Hangin' Around Home

As much as we like to hit the road,

going to visit our kids and grandkids or on get-aways together,

we also love to hang around home.

We live around some pretty awesome people and our Branch in our church has such fun get-togethers.

Every spring we have a potluck picnic with the Branch providing grilled burgers and hot dogs.

I previously talked about our Branch INSTA-CHOIR assignment from the Stake 

to provide the music for the morning session of Stake Conference on April 24.

I was overwhelmed with the support I received.

Our branch has less than 200 members and 45 of them sang in our choir. 

Many rearranged their schedules so they would be in town (sometimes couples take the opportunity 

to travel on Stake Conference weekend), 

they attended all rehearsals, morning and evening, and they did all of this with cheer and excitement.

We considered it an honor to bring the Lord's spirit to Stake Conference with our music.

It was held in the Stake Center and was televised to two other buildings.

We sang, "The Lord Is My Shepherd" for the prelude, 

"Love At Home," with a couple who sang the first verse in beautiful harmony, 

and concluded with, "I Know That My Redeemer Lives!".

Beverly Bradley, my dear friend and fabulous musician accompanied on the piano,

and Teague Lawrence of the 1st Ward, who has occasionally played for INSTA-CHOIR since he was in Primary 

and is now a senior in high school, played the violin for all three numbers.

Choir members and congregation alike (not to mention their humble choir director)

thrilled to the overwhelming spirit we felt, particularly on the last number.

That afternoon, our Branch had a Walk-About to a couple of the members' homes.

It's a great way to get better acquainted with each other and it was a great cap to Stake Conference weekend.

My cute next-door neighbor, Lilian, and I went to the Relief Society luncheon together. 

Though not active, she loves to go to all of the RS activities.

I divided the sisters tables up and led them in a little song, sung to the tune of "Count Your Many Blessings."

On May 11, Roger played in the annual Chamber of Commerce Golf Tournament, 

held this year at Sunbrook. 

As residents, we were able to arrange the lunch afterwards

 to be held in the Sunbrook Center at a much-reduced rate.

It was a beautiful day and Roger thoroughly enjoyed it.

We had Anne and Jay over for dinner on May 13 for our Aggie Night.

Our friendship goes back to our USU days together and it just continues to grow.

We missed Bob and Mary, who will be returning form their mission to the Philippines in the fall.

We prepared spicy and sweet grilled salmon, celery slaw, twice-baked potatoes and steamed asparagus.

Anne brought the most delicious home-made chocolate chip cookies, snickerdoodles and ice cream.

I used my Mother's Day gift silver place mats and I love them!

And here is a quick little before and after.

One of Roger's clients has a great garden, and, on occasion, 

he gives Roger a call to come and get some of his marvelous produce.

Roger brought home artichokes, kohlrabi, beets and beet greens and Swiss chard.

I steamed the artichokes with fresh garlic, sauteed the beet greens in olive oil and chopped garlic, 

roasted the beets and made a kohlrabi, carrot, celery and onion slaw.

We enjoyed a delicious veggie dinner that night.

So that about catches up what we've up to, 

home in sunny St. George.

Thursday we're off again to go up north for Roger to run in the half-marathon in Ogden 

(with several family members).

 We'll also decorate Mom and Dad's graves with my siblings (we'll miss you, Kay) in Logan, 

 and Roger's Dad's and brother's graves with his mom in Ogden. 

It's fun to go and it's always fun to come back home!

"On The Road Again," Back-to-Back, Part 2

Boise, Idaho

Home for one full day from Mesa, we set out for Boise Tuesday morning, 

stopping in Ogden overnight with Lois to break the eleven-hour trip into two.

Wish we had taken pics with Grandma.

After Jess cut and colored my hair, we had dinner with Lois at her favorite place, Chuck-O-Rama.

We laugh and tease about it, but the food is actually delicious.

We sat up to past midnight chatting with Grandma.

She is so much fun and we adore her.

How would you like to have this cute sight greet you after a long road trip?

Next day, when we arrived in Boise, Miss Claire welcomed us in this get-up. 

She couldn't decide what to put on her head, 

the princess crown or the Minnie ears, 

so she wore both.

We hurried out to Sam's baseball game. 

His team is undefeated, and the team that they played gave them a game, 

but they won with the final score, 5-3.

In the huddle with the coach afterwards, he put his arm around Sam's neck, 

pulled him to him and pointed to him with his other hand, saying,

 "Who is this guy? He got two hits, 

two RBIs and he caught the potential tricky fly that could have tied up the game 

in the bottom of the 6th!"

Sam was beaming the rest of the night.

We didn't want to miss Claire's final tap and ballet class before her dress rehearsal.

She actually wore one of her big sister's old costumes to class.

When we got back home, she changed into another one.

Every day while we were there, she brought her Barbies upstairs to play.

She and Aunt Stacy had a great dance party with them (the Kens aren't in the pic!).

Cinco de Mayo

Missy hosted a great get-together with the Gabrielsens in the area on Cinco de Mayo.

Her builder included a house-warming catered party of choice in the cost of building their home,

so she thought that would be a perfect opportunity while Stacy, Roger and I were there 

so we could catch up with my family.

We worked on her house all day, tracking down decorating items, and it was awesome to have Cafe Rio 

come with the yummy food and set it all up.

Joan brought Mexican hot chocolate cupcakes, Sara, Devin's wife, brought Texas sheet cake 

and John and Cindy brought all kinds of Tampico sodas and an assortment of Mexican cookies.

Feast City, Mexican style!

Stacy holding Sara and Devin's newest - cute!

John, Cindy, me, Roger, Joan and Tom

The girls - Ellie, Cindy, Claire, Missy, me, Joan and Stacy

They loved Missy's house, 

we ate a delicious Mexican feast and we loved being together!

On Friday morning, these three ran eight miles.

Missy and Roger are training for the half marathon they will run May 21 down Ogden Canyon.

Stacy has run several marathons, so she just ran with them for fun. 

That afternoon, the girls went shopping for decorating items, and Claire stayed home to play with Grandpa.

Off to the park they headed.

Jedd and his boys, Jared, Sam and Anderson, left for the Father and Sons Campout, 

so Roger took the girls on the town.

We went shopping in The Village, a new shopping complex in Meridian. 

We put our names on the list at the Yard House, a trendy restaurant that had tasty food, then shopped, 

waiting for our buzzer to go off. 

During our meal, a huge cloudburst hit, causing flooding on the restaurant patio. 

We though the boys were getting drenched. We found out next morning that they didn't get a drop!

Claire loved her mac and cheese!

Coldstone for dessert - yum!

Saturday morning was the big day - 

a dress rehearsal for Claire's two-year-old tap and ballet class's recital at a nursing home.

Doesn't she make a Beauty in her ballet, "Beauty and the Beast?"

Three Smith beauties

Claire's class actually didn't change out of their Beauty costume into their lion costume 

for their tap number from the Lion King.

What a little charmer!

Missy put her Lion King costume on afterwards so we could see it.

We love our little Claire!

Claire changed into this little number for our trip to the Boise Street Market.

I love to be in Boise on a Saturday, because the street market starts in the spring and goes through late fall.

The mini doughnuts with maple icing are always a part of the shopping, 

but they were out of the maple icing. Bummer!

So we settled for vanilla bean.

Stacy had not been to the Westside Drive-in, featured on, Diners, Drive-ins and Dives.

Our lunch was a fried fiesta, with fresh fried fish sandwich, a Monte Cristo sandwich, burgers, French fries and sweet potato fries with cinnamon honey sauce.

We all shared everything and it was delicious!

A real highlight of the trip was the adults doing a session in the Boise Temple.

We got there just in time for the last session, and we were all thrilled to be together 

and take some of our family tree's ancestors names through.

Stacy, Missy and I stayed up talking until the wee hours,

then were treated to a Mother's Day brunch by Jedd and Roger.

Five little Smith kids all in a row

Jedd fixed his Mountain Man eggs, bacon and potatoes and baked some Trader Joe almond croissants and we had Trader Joe's Kringle Danish pastry.

We cleaned up, then dropped Stacy off at the airport to fly back to Mesa and we pointed our car toward Ogden.

We stopped to see Lois for a Mother's day visit, then headed to Rick's in Salt Lake for dinner.

Jodie's mom and her mom were also invited, and Jodie fixed a tasty fish dinner. 

We love be with these guys!

Sadie, Abby, Jodie, me, Katie, Rick and Blake

Sadie took a pic so Roger could be in it . . . 

. . . then Katie took one.

We next stopped to see Mindy in Highland, who drove back to her home from Jeff's family's home, 

where they were having a Mother's Day get-together. We enjoyed catching up with her, 

and we were tickled to see four out of our five kids on Mother's Day. 

We got to see Ryan the week before in Mesa.

This is a text that big brother, Jared, sent a little later: 

"This is how Claire reacted when she found out Gma and Gpa were gone."

Be still my heart.

Back-to-back road trips are history.

The memories. . . priceless.

PS - YIKES!

This website has glitched like crazy with the ink colors, margin justification, print size.

After many redos, this is the best I could do - oh well!