March 2019 Spring Wedding, Baptism and babies

Its Jenae's wedding day. It was cloudy with threatening rain but it didn't do much other than drizzle a little bit. 

We went to the temple and Jacob just made it in time for the sealing due to transportation miscommunication and then Ashley's expert driving, ha ha. Jacob flew down just for a couple of days to be able to be there for the wedding. 

The fun uncle.

Some of Jenae's beautiful bridesmaids.

Jared, Vanessa and Annora.

Jeff and Dave Hanson

Grandma and Elsa

The happy couple!

After the wedding we met up with the family at a luncheon put on by Ben's family. 

The food was good and even included entertainment by the family with specially written songs by Ben's family with Jenae and Ben in mind. 

Look how in love they are. 

Between the wedding and lunch and the reception that night I was finishing honeymoon shirts for Jenae and Ben. Their hashtag all over their social media posts was #alwaysandfavero so I made sure to include it on their shirt along with the temple where they got married and then had a Mickey and  Minnie Mouse and their names on it for the front of the shirt. 

That night we went to their wedding reception at the church where we saw more family. 

Nice to have all the kids there with us. 

Its been almost 2 years that the Taylors have been dating. Maybe in the next year or two we'll get an announcement from them...

So now that Jenae and Ben are married they will be starting their life up in Utah. 

We found out that Jenise's family will be moving to Arizona too. Jolene and JJ both have plans to move to Utah at the end of the summer so all of Steve and Tahna's kids are flying away from the nest!

I got to have a fun sisters outing attending the Pinner's conference in Ontario. 

Angela knew about it and invited us calling it her birthday celebration. It was a two day conference but I had to leave early the second day to go to our tax appointment so I Virginia and I went Friday morning and Angela met up with us and we spent the night at a hotel to enjoy both days. 

One of my favorite projects was the chalkboard with the chalkboard markers. They don't rub off when they are dry but they wash off with water when you want to change the chalkboard. It's been fun changing the sign and it was easy to erase. 

I also took a couple of hand lettering classes but that will take some more work before I get good at it. 

There was lots of chalkboard inspiration at this booth. 

The conference was perfect for all 3 of us who love to create and craft when we get the time. 

This class was how to organize things from Becky Higginson and Becky Proudfit. It was probably my favorite class and now I started listening to their podcasts. They were inspirational and talked to us like they were all our best friends. They through a few organization tips in there but mostly it was about changing  our expectations for ourselves and our families and being happy where we were at. 

At one of the booths they were using hair styling tools on us...Virginia's hair got straightened and my was curled, ha ha. 

It was a fun conference made even more fun by being there with my sisters.

 I'll have to look for it next year.

That night after our tax appointment Jeff and I went to see Aladdin at the Segerstrom Center. It was an amazing show and the special effects were great. We loved it!

The next weekend we got to stay a couple of days in Camarillo to be there to celebrate Ian's baptism. 

We drove in Saturday morning and met everyone at the church. Ian was poised and reverent and seemed to really understand the importance of the day. We were all so proud of him. 

After the baptism we had a lunch at the house where people from all over that came to the baptism to support Ian came over to visit. I was introduced to the dog poop game where the had molded play-doe dog poop on a mat that was supposed to represent grass and you had to be blindfolded and try not to step on the poop. 

I love how talkative and snuggly Paisley is. She's growing up and saying so many more words. She's fun to play with and you never know whats going to come out of her mouth. 

After everyone left we drove to a local beach and took a walk along the coast, let the kids play on the playground a bit and then found a place to go to dinner. Sadly the beach we picked didn't have many shops or food options like the beaches we normally go to but we found something decent to eat at a Lebanese restaurant. 

The next day we met up at Angela and Roberts to go to church with them before we headed home. Joel had to be at the airport for an early flight so we didn't see the Olesons on Sunday. 

Paisley took me in her room and wanted to wear this pink, fuzzy coat that was in the "to grow into" pill but she was excited to wear it.  By the time she took it off she was all hot and sweaty, ha ha since it wasn't really cold enough for it. 

We were glad we were able to be there with the Zooks to celebrate Ian and his baptism. 

A few days before we went to Camarillo we found out that Cheri had the twins! 

Jack Ryan Grover and Luke Beaulieu Grover

We knew that we had some busy weekends and were going to go to China over spring break so we wouldn't get to see the babies for awhile if we didn't make plans so we decided to drive to the hospital after driving home from Camarillo so we could see the babies. 

It ended up working out because Cheri and Ryan were getting them ready to come home so we got to be there and help them pack up, hold babies and get them to the car. So fun!

They are so sweet and I was surprised at how alert they were. 

Jack or is it Luke... 

Proud but tired parents! 

We wish them all the love and energy to get through these next few months of lots of feedings and sleepless nights. 

February 2019

Since we never celebrated Ashley's birthday as a family. We took the time to go out to Ookas to celebrate. 

This is one of those places where they chop up the food in front of you and serve it to you as they cook it. 

Ashley loves this place but we don't come very often so it was a treat. 

Celebrating with Ashley

Maddie has made a new friend. Kristen Cowden and I have been walking the dogs together. Bruno and Maddie both do better on their walks when they walk together. They both pull less and are calmer when they are together. 

Jeff was sweet enough to get me flowers for Valentine's Day. We didn't get to do much else to celebrate because we were youth conference parents this year, which is fun but has been happening the same time as Valentine's day. 

Youth Conference was only one night and two days so a lot of things were packed in those two days. We got a family with a lot of first timers so it was nice to make the situation as comfortable as possible for them. 

We even had a son that was the son of someone we had as a youth in Youth Conference years ago. We are feeling old!

As parents we had a lot more responsibilities this year and had to feed them meals a few times as well as come up with a service project activity to do as a family. 

I helped some families with Justserve project ideas and we arranged to help at the March Field Museum. They were having an event that night and needed some floors mopped and tables and chairs put up. 

The nice thing was they were able to go through the museum after we were done helping and check it out. 

We still had plenty of time after helping at the museum so we came back to our house with our cousin family and worked on some service projects at our house.  The kids made cards for hospital kids and veterans...

and another group helped bedazzle flowers and snowflakes for the Magic Yarn Project that is coming up June 1st. 

Back at the church we had fun relays and games that we played to get to know our family better and compete with other families. 

Some of our competition and fellow youth conference buddies. 

The second day we had our dinner at our house with our cousin family. We thought we would have more time but it ended up being pretty quick. 

The last activity we had was watching the BYU Young Ambassadors perform. They did a great job and they were entertaining. Sadly we had 2 of our family members get sick during the two days and had to go home a bit early. The next night on Sunday we had the testimony meeting. It was nice to hear that a lot of the youth really had a good time and most especially were touched with the opportunity to do service during youth conference. 

Jacob drove down from Idaho for the President's Day weekend even though one of the nights he couldn't even stay at the house. He had to stay with a friend since we were doing Youth Conference but he was busy going to the beach and doing other things so he didn't seem to be too sad. 

The night before he had to leave we drove out 

At the end of the month we got to host Jenae's bridal shower. Her long awaited wedding is getting close and she's so excited. 

The shower turned out good and a lot of people ended up coming. I never had a guest list but I was told it could be a few people up to about 25 and we probably had 40 or so. A lot of people came out to support Jenae!!

Jenise and her friend did the decorations, planning and food for the shower. Taylor Rose and I helped decorate and get set up before but they had done tons of work behind the scenes before they got to our house. 

Jenae opening her fun presents.

This was a Pinterest art project that Jenae wanted me to help her with for the wedding table. They were dollar store glasses that I decorated to look like a bride and groom (the sample ones were Mardi Graw) The ended up turning out pretty cute and they were happy with them.