Dave & Heidi Visit, Family Fun and MORE Bottled Hamburger!

March 1st - March 8th, 2008

On the weekend of March 1st, Brian's brother David and his wife Heidi and their kids came down to Utah for a family wedding. They crashed at Brian's parents' house in Springville for a couple of days. Their stay was so short that we only had one evening to see them, so we tried to make the most of it! When I got there, Heidi and I both had gotten our hair cut, so it was a fun surprise for both of us! And we had also each gotten 12 inches cut off! It's funny how us sister-in-laws are connected mentally. So here's me and Heidi after our fun discovery!

And of course we had to give our sassy pose as well. Heidi is really fun to be around! I'm sad she lives all the way up in Boise. And I'm sad that we only got to see her and David and the kids for a few hours! I didn't even get a picture of Annika, their newest addition. She is the baby that I said Heidi called, "Fat and pink and delicious!" Boy is she ever cute!

Robert's girlfriend Heather was gone that weekend, so naturally Robert could be found moping around the house. He just sat there with bugged eyes spacing out.

When I asked him where Heather was, he flipped out. He literally lost his marbles. So I figured I'd let the poor sap just BE and he would eventually come out of it! (Note: these pictures were posed. Robert isn't THAT pathetic!)

Here's Heidi just having fun talking with whomever was in the kitchen. P.S. I really like your shoes Heidi! It's just too bad I didn't get any pictures of David or the kids.

We all gathered over there for dinner, which Linda and Julie were very gracious to cook for us. We had quite the full house, so it was a lot of work. But they cooked us some delicious Navajo tacos. Yum!

Amy and Brenden's kids were over to play too, so Vaughn of course took time to play with his cousin Kimball. She has always been extremely kind to Vaughn. Whenever we ask Vaughn to smile lately, he does a funny face like the one he's pulling above. Weird!

Once Kimball was tired of playing with Vaughn, he was kidnapped by his older girl cousins. Here, from left to right are Alex, Maren and Riley. They decided to give Vaughn rides in a sheet, which he LOVES! Thanks you girls!

And here's a view of Vaughn spazzing inside the sheet. He just couldn't get enough of it!

After a night of fun with family, Brian and Vaughn were pretty tuckered out, so naturally they took a nap Sunday afternoon. Here they are asleep next to each other in the living room. It was so cute to see them sleeping there!

Vaughn fell asleep sucking on his hand and holding one of his little plastic golf clubs. It was too much!

Vaughn usually has to have two things when he goes to sleep: his golf club and his Tigger doll. Brian's sister Rebekah gave Vaughn the set of golf clubs for his birthday last year, and the Tigger doll before that. I guess Rebekah really knows how to pick gifts! Thanks Bekah!

Vaughn used to sleep like this all the time, and when I saw him sleeping like this I about melted. He hasn't done it in months, so I made sure to take a picture of him to remember it! We even have an ultrasound picture of him before he was born doing this in the womb. Boy does that bring back some memories!

On Tuesday we went over to Brian's parents' house for dinner and to watch American Idol as a family. Linda provided two rotisserie chickens that she cooked herself. I made garlic-ranch potatoes. We had a pretty nice meal together! And here's everyone chowing down!

I made sure to greet Danny with a very crazy smile when he got home from work, because he looked a little stressed.

Danny gave me a very nice glare to let me know he appreciated it! You're a DORK Danny!

But I guess it was a night for grumpy moods, because even Baby Lampateeze was not his usual smiley self! What a sad face!

Later that evening Robert came home from being out somewhere, and Vaughn ran to him to welcome. Robert gave him a little ride.

Vaughn was pretty stoked because #1 he LOVES his Uncle Bobby and #2 he LOVES rides. Thanks Robert!

Little Lorna saw that I was taking pictures and wanted to join in on the fun. So I told her to smile and she gave a great little smile! Then I wanted to take a picture of her without the flash...

...so I told Lorna to smile one more time. She was already smiling, so she just "smiled harder" and this is the face that she made. We were all laughing so hard!!!

On Thursday evening we went over to the Springville house again to watch the American Idol results show. No, we're not obsessed. We actually just like to sit around and make fun of the show! Isn't that just as dumb? But it's so much fun! So for dinner that night I made some homemade pizza. It was a real feast!

Vaughn enjoyed sitting next to Kalel while they ate dinner together and played with Star Wars toys. Kal was nice enough to eventually share his R2D2 toy with Vaughn. Vaughn was so happy he smiled really big at Kal.

Kal eventually noticed, and took a closer look at Vaughn, trying to figure out why he looked so weird! Kal is a really good buddy to Vaughn and we're so glad!

Yes, we went back to Brian's parents' house on Friday AND Saturday because I was doing some bottling with Linda. We were bottling hamburger, and there was no way we could do it at my house because there's much less space for kids to run around. Another bonus is that Brian's parents have a fenced-in back yard, so we can let the kids outside to run around. So the guys helped watch the kids on Saturday we were bottling. Eventually though, the kids went in the house, and the guys didn't come in. I went out to see what was up, and I found all the guys watching Brian draw with sidewalk chalk! It was so cute!

Brian didn't want me to post this, but too bad. He did this very fast sketch of R2D2, which I thought was pretty cool.

And just to prove that they're really very manly, the guys made sure I got them in a very many pose. I guess real men draw with sidewalk chalk!

Later that afternoon while the hamburger was processing, Vaughn snuck over to watch Linda cutting some fabric for some headbands she makes. Vaughn was really interested for some reason!

We eventually realized he wanted to try out Linda's scissors. So Linda very kindly let Vaughn try the scissors out on some scrap pieces of fabric.

That's all Vaughn wanted, and afterwards he was very happy to sit and watch Linda again!

I mentioned we were bottling hamburger. Well, this is a picture of what we start out with....giant 10-pound rolls of fresh hamburger! They're kind of nasty huh? But I have to buy them this was to get the best deal. I go to Sam's Club and get the 80-pound case of hamburger meat. It is so much cheaper than the packaged patties, and it's 90 percent lean. You can't get much better than that! And the leanest ground beef is the best for bottling. So anyway, that's where we began!

And after all the cooking and cleaning and bottling, and two days of very hard work, we finally got 79 pints of hamburger done, with almost enough meat for one last pint! Since we started out with 80 pounds, that was almost exactly 1 pound of hamburger per pint! Perfect! I don't think I'll be bottling hamburger for a long time. My feet and legs were killing me! And I could barely fit my swollen feet into my shoes. Whew! So thanks to Danny and Linda and kids, and Robert and Jared and Brian for putting up with all the canning and hectic stuff over the last week. We love you guys!

And here's one for the road...

Here's Lorna, very proud of herself after finding and applying Linda's lipstick! ADORABLE!!!

Love, Lisa

P.S. I am finally caught up on our blog entries!!!!!