A week full of family!

Jessica (Derk's sister) and her fiance, Mike, came for a visit last weekend. He's moving up to Coeur d'Alene, so she flew down to get him, and then they made the long drive back up to Idaho. We're so glad they stopped to see us on their way! It is a huge understatement when I say my kids LOVE Mike. :) We watched some movies, played Risk, Jessica painted the girls' nails, we did some hiking, Mike tortured Kyrie with riddles and amazed the kids with magic tricks (he can take out his eyeball AND remove his thumb!) ;-) , and we had fun just hanging out together. I only got one picture while they were here. We stopped at the top of our hike to check out the view, and I snapped a quick picture of everyone.

They left our house late Sunday night. Derk's cousin, Grant, was getting married and sent us an invitation. When we found out Jessica and Mike were going over for the wedding, we decided it would be a fun excuse for a weekend getaway since we'd get to spend more time with them at the same time. We packed the kids up and left for St. George on Friday afternoon. It's about 7 hours away. The kids were SO awesome in the car! We were extremely impressed and told them over and over how proud we were of them.

We got to St. George around 8pm on Friday night. Derk's grandma really wanted us to stay with her, so we decided we'd do that for 2 nights and then spend the 3rd night at a hotel so the kids could swim. I'm so glad we chose to stay with Grandma those nights. She really loved the company, and it saved us a good amount of money, too. Jessica and Mike stayed there also, so that made it extra fun. The sealing was first thing on Saturday morning, so we woke up, got ready and headed to the temple. We didn't go to the actual sealing, but we had a great time on the temple grounds as we waited for everyone.

Asher wanted a turn with the camera, so we let him snap a few. The photographer at the wedding thought he was the cutest thing ever and got pictures of him taking pictures of her. :) Here are some of the pictures he took. He did a pretty great job!

After the sealing, we went to the cemetery where Grandpa Dean is buried. This was per Cambria's request. She still talks about Grandpa Dean daily and asked if we could go visit him. I love how close to Heavenly Father children are. We had a really nice talk about how he's in Heaven and how we'll see him again someday. Right by the cemetery there was a wildlife refuge type of place with a pond and ducks. And then right near that was a farm with a lot of horses. So we took a little walk after visiting the grave site.

This next picture is hilarious. As the kids were checking out the horses, Kyrie made an observation that one of the horses was most definitely a boy horse. You can see by Bri's face that she thought it was gross, but what you can't see is that Asher is laughing his head off. It was really funny!

While there, we also took the opportunity to go on some hikes at Snow Canyon. We took lots of pictures there!


On the way back to Yuma, we decided to stop at Hoover Dam and check that out. It was pretty amazing. We really wanted to take a tour, but they were between $11 and $30 per person.

And I got some cute ones of Jess and Mike throughout the weekend. Here are my favorites.

Living so far from family sure makes you appreciate them that much more when you do get to see them. It was a really fun week! Thanks for all the fun, Jess and Mike! Can't wait to see you guys again soon! :)