FAMILY ANNIVERSARY #15 - TRIP TO PROVO, UT

I was so excited to celebrate our 15th year family anniversary with the family by going to Provo. The reason why we chose Provo was because the Provo City Center Temple had an open house going on right now. Perfect timing for us!!!

We left on Friday and headed down to Provo to our hotel. Our kids just LOVE staying in hotels. We don't get to do that very often, but we have been staying more often than in the past. We decided on Red Robin for dinner and met Laura and Jason, along with Sam!!!

Dinner was not great, but we did enjoy each other's company. After dinner, we took a dip in the pool and earned more points for our fitness challenge.

Saturday morning, we beat the morning rush to breakfast and headed to the temple. It was quite the rat race going back in forth in the lines in the underground parking lot. Luckily the standby line was quick.

After waiting for a little bit, we went into one of the theater rooms, put on the famous booties and watched a 10 minute video of why temples are so important to Mormons. It was beautiful.

It was beautiful. Kate was so touched at the baptismal font that she asked if she could be baptized for cousin Maze when she turned 8. I had to explain to her that girls are only baptized for girls. And then Robyn reminded me that children under 8 don't need any temple ordinances. He is perfect. It still gives me chills just thinking about that perfect nephew. I can't wait to meet him again.

Here are some pictures from online since photography is not allowed.

One of the entries

Baptism font

Staircases

Celestial Room

One of the sealing rooms

A beautiful picture of the temple and the sunset

The end of the tour ends with the Christus

Our pictures as we were leaving!!!

After the temple, we went to Spanish Fork to see Laura's apartment. We had a good laugh about how narrow her kitchen was. Dishwasher in the back, across from the fridge and then the stove. It's cozy!!!

The kids then played the wii and tried out several things. It was very fun!!! Here they are bowling!

the Peterson family!!!

 After the time in Spanish Fork, we went back to Provo to visit with the infamous Thomas family. We like to call them the Fa'aga'i's. Haha!!!

We had a wonderful time visiting at a lunch/dinner!

They brought up back to their cozy apartment. I had to take a picture of their picture frame!!! 

We all signed their frame while we visited even more.

After we were done visiting, we headed up to the Jolley's to visit with our cousins. We had dinner and then played card games while the kids played too. I love that they all get along and love each other.

Faith and Andrew

Dawson, Jony, and Kate

Too much fun!!! Sunday, we attending their full block of meetings at church. I really loved it so much!

The weekend was so much fun and worth every minute of it. I hope the other kids loved it as much as I did. Here's to another 15 years!!!

MISSIONARY FILLED WEEK

This week was a missionary filled week. The missionaries happen to stop by on Sunday night. That was when Brandon told me that I was supposed to call the ward mission leader to sign up for a dinner.

Elder Earley played the guitar. (He is really good)

And we took a picture of the missionaries - Elder Kim, Elder Earley, Elder Holiday

That was Sunday. Making the phone call, we found out that we would have them over for dinner on Saturday, but that meant that we wouldn't have Elder Earley. Another call later, we invited them over for dinner on Monday night, which used to be a regular thing for the Jolley household.

We served breakfast for dinner so that they could try pumpkin french toast!

We played General Conference Jeopardy which was fun to stump all of us. Good times!

Thursday morning, we got to pick up on of "our" missionaries and bring her to the airport to go home. Sister Richins really touched our lives and we just loved getting to know and love her. It was sad to see her go, but I hope that she continues to stay in touch with us!!!

Seeing her through security at the Pocatello Airport.

Saturday, Elder Kim requested that we do a 'greenie' dinner for Elder Holiday who didn't get his greenie dinner yet (he's been out about 6 weeks now.) I did not want to disappoint.

Green beef pot pie

Green salad

Green pistachio fluff

It was fun to have them over again. They taught us the message of the Restoration for practice. And for practice, Brandon pretended to be Catholic. We will just have to follow up with them the next time that we see them to see how things are going.

We love having the missionaries over because it fills our home with the spirit. It's really like nothing else. They are young and full of life. Plus they have deep and growing testimonies of the Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you Elder Earley, Elder Kim, Elder Holiday, and Sister Richins for filling our week with missionaries!

MORMON SUPERBOWL OCTOBER 2015 - EPIC

We were so excited for General Conference this year! In case you don't know what it is, our leaders speak to us in 6 different session to instruct us on this we should do and not do. It is very uplifting and enlightening! It's also something that we look forward to every 6 months (the first weekend in October and the first weekend in April.)

We LOVE conference. It is a holiday at our house. Our kids are always saddened and shocked to learn that their friends don't do what we do. And this year, Faith almost started crying when the last session came on because it ends so quickly.

I also like to pump up those with whom I visit teach. It's fun to share a message and give a treat to those sisters. I hope that they enjoyed conference as much as we did! This year, I did a post it note idea found at The Mormon Home! She did an incredible job and I'm excited to see if my sister used their post it notes! Thank you Mormon Home!!!

For starters, we sleep in tents like the people of King Benjamin when they came to hear the prophet speak. Here is Miss Kate in a single tent this time! 

Then, we make and buy treats and special foods that we don't normally have. This time, I made Twix marshmallow treats, twix bars, and homemade rolls.

Then we bought a couple of treats. Spray cheese and the fruit tray always happen at our house. This year was also highlighted by peeps and the Kirkland macadamia caramel nut clusters. Yep! We were spoiled!

For awhile now, we've been calling it the Mormon Superbowl. And while I was preparing for General Conference, I had this wild and crazy thought. Like, let's actually make this like a superbowl party. Friday night on Conference Eve, we ordered pizza (I highly recommend this as I was able to prep all the other treats without having to cook dinner!)

Then, I wanted everyone to wear sports shirts! Texas Longhorns

Dawson is wearing a Highland rams shirt but likes to be snuggled during conference!

And Kate wanted to set up the half tent to watch conference, which was fun! Another Highland rams!

  

This was Sunday's picture! Aren't we twinners?

Part of the Superbowl idea was to recap all of the sessions of conference. Here they are:

RS Session

Saturday AM Session

Saturday PM Session

Priesthood Session

Sunday AM Session

Sunday PM Session

I can honestly say that I usually have a couple favorites for all of the sessions of conference. But this session. Holy Smokes!!! Each and every talk spoke to me. So many great and wonderful messages from the Lord. I also am doing a General Conference group through email where we will study out each talk between now and the next session of General Conference.

Kate also wanted to fill out our other conference poster that we have framed. This will be exciting to use when it is updated. Just hope I can find it on the world wide web again! This was about 1/2 way through. She wrote names of who got to write what they were talking about. It's tricky though because Faith means faith, not our sister/daughter Faith. Hence the Faith Jolley!

My love of conference has spilled over to friends and I hope that you find motivation here too! I asked for pictures from Texas and New York. I was able to receive some from NY and hope to get TX ones next time!

Byleigh thinks I'm weird, so she wouldn't look at the camera!

 The littles!

Homecooking!!!

Thank you for sharing Beauchat family! We love and miss you!

My last idea was to do the MVP of conference for each of my family members. Most Valuable Player or Most Valuable Prophet ... however you decide to look at it!

Kate loved both of President Uchtdorf's talks. 

A summer with Great Aunt Rose

It works wonderfully!

Dawson too loved Uchtdorf! He has such a great way of speaking!!!

Faith loved Elder Durrant's talk "My heart pondereth them continually."

I really couldn't choose, but in the end decided that Elder Foster's talk would be my MVP as it answered a lot of questions that I had been pondering this time.

It's never too early and it's never too late

Brandon picked the same one as Faith did and boy, I will be ponderizing conference for quite awhile.

Why can't we see his face? Well, on Saturday, Brandon went to the doctor to find out he had pneumonia. He says it phonetically if you can imagine that. Try saying it a couple times. So not feeling good = no pictures!

So this weekend worked out to be a great one ... full of family, the spirit, and great food and snacks. So blessed to be able to listen to the Prophet. His talk was a powerful one that I hope to re listen to soon! If you haven't made conference a priority in your life, I promise you that it will bless your life! Make it a priority and make your own traditions around this special holiday!!!