We love our family!

What a week this has been! Bill's parents came to Illinois for a visit, so of course we tried to cram as much as we could in the 5 days we had together. I probably won't remember everything that we did, but luckily I have a number of pictures to help me remember most of it.

Sunday:
After attending church together, we all gathered at our house for a nice family dinner. Will loved putting his train track together with Daddy and Grandpa (and I think Daddy and Grandpa loved it too)


Monday:
Grandma and Grandpa Evans were gracious enough to help me out by babysitting Will while I went to a doctor's appointment. We all spent the majority of the day resting and doing our own things before getting together again that evening for a joint birthday celebration. It was my sister-in-law Susan's birthday on Wednesday, and my father-in-law's birthday is later this month, so we took advantage of all of us being together to celebrate. I attempted to make BBQ chicken in the oven, which sort of worked. If nothing else, I managed to set off the smoke alarm! But the evening was a lot of fun regardless of my so-so BBQ skills.

Tuesday:
We took Will and his cousin Alice to the Orpheum Children's Science Museum downtown in the morning. It's a great place for kids of all ages, and they both seemed to enjoy themselves while their parents and grandparents enjoyed taking pictures. At one point we all converged on a water feature, and Bill and his dad even got into it by making little dams. Hmm, I'm not doing the best job at explaining, so I'll let the pictures and video do the talking.


I think we definitely have a train lover on our hands. Will found this train track and wouldn't leave for the longest time.


Will steering a ship.


I'm not sure why they have a giant chess set outside, but Will enjoyed helping move the pieces around.


Will and Alice on the teeter-totter. They had so much fun playing together this week. More pictures of them together to come.


Bill and his dad trying to out-do each other by building dams to stop the water.

Later that day we all went over to Bobby and Susan's house to hang out and have some fun. Will and Alice had such a fun time playing together that I had to take a few pictures of them.

My cute niece.


Bill started giving the kids piggy-back rides.


I am so excited to see Will and Alice grow up together and become close. They are playing together so well now.


For some reason one of my favorite things to do was ask Alice and Will to hug a lot. It is so cute when they do.


Wednesday:
There's a great nature center and forest area near our house, so we all spent the morning looking at the animals and walking around. It was a beautiful day and a great place for some cool pictures.





Later we all had lunch at El Toro for Susan's birthday, which was conveniently located right next to our apartment complex. It was really good Mexican food, and it left us all stuffed for the rest of the day. That evening we spent a little time at Hessel Park, which has a fun water sprinkler thing. Will and Alice were somewhat interested in it, but they just roamed around and played on the playground for the most part while the adults tried to stay cool in the shade and chat.

Thursday:
We didn't really do much together during the day, but that evening my mother-in-law, Loretta, gave a special genealogy conference at the church. I call her the "genealogy guru" because she's amazing at this stuff. I'm always surprised at the little details she manages to find about people. Because I served my mission at the BYU genealogy center, this was fun for me too. When the conference ended we said our goodbyes and went home so that Bob and Loretta could get a good night sleep before making the 20+ hour drive home the next day.

It was an awesome week, and we are so glad that we could spend so much time together. Come back soon Grandma and Grandpa!