apologize to the one person who actually checks my blog... anyway, here are a few pictures from March. We had a Mardi Gras party where Grammy made a cajun meal, a king cake, and provided masks and beads. It was a lot of fun! I have never celebrated Mardi Gras before, so this was a new tradition for us.

The bottom 3 pictures are from our "anniversary" weekend, or couples trip, whatever you want to call it since our anniversary isn't till June. We went down to Salt Lake, got a hotel, visited a zoo, went to a comedy show, then visited my parents. We forgot to take the camera to the zoo, so we had to buy a disposable camera and have yet to develop the pictures.... got to admit, I like digital cameras! Then a picture of me in our hotel (I hardly even include pictures of me, and I don't really like these, but thought I'd put them in anyway). Then the bottom picture is me and my parents and two brothers. We got to meet my brother Ammon's girlfriend, Jackie, and we really liked her. She was a lot of fun. We highly recommend keeping her, Ammon. She took this picture for us. Then we hopped in our van and went back to Idaho. It was a short trip but provided well-needed respite from the daily grind. Wish we could do it more often!