Happy Sunday ya'll!
Oh man, this weekend has been a memorable one! Let's see, where shall I start, oh oh I know.
On Thursday Dad, Del, Jordan's dad, called me. I had mentioned earlier in the week to him that I wanted to come over and help with the backyard work and hang out for the day with him and mom, so he called and we worked up a plan that included, but was not limited to early morning labor in the "jungle" I so lovingly call it, BBQ food, BYU football game, family games, and milkshakes. Family get-togethers are always so fun and this was not going to be the exception. That was how the plan was supposed to go....here is how it really went.
Friday night Jordan and I headed over to Kylie and Mike's house (Jordan's sister and brother-in-law). We met mom and dad (Marlys and Del, Jordan's parents) over there. Kylie made artichoke dip and everyone munched on that for awhile, then we made fried pickles, YUM!, and hot dogs for dinner. Oh man, I know for a fact that I gained five pounds! Side note: for those of you that have never had fried pickles...you need to. If you don't have a fryer there are some yummy looking recipes for baked fried pickles. Anywho, once we finished gorging ourselves we sat and relaxed to The Little Mermaid with Preston, the almost-2-year-old, until it was time for him to go down. Once he was in bed the games began, quite literally. We played a round of Bohnanza, or The Bean Game. So fun. Side note: if you have never played/do not own the game...you need to. It is cheap cheap on Amazon....go now! After The Bean Game, mom and dad went back home leaving me, Jordan, Kylie, and Mike to play games. We played a game called Cover Your Assets. It is a card game in which you want to rack up as many points as possible by pairing cards and laying them over your other paired cards while also battling others for their valuable stacks. Oh man, we played that game for meh....easily 4 hours. We did all sorts of variations and since it was getting late it just got more fun the longer we played until finally at 2:30 a.m. we called it quits. Jordan and I made the short trip over to mom and dad's place and crashed for the night.
The next morning we hear dad working out in the garage so we went to join him and much to our surprise it was 68 degrees out. Oh my heaven! It was the most lovely feeling I have felt in four months. Since it was so cool out Jordan and I put on our work clothes, our bug repellent, our work gloves and boots and headed out into the "Jungle" with dad. We worked and worked and by the time we were done we have gathered 3 or 4 piles of brambles to burn, felled 4 or 5 dead trees, gathered a TON of wood to burn, and had created a forest out of that jungle, a well manicured forest. That was the good news, the bad news is that we only manicured about a 12 sq. ft. area. Darn...good thing fall is coming.
Once we finished up for the day we showered up and headed on inside to make food, snack, and watch the BYU football game. That lasted about 2 hours and then Mike and Kylie came over and it was game time again. We simultaneously watched the football game and played Cover Your Assets for about an hour and then all the focus was on the card game. We played with all different teams with several variations of the basic game and finally ended our game time at 10:30 p.m. That was about 6 hours of playing this time. Of course there were small breaks in there to snack on food and go outside to enjoy the beautiful, gorgeous, fabulous weather, but they were only short breaks. The night ended right with Nutella milkshakes.
In the end this weekend was great. It is really nice to be with great people and further develop friendships with those great people. I'm grateful for Jordan's family and how they have brought me in and made it known that I'm part of the family. They are that type of people with the mentality of "you're in for good so you might as well join us and get some ice cream out of it" and I'm happy to do so. I love them all and am so happy to be part of the family.
