Week In Review

Last weekend was a busy one. Friday was Cody's 16 birthday. I wanted to surpirse him by bringing lunch to him that day for him and a couple friends but they had semester exams and were out of school by 9:40-why even bother going? So I found that out earlier the week before and called one of his friends to help make arrangements with all his other friends for a surprise birthday breakfast. I made a breakfast casserole, grits, bacon, sausage and about 40 pancakes. The kids all got there right after school and Don had gone to pick up Cody and drive him around Overton for a few minutes until all were assembled and then they came back. Seriously he did not have a clue what was happening and so he came in the door and headed toward his bedroom yakking away to his dad the whole time before we yelled surprise and he figured out what was happening. Megan did a good job keeping it a secret. The kids all had breakfast and then to my dismay the party continued. They hung around until 2:00 when we finally kicked them out. His friends that came were Megan Potter, Shelby Bennett, Jessany Mortensen, Sterling Waite, Daniel Gourdin, Emma Hardy, Allison Hardy, Jordan Hardy, Grant Mecham, Pamela Mecham and a foreign exchange student whose name I did not catch. They played Scattergories and then watched a couple episodes of Supernatural-again to my dismay. We left for St. George to go to dinner right after we picked up Caleb and Cayden from school. The plan was to go to Texas Roadhouse but it was particularly busy and we did not want to wait. We went to Ruby Tuesday instead. After dinner and a short perusal through Barnes and Noble-ok 30 minutes and few purchases later we went home to wait for the arrival of Grandma Penny, Granddaddy Larry, and Mawmaw. While we waited Cody opened his presents from us. He got some new white church shirts, a new Ihome, and a electric keyboard. They arrived around 10 and we helped them get settled in. Saturday morning we had another big breakfast and then Don, Larry and Cayden went for a ride in the Rhino while the rest of us risked our lives on the freeway as we let Cody drive to Mesquite to go to Walmart. He did much better than I thought he would although if I was a smoker I would have gone through a pack in the 30 minutes we were driving. He is getting much better at driving and has gotten a few in hours in in the last few weeks. We came home from Mesquite much poorer and very hungry so we made dinner. We had hamburgers, chips, Suzanna's yummy fruit salad and homemade salsa. Cody made a lemon ice box pie for dessert. We settled in for an uneventful evening watching 7 Brides for 7 Brothers and then my parents watched National Treasure while I laid on my bed watching hour after hour of Bones. My neck was giving me trouble again-shocker! Sunday morning dawned bright and clear-seriously with the weather hovering around 70 all week. We made biscuits and gravy and Connor went for his interview. We also got started on some of prep for the after church meal. I made Frog Eye Salad and the angel food cakes for the dessert. Then we got ready for church. Connor was called up on the stand to be sustained to the office of a deacon and recited the 4th Article of Faith. After Sacrament we went to the Bishop's office for the ordainings. Don ordained Cody to the office of a Priest with Granddaddy Larry, Grandpa Don, Bishop Barlow, Bill McConnell-2nd Cousenlor, William Stratton-1st counselor in the Young Men's Presidency, Greg Chappell-2nd Counselor in the YM Presidency. Then Cody got to stand in the circle as Don ordained Connor. The Deacons quorum presidency was also in attendance-Sean McConnell, Devin Mortensen, Mitchell Eide and Jeremy Waite. As soon as the Amen was said for Connor's ordination Cayden jumped up out of his seat and said " My Turn". He was quite adament that he get a blessing too but we told him it wasn't his turn. In hindsight we should have just let Don give him a short blessing too but oh well. Don's parents and Darbie were there with us too. After we were done in the Bishop's office we went home to get ready for dinner. We had a baked potatoe bar (the potatoes were the size of footballs and took almost 2 hours to bake) with Chili and Broccoli Cheese soup plus all the other fixings for potatoes as well as Frog Eye Salad, green salad, and my mom made rolls. For dessert we had Snow Tunnell cake without the tunnel-Cody's traditional birthday cake request. Chris and the girls came over for dinner although we missed Dena and Ashley who were in Arizona. Dave and Amy did not come either. I love having yummy food to eat but it takes so long to prepare and then almost as long to clean up. My parents decided to stay overnight again and go home Monday since it was Martin Luther King Day. I think that they probably were wishing that they had gone home Sunday night but Larry had a bunch of conference calls early Monday morning so they ended up not being able to leave until 2. Cody had friends come over again around 11 for a contination of the Supernatual marathon and so there was a bunch of screaming girls and very loud sound effects all afternoon. It was really rather obnoxious but hey we decided that it was better that they were all here so that we knew what they were doing as opposed to being somewhere else getting into all sorts of trouble. The kids went back to school onTuesday and had a short week because there was Teacher Development day on Friday. I made baked potatoe soup with all the left over baked potatoes from Sunday on Tuesday as well as homemade rolls and monkey bread-a new family favorite. One of my goals for the new year is to use my food storage at least once a week if not more so the bread was part of that. I went to the temple Wednesday morning and Don has had a show in Vegas all week. Thursday I made a quiche and whole wheat banana chocolate chip muffins-again the food storage and I even ground up my flour again with my handy dandy wheat grinder. I ground up a whole #10 can just so that I don't have to do it as often. That was after I ground up part of another can and realized that it had weevil carcasses in it. Now I could have gotten away with it with noone the wiser but there is just something psychologiallyand morally wrong with eating weevils even if they are all dryed out and ground up in the flour. I threw out the rest of the can and the flour. I guess if we were starving I could gag it down and of course I would not tell anyone but now is not one of those times. Thank goodness! The kids are home today and it is rainy and wet and muddy. Lovely-couldn't it have rained yesterday when they were in school? If Caleb gets all his missing assignments done I told them we could go to McDonald's and then have a read-a-thon this afternoon. Connor and Caleb are going to the hockey game with Aunt Darbie tonight so Don and I will take them in later to meet her. Bad thing is that Don is already in there at the show and says that he wants to come home and then go back in tonight. I don't like that but whatever! He just knows that I don't like to drive at night and besides we would have 2 cars in there also. Happy Friday!