Friends, Friends, and More Friends

During the past two weeks we have been blessed to have visits from some of our favorite AZ friends. What fun we had and how much we realized we missed them all. It all started with the Blomquists showing up a couple Sundays ago. The oldest two daughters were my Young Women during the two years we were in AZ and had been up for EFY. We were able to get a hold of eachother and had a wonderful BBQ Rib dinner night...thanks Jare for the yummy ribs!! We had a lot of fun chatting and catching up on what has gone on during the year we've been away. What fun it was to have my girls around. I miss them dearly and had so much fun seeing how much they had changed within the year.

Me with all the Blomquist girls and all my kids:)
Here we are again hamming it up for the camera!!
Our next visit came when my friend of many years (since good old BYU days to be exact)stopped by the next day. Unfortunately my camera was out of commission so no pics from that visit, but it was our good friends the Zincke's!! Charity and Elizabeth came early in the morning and stayed all day so we could spend as much time together as possible. It was so great to see her and catch up. Charity and I were eachother's backbones while our boys slaved away in MBA school. I can't remember a week that went by that we weren't either eating dinner together with our kids while our honeys were on campus or just spending countless hours talking about what life would be like when we had our husband's back. We had such a great time and for old time's sake we ordered Papa Johns Pizza for dinner!! The kids had a blast playing with Ellie who has grown so much this past year. Sorry Jacks, even though she's younger no prospects of marriage there seeing as that she's not even four yet and she's as tall as you!! They left come nightfall and my kids and I were sad to see them go. 'Till next time:)

Then our last visit just came and went this week. Lanae and her three beautiful red-headed boys showed up and spent a couple of days with us on their way down from Canada. What fun was had when my kids were re-united with hers. Jacks and Ben were inseperable in AZ and it took no time at all to re-establish their friendship within the first five seconds. The boys and Mickey played and laughed and pretty much had a blast the entire time. All boys slept in one room, which led to numerous times of us going down and telling them to fall asleep (well actually just telling Jeff and Jacks to fall asleep, those boys were quite the talkers!!) Mickey was sad no one bunked with her but she pulled her own weight amongst all of them. On the second day they were here Jared was kind enough to take the four older kids for the night and Lanae and I got to go out and have a quick girls night with the babies. Baby Lukey and Alexis were quite the troopers as we spent time at Down East and then ate a yummy greasy dinner at Burger Bar!! For all of those who don't know Burger Bar was featured on the Food Network on Guy Fieri's show "Diners, Dives, and Drive-In's" and it is the yummiest place on earth! We split everything since we wanted to try so many of the things on the menu. Then later we spent countless hours on Photoshop, talking, and simply catching up. They left us on Wednesday and once again we were sad to see friends leave us. Jacks asked me why his best friend had to go away again and insisted we get on a plane to go and visit them next week!! Easier said than done buddy boy:)

Here's a pic Jare took of the kids on his babysitting night. He did make your own pizza night with a movie...classic for winning over children:)

All of them hamming it up with Oreos for dessert!!

The morning they left I just couldn't resist and had to take a pic of all of them together. Lanae and I met with our older two barely as toddlers and our seconds as newborns!! My how the brood has changed:) We love you guys and miss you tons already!

So all in all quite an eventful couple of weeks. Even though we have not gone anywhere we have been fortunate enough to have people come and visit us. All these visits made me realize just how fortunate we are to have such great friends in so many different places. Even though it has been sad to say good-bye to a lot of them as we have continued to move on our way, it is never for very long. And our reunions are always timeless and full of laughter. We love you all.