The long awaited visit

After months of looking ahead to Max, Jenny, and Graham's visit, they came and are now back home again. It went by far too quickly, but it was lovely nonetheless. Graham has grown so much! And it's amazing how much is going on in that little noggin of his. :)
We went to pick them up in Sacramento and they then stayed at the Parishes for a few days during which they held the Return to Manhood conference. After that was over, they came to our house for a few days and at the end of their stay Mrs. Parish, Sally, and the Littles took them back to fly out of Sacramento. It was a sad goodbye, but I have my tickets to see them this Summer!

One happy Auntie :)

First In-N-Out burger :)

Goofing off with Uncle Connor

sisters, happy to be together again



Uncle Connor's so funny :-p



"Can I have a kiss?"




Uncle Simon comes to take them out to the property for the weekend

An Auntie's heaven

Serving dinner to the conference attendees

The dinner roll queen (she made 200!)

The guys enjoyed jammin'

Great times with Grandpa :)

"There's a cow!!"

...the things we do to get a baby to laugh. :-p

Grandpa's so funny

just like old times :)

Graham joins in the song

watchin' a movie

dog tired

Graham LOVED spaghetti factory (we bought their sauces, cheese, and dressing, and took it home to enjoy)

Space Mission Graham-O-Man

Catchin' up on world news

More kisses :)

Snuggles and Snacks

Sweet, sweet Sally

awwww :)

The guys singing a new song that dad found

Stories with Grandma Sandy

Uncle Simon playing "Jesus Loves Me" for the Littles

almost time to say goodbye

~Kaylee

Back from Blogger's Block

"Hi! I'm good! You? Great! Haven't seen you in a while. What's up? wow. Neat. What about me?? Let's see. hmm, that's funny.....can't call anything to mind just now. Well, gotta go. Bye :)."

And so it goes. The typical conversational "remember 'what's up'" block. As it happens, the same symptom that causes that in small talk has kept me from blogging (well, to be honest, I just needed a better starter than "Laziness and How It Affects Blogging.")

Well, no, it's true. As I've looked through pictures and the such, there hasn't been much that pops out as blog material. Or if we did do something that was blog worthy, we forgot the camera.

But days pass and things go on despite the absence of extensive photographic evidence so...

"Here's what happened..." (Adrian Monk :-p)

Grandma and Grandpa McCracken came to visit "Sunny" California ;) We had a wonderfully relaxing week doing lots of not much. We talked, laughed, played games, sang, had a delicious (truly delectable) meal at Sweet Tomatoes along with many delightful ones at home, enjoyed the quirks of "Monk" on top of the games in Vancouver, and simply (and most of all) basked in each other's company and God's goodness to us.

aaaand.....

I have a puppy. :) You knew that, but I thought I'd just throw that in there since she's been a bright part ("biting" part?? :-p) of our lives for the past few months. ("Polly? Poooolly? *:-0* Polly! NO. Drop the sock. Drop it. Good girl! Ouch! Ouch! Let go of me!".......and so on :-p)

annnnd.....

JENNY'S COMING! (Can't leave that out). She and Max and Graham will be here in approximately....*checking clock*.....2 days, 19 hours, and 27ish minutes. (if I calculated correctly) :) yes, I'm counting. I'm more excited than...than....than a normal excited person...usually is....:)

Speaking of Jenny coming, the reason they're coming is because the Parish family is holding another Return to Manhood conference (go to http://www.returntomanhood.com/ to register. Come on out! It's for everyone AND it's completely FREE!) and mom and I are baking cookies! Hundreds of cookies! Scads of cookies! Cascades, mountains, cloudbursts of...*ahem*...yes, moving on. In other words, the house has smelled of chocolately sweetness and other like goodies for the past couple days. In fact, I had a grand old time just the other afternoon when all others were out and about. I whipped up a double batch of cocoa-y, weep-when-you-mix-it-because-it's-just-so-beautiful-and-you-just-have-to-have-a-taste-oooor-two dough and then proceeded to watch the Princess Bride in 10-15 minute increments. It went something like this:

"True love is the greatest thing in the world! ....except for a nice MLT, mutton, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, when the mutton is niiiice and leeeeean, and the tomatoes ripe, so perky, I love that. But that's not what he said! He distinctly said, 'BEEEEEPPP, BEEEEEPP.'"

And so I'd pause the movie, make my way to the kitchen , take out the cookies, set the timer for another 10 minutes to let them cool and skip back to the sofa where my groggy puppy waited to be curled back into my lap for the next short segment of the Princess Bride. I enjoyed this thoroughly, and it got the cookies made, which was the intent. :)

Well, enough for now. :) I actually intended to put the pictures at the top of this post down here.....but this is blogger and it wouldn't let me since I had already entered text. So I'll end with that.

Blessings,

Kaylee