Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Papa and Nana Visit

This post should have come before our surprise visit to home.
We miss having Emilee and Mark living so near us for oh too many reasons to say!!!! tipo will randomly call out his cousins' names when we leave the house. Maybe thinking we'll finally go visit them? And Rylee needs a baby in arms...the girls would finally outnumber the boys! And having a sister (in-law) around was very nice, especially one so creative as Emilee. There is another reason not having family here is sad.... People don't come to visit nearly as often. Which, I can understand, it's hard to fit a clan of people in a two bedroom apartment - as opposed to a house with a basement.
But we were very lucky to have visitors recently. My parents (papa and nana) come visit us the weekend before we went home.We spent all day Friday with them.
We ate watermelon in front of our apartment while Papa showed Joseph his cool new smart phone by having him watch the opening scene to Lion King and the ever sensational gummy bears music video! My parents pulled out the tubs and bags of hand-me-downs for the kids. They enjoyed digging through them and begging to change clothes. Rylee enjoyed the animal winter hats and Joseph made sure everyone knew they were hers (his head was a little too big for them). Parents coming into to town is always nice, especially when they take you out to eat.... a rare occasion. They took us to Applebees (One of my favorite restaurants, the Oriental Chicken Salad is A-MAZ-ING, and the dressing? Although maybe not healthy it is what makes the salad!) I was a little nervous though because Cody and I have gone maybe twice in our marriage and he wasn't all that impressed. But I'm happy to say he enjoyed him some ribs!
Afterwards we did a bit of shopping (us girls anyways, the boy guys!). My mom likes to spend money! (But she is also VERY good at getting good deals) so maybe some of us just happened to get some much needed clothing! Thanks!
Then we took my parents on a tour of Campus. They have never been to this campus so that was fun to show them around. We went through the Bookstore and my dad bought chocolate covered cinnamon bears. Have you ever had one? They are so yummy! It was my first time and I am hooked. Now you know  why I have such a sweet tooth! We also got to see a bit of the Olympic Opening Ceremony on the TV's in the store (without sound).
All summer long they have a sort of Youth Conference on Campus, with new groups of kids every week. And this particular week on this particular night they were having a dance in the courtyard of one of the buildings so we sat outside and listened to the music and talked. My dad is a leader over the young men in his area for our church and recently they had their own smaller youth conference. At their dance, my dad was telling us, they did this cool choreographed dance to this crazy fun song. Well, that song came on and suddenly all the kids started dancing this dance to this song! My dad got really excited and rushed over to watch it. It was great. That calling is good for him. He was called to it after just recently retiring as a teacher for 6th and 7th grade Math and Science. He's good with kids.
My parents got to be there as we got the kids ready for bed, I really enjoyed that. And I really enjoyed just watching my kids interact with their papa and nana.
Sometimes when we go home or when multi people come to visit it's hard to just enjoy time with your parents. This was one of those nice alone times. I loved it.
Come visit more often Mom and Dad!


Nap time! Actually my dad took a power nap and Joseph just wanted to copy him!

New Jammies