I have a sinking feeling . . .

that this is not going to stop any time soon.

It all started when Hyrum was about a year old.  He wanted me to hold him while I was making dinner but I really needed to get dinner finished and couldn't do it while holding him.  So, I put him in the vegetable sink and turned on a trickle of water for him to play in.  He loved it!!  It became part of our routine.  He sat in the sink and played while I made meals.

And he didn't really ever grow out of it.

Even though he did grow out of the sink.

Now (at 4 1/2), without me knowing, he wanders into the kitchen, climbs up on the counter and plays in the water.

Beautician & The Beast

Bret needed a  haircut.  Hyrum said so.

He had been growing out a mustache and a soul patch (A small patch of hair between the lower lip and chin)  because . . . well, we don't know why.  He thought it was funny and many men on campus grow out facial hair to the very point that the dress code will allow.  Once one of his professors told him that he admired his "lip mullet" he shaved off the soul patch but he left the mustache for a little longer.

Then he couldn't stand it anymore.  And we were having a family picture done. And Nathan told him it was time to get it cut.

Bret and Erika have been very frugal and wise with their spending and saving.  When it came time to do a haircut they didn't want to spend the money for it.  Knowing that I have cut LeRoy's hair for the last 22  years (which started as a desperate need for a haircut and no funds to provide it) they begged me to cut his hair.  I convinced Erika that she could do it and after watching a couple of videos they locked themselves in my bathroom.  I left for an orchestra concert.

When I returned I found a clean cut Bret.  Erika wasn't overly happy with it because she had cut one part too short so had to cut the rest to match but she was determined that she would get it right the next time.  Luckily, Bret is a bit of a goofball and had her laughing through the experience.  He had her leave the top so that they could take mohawk pictures to remember the first time she cut his hair.

They even took a picture of the pile of hair.

(This is the part where LeRoy starts coveting)

The next morning he shaved off his mustache just in time for pictures.

They are so fun!

Ginger-rock House

Levi and Daymia decided one night to make a gingerbread house.
 

After baking the gingerbread a little to long they had to quickly cut the pieces out before it set hard as a rock.   Really, it was hard!  Because they had to cut the pieces out so fast and as they cooled they shrunk a little, it didn't quite fit together as they had hoped.  They tried several times with icing but that wasn't working so Daymia's mom pulled out the glue gun.  That worked.

I was very impressed with their creative decorating, especially the candy cane door frames and the dripping ice hanging from the edges.  They had a good laugh at their shingle skills.  Levi started on one side putting the  chocolate chips close together so they were touching.  Daymia started on the other side leaving a small space between the chocolate chips.  The second side of the roof showed their improved teamwork skills.

The kids spent the next few days eating away at the house until it was just a frosted (and glued) shell.  The lingering over-cooked smell of the gingerbread didn't tempt anyone to eat the rest of it.

Spencer & Jenell

November 25th - December 16th 2012

In October we had a friend (Rick) ask us if a newlywed couple could live with us.  Complete strangers but in LeRoy's mind they were practically relatives.  LeRoy and Rick both served missions in Oregon but were never companions though they were roommates at Ricks College when LeRoy and I got engaged.  Rick remained friends with a family from the mission (a family that LeRoy had never met) and 24 years later (2012) their daughter is getting married.  A daughter that wasn't even born when they were on their missions.

Spencer and Jenell were getting married right after Thanksgiving but Spencer still had three weeks of the semester to finish and they were unable to find an apartment for just three weeks.  They did have an apartment arranged for January but needed a place to finish the semester and then they would spend the holidays in California and Oregon.

Spencer and Jenell were married on the Saturday morning after Thanksgiving, had their reception Saturday night in Oregon, left Sunday morning for the thirteen hour drive to Idaho and by Sunday night were moved into our guest room.  It was a bit awkward at first.  Spencer would take the car to go to school in the mornings and Jenell was left with complete strangers for the day.  At eighteen, home-schooled, never having lived with roommates (or anywhere away from home) and with no school or job to keep her busy she was a bit unsure of herself.

However, after about a week we all became accustomed to each other's schedules.  By the second week we were blending very well together for meals, church, fhe, evening stories, movies and other craziness.  At the end of the third week we were sad to think that it was over.

During the second week they told us that the apartment that they had a deposit on was not going to be available (the couple decided to stay longer) so they began looking for another apartment.  When it was time for them to leave for California they still didn't have a place.  So, as of now they still have all their stuff in the guestroom, are looking for a place online during the holidays and hope to have an apartment by the time they come back in January.  If they don't have an apartment by the time they return to Idaho they will stay with us until they do.

As Justin said, "we were just getting to really like them and they're leaving". We are all okay with them staying for a while longer.

Engagement Pictures

May 2012
Idaho - Wyoming - Colorado

Two years after they met, six months after Bret got home from his mission, and after months of hinting. . .
 Bret and Erika were officially engaged in April.

Right after the BYUI sememster was finished Bret left to work for the summer in Colorado.  Erika was going to also spend the summer working but in Rexburg.  The only real wedding plan complication that this caused was getting engagement pictures with both of them.  We didn't want them to be the first couple to have individual pictures on their wedding announcement so in a rash moment of engagement excitement Erika and I called up Michelle (who has been our family photographer for the last 3 years) and planned a weekend trip to Colorado.

On the Friday morning of our get-a-way weekend Erika and I stopped at Maverik to fill the car and stock up our caffeine and chocolate storage to help us survive Wyoming.  I wanted to clip my nails because they were bugging me so I asked Erika to pump the gas and use my debit card.  In a very teasing but somewhat serious voice she started complaining that she didn't know how to use a debit card . . . oh, and could she also get a Score bar for the trip?  I laughed and in the same teasing but somewhat serious voice replied something along the lines of, "if you're old enough to get married and Score, you're old enough to use a debit card to get gas".  It was just the beginning of the silly humor that would take place over the next three days.

Once we got to Michelle's we were pretty hyper and excited for this girly trip.  As we walked up to Michelle's front door we noticed a bright yellow chair on the porch. .. well, half a chair.  It was missing the legs.  Just before I rang the doorbell Erika grabbed the half-chair and placed it about 4 feet in front of the door, pulled her knees up to her chin with her (of course) bare feet showing and and with her fingertips drumming together in excitement in front of her over-exaggerated cheesey grinned face. When Michelle answered the door she burst out laughing hysterically.  Michelle loved it so much that when she did our family pictures a few weeks later she actually posed Erika in the same position.

All of the pictures turned out great, really showing the personality of these two crazy kids.  There were so many to choose from that we loaded the wedding invitations with only a few of our favorites.

On the long trip home through Wyoming Michelle and I made a favorites list from the weekend:

* Across the bare emptiness of Wyoming there were four unmarked black sedans with tinted windows and Chinese symbols in the back window.  They all pulled off the main road onto a dirt road.  Chinese Mafia?

* Prehistoric looking bird flying in what looked like slow motion

* Little America - oriental man who bowed at Erika while holding his money tray, saw a polygamist family loading up on the fifty cent ice cream cones

* NOTHING through Wyoming except for snow barricades and semi-trucks

* Wendy's in Cheyenne smelled like vomit and they got our order totally wrong so I was a little surprised when the new limited time salad tasted pretty good.

* Cheyenne to Thornton went super fast even though Erika was constantly telling me to go faster and asking why cars were passing me

* Trying to find our hotel we ended up in the business district and found an official Google office building

* The hotel bedspread matched the hotel hallway carpet

* Michelle kept getting locked in the bathroom at the hotel - the pocket door had a weird latch

* Michelle informing us that the Hellbusch backyard has a corner - just the way she stated it so matter-of-factly had us all laughing, as if she was surprised that there was a corner in the yard.  What she meant was that it was a beautiful corner for taking a few pictures.

* Climbing the wheat field hill for pictures and by the time we got back down we had a good inch of mud on our shoes.  Barefoot Erika had the easiest clean up!

* Bret took us to a Mile High Thrift to find Erika a wedding dress and a suit for him. Erika's dress was $9 and the suit was $4.

* Walmart - HILARIOUS!! Erika changed in the bathroom and the Walmart employee in the bathroom who was gushing at how beautiful Erika's dress was and how excited she was for her.  Bret and Erika played in the toy department like little kids and as Michelle and I came to the superhero isle we were met with Bret protecting his girl. The picture was one of our favorites so we came up with a way to include it with the wedding invite:

* The Rubbermaid bin isle.  It was Michelle's suggestion to have Bret pull Erika across the isle for a picture but when Erika was pulling Bret we nearly lost all bladder control.  We were sleep deprived, hungry, tired after five hours of clothing changes and pictures and it all added up to a bladder issue.  They satisfied their hunger by eating Cheetos in the furniture department. They did pay for them first.

* Paint war on the water tower hill during trash-the-dress session and the old guy watching with this romantic adorable look on his face.  The two girls who kept trying to get in the pictures were a little annoying.

* While sitting around the Hellbusch dinner table Katie said "hawesome".  It was so funny to hear our personal family language used in Colorado, especially by Bret's little sister who had never met Hyrum.

* When we went outside to leave Bret's house there were cheese puffs all over the car, road and cars around us.  Some of his wild neighbors were having big graduation parties.

* Getting egg-ed as we drove away from Bret's house last Saturday night. Michelle hollered out "don't use your wipers".  We pulled over at a gas station only a couple of miles away and the egg was already dried to the car.  It was a pain trying to get dried egg out of the front grill and off the paint.

This isn't actually from the trip but it's the only picture I have of Michelle.  It's a photo reminder that she is spontaneous, fun, cool, and a little bit crazy and I'm just, well. . . not.

I have pictures of myself when I try to do one of those make-a-silly-face-and-it-turns-out-fun pictures but they always end up looking something like this:

It just translates to quirky, weird and a lot of crazy.  In my defense, I was hanging out with Nathan and Hyrum.
They made me do it.

And that has nothing to do with engagement pictures.