Steed Visit June 2016

The Steed family (Matt's sister Steph and crew) came to visit so we could take them to the Flight of the Conchords concert. It was amazing, and the ice cream was delicious.

We celebrated Josh's 8th birthday with them here.

If we do cakes for all the birthdays and all the parties in our family, we end up with too much cake in one week. So Josh chose a tower of cookies for this celebration.

I love how excited he gets about presents. A few things he opened: a Nerf gun with extra bullets, Invention kit and Magic Show kit from Grandma Cheri, soccer ball, a green frisbee from Jude, and green Gatorade.

It was too hard not to take pictures of Baby Jack half the time. 

The frisbee flew over the fence right away, but fortunately Teague was there to lift Jude over to get it.

Do you like the pretty back of our house? I'm not sure it will ever get done. There's too much work to do inside first.

Can't get enough of these cousins and their cuteness.

There was lots of nail painting during the visit, per usual.

Grandma always shows the boys new cool games on her phone when she comes.

We took our little Steph siblings and their husbands to sushi, and we took the Steeds to see Pike Place.

It's hard to say goodbye when you know you won't get to wake up to this every morning. 

Utah Spring Break

For Spring Break, I found out most of my family would be in Utah. So I loaded up my kids and made the 14 hour drive. It was ridiculously long. We stopped at a hotel in Twin Falls, ID on the way because I'm a wuss. But we got to swim late at night, and the boys loved hotel breakfast the next morning.

Adele loved spending the week with her twin cousin Elsie.

We stayed at Aunt Melissa's house in Lehi. The weather was beautiful.

My littlest sister Julia took us to her dorm at BYU and we ate at the new Canon Center. It has changed so much in the last decade.

"Free" donuts and anything else you want for breakfast. These kids were very happy.

Then we drove to Daybreak to visit my twin cousin Oakley and her kids and play at the park. And I took a lot of photos.

Matt joined us for the weekend. We went to the airport one afternoon to meet up with a friend from Brazil. Matt met Irminia on his mission in 2003. She was small enough to fit in his backpack then. We have proof!

We saw our favorite Palmers who live in Provo now, but got no picture! Just this of Adele and Ezra sharing a romantic moment.

We drove to Springville to see Matt's sister Stephanie and her cute family. 

And they came up to Lehi one day to see us again.

Back to Daybreak to see Oakley again, this time with Matt. Josh and Welles were really sweet together.

The rest of the weekend we spent with my family. Julia and Steven were out of class, and Steph and my dad flew in. Ironically, everyone was together at Melissa and Mike's house except Melissa and Mike, who left on a trip to Hawaii. At least we got to keep Elsie. There was a lot of braiding and nail polish.

Big hair bows and cleaning supplies. Such little domestics!

Yoga and climbing with Steven was super fun, per usual. I was really proud of the boys for being brave. No ropes at this gym.

Last but not least, a scrubby picture of 4/5 of the Madsen kids. I'm glad we made the trip. And very glad Matt drove with us on the way home.