When my parents came to town!

My parents are on a CES Church history tour right now, and I bet you can't guess where their first stop was... Independence!  So they decided to fly out a week or so early and spend some time with their favorite daughter ;) They arrived Saturday June 27th!  After they got here we spend the day relaxing at home.. and catching up on some lost sleep ;) We also made a Costco and Hyvee run to get some essential food for the week- like that cheddar popcorn you see there ;)

We also went to dinner at our favorite restaurant, Cheddars! I'm pretty sure my parents would agree it's dang good! 

 I'm pretty sure we watched a movie every night they were here as well :) 

 The next morning we tried to play upstairs quietly while my parents could catch up on some lost sleep (the one benefit to 1:00 church!) Jenson didn't really understand the whole "quiet" thing ;)

 After church we took naps (um.. I am sensing a theme here...) had some amazing pot roast, and helped my dad catch up on some missionary stuff he had to do. 

Monday morning my parents headed off to Branson to cross that off my dad's bucket list.  While my mom got ready my dad went to push Jenson on the swing- I'm pretty sure he is going through swing withdrawals because my dad was so good at taking him all the time!

 ^^ Jenson loves "reading" and I love watching him read in the car! tooo cute! ^^

 While my parents were in Branson we went spend as much time trying to distract us from counting the hours till we got to see them again! 

We celebrated my moms Birthday when they got back on Wednesday by opening presents and eating at one of our favorite Kansas must see places, Freddy's!  If you haven't tried their lava cake you need to- right now! Mom's birthday theme was "Joela's Day the Kansas Way" so her presents mostly consisted of things that were invited in Kansas, or Kansas was known for.. 

Stay tuned for all of the other fun things we did while they were here! 

4th of July- 2015

I LOVE the 4th of July!  Something about family, friends, BBQ's and our Freedom just get me I guess.  This year was soo fun because my parents were visiting!  

We hit the Lenexa parade in the morning, a lame parade filled with cars, political campaigns,  and some random mid evil festival people mostly but it's tradition and I love it!

 We wanted to make sure to get "our spot" (that has shade the entire parade.. it's a beautiful thing!)  We packed lots of treats and bubbles to keep Jenson entertained until the parade started.  Even though he mostly wandered all around the block (it's so nice to have extra hands to take him! Thanks mom and dad for always chasing after him!)

 We started a tradition last year to "hand" make (haha get it?) Jenson's shirt!  Some day I want to put all of his shirts together and make a quilt or something- how awesome would that be? It also shows you how big his hand (and the rest of him!) has gotten each year!  He even got lots of compliments on it so I would call that a win ;) 

 Jenson LOVED the parade, every time he heard music he would start dancing and he would wave and blow kisses to everyone passing by- so much different from last year when he mostly slept through the whole thing! haha He even stayed on my lap for almost the entire parade (now that's rare!)  

After the parade we headed home for naps and food prep for our BBQ :) 

 My dad made these AMAZING hamburgers filled with hash brown's, eggs, and bacon!

 some of our spread!  I'm drooling just thinking of it... 

After dinner we headed to the golf course to pick out our spot for Fireworks and play some Bocci ball

 ^^ Jenson would not sit still.. He wanted to pick up every ball we were playing with!  He was our little shadow- just look how red he gets! haha The plus was the weather was amazing the entire day!  It was only in like the 70's maybe 80's with a nice breeze and low humidity! ^^

Jenson only got a short nap and stayed up way past his bed time!  He started to get kind of grouchy around 8:30 so we put him in his stroller to watch MMC, drink lots of  water, and have a snack, and so he could cool down haha 

The fireworks didn't disappoint as usual, Jenson was awake during he whole thing!  He kept pointing to the fireworks and clapping when they would go off!  (I LOVE this age!)

After fireworks Jenson pretty much crashed, while the rest of us watched a movie!  

It was a perfect day filled with some of my favorite people.  I loved showing my parents around out town- and they loved not being in Utah with the 100 degree weather ;)  

We sure are thankful for our freedoms and all of those men and women who fight to keep us free!

God Bless America!