Pre-Wedding Pastime

Crystal flew in last night from Colorado and spent the night at the Nuttall's house with us. It has been fun hearing about what she does in her new job in the hospital lab. She impresses us with her big words and medical terms. It sounds very interesting.

We briefly considered having cold pizza for breakfast this morning, but then wisely decided to get wild and go out for French toast at Magelby's Fresh.

You wonder how they can afford to give you a nice serving like this, complete with a slice of bacon for only $5.19. This is one of the things that makes eating out in Utah so much fun.

Brittany and John drove up to Salt Lake City with us, where we ate at their favorite Tibetan restaurant. I especially liked the lentil soup there. It was good enough to sell your birthright for!

Because we still had plenty of time left we decided to go over and see the fancy new City Creek Mall across from the temple. It is an outdoor mall with a retractable roof that can enclose the entire mall in the winter. I thought that was a great way to get the best of both worlds. It was a nice day, and the roof was open today.

We also enjoyed walking around temple square a bit. You can see from the beautiful blue sky behind the temple that Eli and Lacy couldn't have picked a more picture perfect day for their wedding!

Pool and Pizza

There are so many people here for Eli's wedding that Ed and I and Crystal ended up homeless last night. We were fortunate that the Nuttalls offered us the use of their house for a few days. It is fun to stay here and see their beautiful artifacts they've gathered from living all over the world. Joan got to try out their grand piano that is hundreds of years old. We all gathered together for pizza and a pool party last night.

My niece and nephew, Bobo and Naji couldn't wait to get in the pool! They have a full sized lap pool in the basement.

I enjoyed some quality hot tub time with my sisters, Annette, Barbara and Joan. We missed you, Verlene!

And after we got shriveled up, there was plenty of room to just sit around and enjoy one another's company! Thank you, Nuttalls for giving us such a beautiful gathering place on Eli's wedding eve!

Fun With Grandma

Grandma and I started the day out with a little shopping, my new favorite thing to do in Utah. I did not come home disappointed.

We spent the afternoon in the Family History Center, where Grandma is starting to work once a week. There was a lot we didn't know, but happily, we went to a training seminar this evening that answered most of our questions! I'm pretty excited to start uploading pictures and source documents. This is really going to help me be more organized in my research!

 We had dinner at the Pizza Factory in Spanish Fork. They make me so happy because they have zucchini and summer squash cut in slices skinny enough that they look like spaghetti. You can have a big plate of it and convince yourself you're eating low calorie. We might have believed it if we hadn't enjoyed the twisted bread sticks so much! Eating out in Utah comes in a very close second to shopping!

Eli's Gone, Hold Your Hearts Girls!

My nephew, Eli, is getting married this weekend. He and his fiancee, Lacy, were nice enough to invite me to dinner last night.They made Pad Thai, which was delicious!

Brittany and John picked me up at the airport and joined us for dinner. Before dinner we fit just right in Eli's love sack. 

Barbara and Kent (parents of the groom) heard there was a party going on and drove out a day early from Denver. I was so impressed that Eli and Lacy were able to have us all over just a few days before their wedding. Eli has always bragged (and I mean REALLY bragged) about how easy it would be for him to put a wedding together. We always rolled our eyes when he went on about how people seem to make it harder than it is. But he and Lacy were so relaxed and gracious last night. I hate to admit it, but in this case Eli might be right!

Where Is Spring?

Now that spring has sprung we're ready for beautiful weather! But where is it? We woke up to about four inches of snow Monday! That's more than we've had all year. Because we live in Maryland, school was also cancelled.

Coda enjoyed playing in it for a minute. She was then just as happy to go back in the house and shake it off. She only likes being outside in the snow when we're out there with her.

I had intended to post pictures of daffodils today.... Maybe next week.

Sofa, So Good

We got a new sofa for the living room today. We thought we were taking a little risk with the red color, but it turned out nice. We also moved the chairs out of the foyer to the living room and put them in front of the window. They have a lighter, cleaner look and they are also very comfortable.

Our new foyer has one of the end chairs from the dining room. We only use those chairs on Thanksgiving and Christmas, and it will look very nice next to the table the rest of the year.

The old love seat (pictured here) has found a new home at my friend Barb's house. The wing chair went to the basement, and the bass is now in the dining room. I also swapped the rug with our bedroom rug. With the new changes we've increased the seating in the room from three people to five. Now we can have the home teachers visit us there!

Long Time No See!

Ed's friend Joe dropped by Sunday afternoon. They hadn't seen each other for 33 years! Joe lives in California, and dropped by while he was in the Baltimore area. They had a lot of catching up to do. They knew each other through 4 years of college and shared a house with two others the last two years. It is amazing that those four men (boys, really) shopped together and split the costs of dinners. They had a system where the first two to come home cooked the dinner and the second two cleaned up! That has to be a very unique and unusual situation for college guys! They also were able to re-live the glory of capturing the Intramural B-League basketball championship, playing on a team with the guys in the downstairs apartment. Good times!

Joe was nice to try to help Amanda learn more about her dad in the early years. It was fun for me to meet him, because I've heard plenty of stories about him over the years. It made us want to follow up with more of Ed's college group. Maybe we could go to his 35 year reunion next year! RPI (in Troy, New York) is an easy ride for us now, being a mere 350 miles from our home!