Rain, Rain, Go Away...

The weather here has been CRAZY! It started raining the Friday night of Easter weekend and rained until that following Wednesday. We took pictures on Monday, which is when the flooding started. I just have never seen it rain that heavy for that long, and it was really thundering and lightening the whole time! We also had some tornado watches/ warnings in there somewhere.

Aaron took some awesome video that he posted on Facebook, so if you want to see that check it out on his Facebook.

The sad thing is that we just saw the forecast for this week and it is supposed to rain for the next three days. UGH!

All this rain is good for one thing though! Snuggling up on the couch with my honey and watching some good movies!

-SL

Easter Weekend!

As per usual... I DID NOT take enough pictures, BUT this is a habit that I am trying to overcome...desperately...because memories are so important to me and pictures are one way that I can really reflect back on those memories!

My Family came into town on Friday afternoon the weekend of Easter. We were SO excited to see them. I gave them a tour around the Sam's Club Home Office. Then we went home to get unpacked and get ready to go to church for dinner.

Our Young Women at church were putting on a fundraiser: spaghetti dinner with table service, as well as a silent auction. They did awesome!! They ended up raising over $1,400 dollars! The reason they needed to do a fundraiser was to pay for Girl's Camp this summer.

Now would probably be a good time to mention that I got called as the Assistant Girl's Camp Leader. Woohoo! So I get to go to camp this year!

Anyways, we needed to raise $1,900 to send all the girl's to camp. They did amazing considering the amount of money they were tasked with raising.


Sister Dunlop coaching the girls on how to serve tables before the dinner began.
A few of the silent auction tables...by the way... Dad bid on a TON of items! He was a great help in raising money for our girls! He wrote each family members name down on a different item.
So during the dinner, we could tell it was thunder storming outside. Our Bishop made an announcement that we were under a tornado warning, and to please stay in the building until it passes. It was pretty scary!

We had an awesome weekend with the family. It did however rain in TORRENTIAL DOWNPOURS all weekend long. We got a total of 11 inches of rain. It was awful. We couldn't do anything outside, so I felt really bad for my family, but we had a lot of fun playing games, dying Easter eggs, etc.

I have a brother who is 15 and a brother who is 17. There are two sisters in our ward who are the same ages as my brothers, and we ended hooking them up Friday night after the spaghetti dinner. They hung out with each other EVERY night they were in Arkansas. It was awesome! They are such cute girls, and they all had so much fun. I've never seen my brothers want to hang out with girls like that.

Here are some pictures of the family:

We miss them, and can't wait to spend more time with them!

-SL

If you ever wonder where you can find us on a Wednesday night...

For those of you who don't know... Aaron and I were both called to work in the youth program at church.

I am the Mia Maid teacher, and Aaron is the Teachers Quorum teacher. So we both have 14-15 year olds. We feel very blessed that our church callings actually help us spend time together during the week rather than us being separated while we fulfill our responsibilities. Here are some pictures from a recent combined activity!

We love these kids!

-SL

March showers bring April downpours which eventually lead to flowers I guess...

Yard work! Yay!
I actually love working outdoors, but living in this rainforest type weather has presented problems. It rains so much here that it feels like we live in a jungle. Everything grows and it grows FAST! You have to do a lot of yard work each week just to keep the grass mowed and the weeds down.

I'm so thankful that Aaron takes care of the mowing of the grass. He takes care of the yard, and I take care of the house. I LOVE this arrangement!

The flowerbeds are a joint venture though, which has been a lot of fun. First of all, we had to rip all the weeds and weed tarp out of the yard from the previous owners.


Needless to say....we were VERY worn out the next day!

More pictures to come on this in the future... once we are done. I can't wait to see how beautiful it will be when we're done!
Random picture from that day: Aaron LOVES airplanes....He was unwinding from the hard work by building a model airplane. Love this guy!

-SL

General Conference Weekend!

Lots of updates to post!

General Conference was GREAT as usual... both in the messages we heard and the people we spent the weekend with. We traveled to Mountain Home, Arkansas to visit Aaron's extended family. We stayed with his Grandma Drake, who is such a lovely lady. We love spending time with her. Aaron has a favorite meal of his Grandma's that I don't know how to make. It's chicken noodle soup over mashed potatoes and EVERYTHING is made from scratch. So this time when we went to visit her, she showed us how to make everything. I still think it will take me years to perfect it, but I will keep trying!

Aaron and Grams making homemade noodles for the soup
We also got to spend time with Aaron's uncle, aunt, & cousins who live just down the road and elsewhere in town.

Cousin Emily, and her son Tanner
Emily is expecting her second child (a girl) at the end of the summer/early fall!

Grams & Aunt Robin


Dinner with the family: Uncle Randall, Cousin Emily, Grams, Cousin Joseph and his wife Julietta.

At the very end of the table you can barely see Joseph & Julietta's baby boy Clark. Tanner is on his Grandpa's lap.It was a great trip! These trips are never long enough, but we're so glad that Mountain Home is only three hours away so that we can hopefully make many more trips!

-SL