Spring Break in Nampa Part 2

Saturday morning was General Conference. We cooked up some scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast for breakfast. After I got that all cleaned up, I sat down to work on the difficult puzzle some more and Charlotte tried to do the smaller cheap butterfly puzzle, but the pieces bend up a little and make it difficult to put them together. (I ended up just throwing that whole puzzle in the recycle at the end of the day.) When the first session ended, we had made plans to meet Melissa's daughter Ellie and her husband and dog at the dog park so that our two golden retrievers could play. They had fun playing with other dogs too, including Melissa's dog, Aussie. Melissa was going to come also but her new meds made her too tired and she had to stay home and rest. It was the first time we had ever taken Milo to a dog park and it went pretty well. At one point there was a kid that asked to use this guy's ball thrower. The boy was standing fairly close to me and as I was looking out at the other dogs play, this boy somehow accidentally threw a ball right on my lower left jaw. It hurt! But thankfully all it did was get a little red. Amazingly it didn't swell up. 

Milo was pretty good at catching his frisbee.

Maverick and Milo. Maverick is so soft for a golden retriever. They are so lucky!

Trying to get the three dogs to pose for a picture is worse than kids, lol.

After we finished at the dog park, we dropped Milo off at grandma's and picked up Jack so we could go see Melissa and Nathan's new house and the progress they have made. I hadn't actually seen any progress past when they broke ground, so they are really far from that point. Nathan was there to give us the tour. It's a big, beautiful house up on a bit of a hill where they can see the valley and the nearby Lake Lowell. They will also be putting in a swimming pool and hot tub. It's going to be super nice! I can't wait to see it when it's finished. Jack really wants to come back for 4th of July so we can come watch fireworks from their house. We'll see. The house is supposed to be finished in May for the parade of homes, but they still have quite a bit to do. And I was too busy looking at the house and helping grandma up and down stairs to remember to take pictures. I'll for sure get pictures next time.

We headed back to grandma's house to watch and listen to the 2nd session of conference. I have to admit, it was difficult for me to pay attention to all of the talks because I was busy working on a puzzle and I had invited Whitney to come help and she did. So she got to listen to some of conference as well. I even heard her humming along to some of the choir songs. I should have done this with her a long time ago. Work on a puzzle while listening to general conference is a great way to get her to listen to conference, ha ha. 

I didn't get much farther than this before we left for Nampa.

I didn't really work on it much more after conference was over on Saturday. Whitney left and then Tamara and her boys came over as well as Dad, Mom, Aunt Joyce and Porter and his mom Heather to play games, eat food and later on watch "Escape from Germany". It was a good movie and a fun day. I'm glad I got to see some friends on this trip and of course, my sister. I also was able to arrange to have one of Garrett's friends, Ryan Loveland, come over to play videogames with him. So Garrett got to see several friends as well. And he needed it again!

Sunday morning, I made pancakes for the kids while listening to conference. Then we packed our bags, ate a good lunch that Mom and Dad made for us. My in-laws also showed up to give Charlotte her birthday gift before we left for home. Back in January when they had come for Alice's baptism, I had asked my mother-in-law if there was something she could make with Charlotte's old baby blanket. Her blanket had been falling apart, and she had told me to throw it away about a year ago or so and instead I hid it in my closet. I just felt like maybe there was something we could do to make it last longer for her because I know she loved that blanket so much. Well, my mother-in-law was able to make a new blanket out of it with an added backing to it and quilted it to make it stronger. Charlotte loved it! The cool part is that this blanket was originally given to Charlotte when she was a baby by Laverne. So that made it extra special.

To go along with the restored blanket, she also received a new puzzle and licorice.

Here's the original side. One small section in the bottom right had to be cut and resewn to the bigger piece.

And this is the added backing.

After they took off, we got some pictures out front and loaded up our van. Tamara and her boys even rushed over to say goodbye before we left. and I was able to give her a few food items from the fridge and freezer that we did not use. It was a good spring break!

Because Jack rode home with Curtis, Milo had enough space to lay on his bed in the back. We piled our luggage right behind him. He approved.

Us with Grandma.

Us with and Dad and Mom.

Oh, and because I didn't want to let all of that work go to waste on the difficult puzzle that Whitney and I had worked on, I decided to carefully pull it apart in big sections and place them in a plastic bag to take home and finish later. I placed it under one of the girls' seats in the van to avoid it getting broken apart while traveling. I now have two puzzles to finish, and Charlotte has one (which she got the perimeter done but hasn't done much since, like me). We'll just have to work on them here and there, but I will probably wait until either Charlotte's 500-piece puzzle, or my 1000-piece puzzle is done before finishing Mickey & Minnie, so I can have space on our folding table downstairs for it. That's where the two big ones are right now.

All of the extra pieces are inside the box.

I almost forgot to mention the worse part of this trip. After getting to bed late Saturday night, I was awakened around 1:30am by Charlotte who tells me that she threw up. She said she doesn't know what happened, that she was just dreaming and then all of a sudden, she woke up and puked. Her stomach didn't hurt before going to sleep and it didn't hurt after she threw up. It just felt empty afterwards. Poor Alice was sleeping on the same bed and got some on her clothes. I had to wake her up for her to change and strip the bed completely. Alice changed and then got settled on a couch downstairs. Then I proceeded to take the bedding to the bathroom and rinse off everything that got puke on it. I finally decided that I needed to wake up Curtis for help because the clean-up would go faster and then we could get to bed sooner. I rinsed and then he took everything to down to the washing machine and use spray and wash on some areas. After we finished with the bedding, Charlotte took a quick shower and then I helped her blow dry and brush it so that she didn't have to sleep with wet hair. We set her up on a couch on the main floor. Curtis got back to bed before we did and when Charlotte and I finally did go back to bed, it was around 3am. I was just hoping I wouldn't be too tired for traveling home. 

We don't know what happened. That was the only incident. Thankfully, there was a mattress protector on the bed and so nothing leaked through to the mattress. After washing everything, strangely enough, the mattress protector was the only item that had a little bit of reddish stain on it (from either pizza or berries). It was faded but you could still see it. Charlotte felt better the next morning but was still careful on what she ate. And we made it home without any more incidents.