Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Love the Weekends

Other than the college kids that actually do live at home, I think I am home a ridiculous amount for the normal college kid. Every single weekend this semester, I have gone home. I love it. School is great and all, but there is just so much more to do for me at home. Even if it is just sitting on the couch in my pajamas all day, it's always better at home. The weekends are always good, and I think they have helped this semester blow by just a little bit more quickly. Always a good thing.

This weekend when I got home a lot of the kids were actually gone. It was just Bryce, Rachel, Evan, and I, so we went out and got some ice-cream. The weather was so nice, so we just spent the rest of the night outside. Evan would stay outside all day if he could, no matter what the weather. He follows anyone outside.

He was pretty excited about getting his own little chocolate ice-cream cone.


I really do have some seriously cute brothers. 


Rachel and the boys: chocolate, Oreo, and key lime pie for Bryce. He liked trying the weird flavors.

Sunday was church. The morning actually started off pretty interestingly because Mom decided to give her elbow a nice whack. It swelled up, and grossed poor Bryce out. One of Mom's friends from Colorado came to church with us. Mom actually found Kanoe when she was searching to find more about her birth mother and her biological family. Kanoe is great friends with Rose, mom's half-sister who was also put up for adoption. It was so good to see her!  

 
Folks, I accurately diagnosed her with olecranon bursitis. Just go ahead and call me Megan Kemmey, M.D.

 Suzanne and me all dressed up for church, wearing skirts from Kavya :)

 On the way over to church, Evan broke his glasses (the pair we had just found THAT morning) right in half. Seriously, that kid. 

 I got really mad at him and he got upset. He definitely did not want me holding him during church, that's for sure. 

 
Kanoe and all of us girls

 Kanoe and Mom 

 Kanoe gave me a card congratulating me on my mission call. Loved the inside of it.

After church, Mom just snapped a few pictures on her iPhone. Dad was actually just a tad grumpy about two seconds before this. Don't worry, he usually doesn't scowl quite so much.

 
 Me with my slightly grumpy pops :)

 
 He might've been a little grumpy, but he can't resist my jokes.

The weekends are the best. Counting down til Friday afternoon again.

Shopping with the Pops

This weekend I had to work here in Richmond, so instead of Mom picking me up on Friday like usual, Dad picked me up Saturday afternoon. I had an appointment with the Apple Store to have them fix my iPod, so we raced over there. After we were done, Dad wanted to do some shopping of his own.

Our first stop was to REI. Dad now has a few things on his wish list, that's for sure. About a year ago, I told Dad that when I graduated from undergrad, I wanted to take a month off of work/school and go hike part of the Appalachian Trail for a month. So that trip to REI definitely got me dreaming about that again. I will graduate about four years from now, so there is plenty of time. I'm sure some of the boys will want to go too. It will be awesome.

So the first store wasn't that odd. Just a good old outdoors store. Then Dad wanted to stop at an RV dealership.

Yep, that sounds exactly like my Dad.

For years now, Dad has wanted to take all of his family, shove us into an RV, and travel across the country. I think it would honestly be a lot of fun. I doubt some of my siblings would think the same thing, though. Anyways, Dad's looked at them on the internet, just day-dreaming, so he finally wanted to go in and look at one, just to look. Let me tell you, the guy really didn't want to give us the time-of-day. But, the RV's were pretty neat. It would be some seriously tight living quarters, that's for sure :)

 The RV guy that thought we were a little nuts, I'm sure. 

 Now I can say I've been RV shopping...

Just us with the RVs. 

When Mom picks me up from school, we race to get home and be off the highway. When Dad picks me up, we spend three hours day-dreaming and making plans for when we strike it rich one day. Just a little bit different :)

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Suzanne's off to Prom

Gray and I both skipped out on our high school proms. It definitely wasn't anything I was interested in going to. It nearly killed my Grandma, and she thought I was nuts. Gray didn't go to either of his high school proms, but then once he graduated high school he ended up going back to two proms, and that's a long story.

However, nobody ever had any doubt that Suzanne would be attending her high school proms. She is definitely much more of a social butterfly than the rest of us. In that way, we are definitely pretty different. Anyways, a few weeks ago she started dating a guy from school, Devon.

Prom is coming up at the end of April, so everyone is getting asked to prom and some people are trying to ask in cute and creative ways. Well, I think Devon did a pretty good job:

 She definitely thought so too. Pretty cute.

Let's just take a minute and zoom up on Devon. He is quite the stud:

Ladies and gentlemen, be careful who you send your selfies to.

Monday, April 1, 2013

Lunch for 400

Mom has helped plan, cook, and serve for several different church activities. She came to girls camp for years and helped cook in the kitchen for all of the girls. She has helped with the midnight breakfasts for the youth New Year's Eve dance, and she has helped with lunches for Relief Society broadcasts and conferences. A few weeks ago, she and a few other women were in charge of another lunch for the Relief Society conference, and were told to plan for about 400 people. Of course, when Mom signed up to help, the whole family was enlisted :)

Other leaders had already decided they wanted to have a wide variety of salads for the lunch. They had planned to have a garden salad and a Caesar as the two main salads, and then there were tons of toppings and grilled chicken to go on top. Then there were a few different side salads. Mom and I made a broccoli salad and a cucumber salad, and other people made a chicken pasta salad, a ramen noodle salad, and an Asian fruit salad. Everything was delicious, but it was definitely hard work. Mom had been shopping and got all of the food ready to go, and when I got home from school on Friday afternoon, the fun started. We were in the kitchen all night Friday, and started working over at the church early Saturday morning.No surprise at all, but the lunch went off perfectly.

Cucumbers for a delicious cucumber salad... my favorite.

Mom and I chopped hundreds of vegetables. Broccoli, celery, onion, cucumbers, peppers, lettuce. It was looking pretty healthy in that kitchen, that's for sure.

Dad was volunteered to grill five huge bags of Costco chicken breasts. He was grilling for three and a half straight hours, but it was sure delicious.

Even using the food processor to just quickly chop up the onions, the juices were everywhere. Thanks to Suzanne's goggles, not a tear was shed (which was awesome because I cry like a baby when I chop onions). Genius idea if I do say so myself.

Evan climbed all around the kitchen just saying, "I'm helping. I'm helping." Cutest help there is.

 
Mom and I. She was definitely a little bit on the tired side. 

The fridge was packed. Thankfully it was plenty cold outside, so we left some of the other things in the van.

My helper and I 

We did a lot, but so many people are always involved in big events like this. Almost 50 tables were set up and decorated for everyone.

Beautiful center pieces on the tables.

With my Mom, I sure have been taught a few things about cooking. My family really is lucky to have a Mom that can cook pretty dang well. She has let my siblings and I experiment and learn for ourselves in the kitchen. I definitely don't think many people my age could say they have cooked for 400 :)