In Suuummmer #2!

Dear Family,
I side with Bella in saying that Olaf is my favorite character in "Frozen", which is a "beloved" movie around these parts as well!  Eliza stands "transfixed" whenever it is on and I can count on her "staying put" and not moving an inch when she is watching it.  Disney really struck it rich with that one....
Summer has officially come to Kaysville with the opening of our pool!  We had a barbecue for Jake's birthday on May 26 and followed with another one for Dad's birthday on the 31st.  We also plan to have some family here this next Tuesday night to help celebrate Great Grandma Horne's 91st birthday.  We are going to the temple in the morning and having a swimming/dinner party here at night.
Dad has been working hard ALL DAY EVERY DAY in the yard (surprise, surprise!) - planting flowers, mowing, edging, watering, doing whatever he can to keep everything looking so nice.  So much for deciding we would have "only a few areas with flowers" in our new yard - in order to "simplify"!  He planted our vegetable, fruit garden as well, along with some herbs!  It is a little challenge adjusting to different growing conditions, but we are hopeful...We love our yard and the view is still so beautiful with the meadow and mountains in the background.  We are truly blessed.... 
Speaking of blessings, I had a wonderful trip (a little earlier than planned!) back to Pennsylvania to help and to welcome little Monty Gruwell into the world and into our family.  What fun it was to be there to not only celebrate his arrival, but Mother's Day and Elli's birthday as well.  I had fun seeing where all three girls go to school, watching Ashlan at an ice-skating lesson, visiting their ward, meeting many wonderful Gruwell friends and learning my way around (a little!)  It is plain to see that Stacie, Matt and their family are very much loved by so many.
Dad continues to be busy serving as a sealer in the Bountiful Temple.  He works Wednesday afternoon and evening and the early morning shift on Saturday.  We both help teach one of the two missionary prep classes in our Stake.  We are learning to love and appreciate the manual, "Preach My Gospel" that the missionaries use.  It truly is an inspired tool.  We just had three young men and one young woman leave for the mission field from our class with more leaving in the next few months.
We are looking forward to our trip this weekend to Roseville to see Cordon, Cameron, Katelynne, and Lizzy perform with their "sing and dance" groups.  We weren't able to attend their performances very much when we were serving in the Fresno Temple, so we wanted to see their program this summer.  Jacob is going to travel with us so we think it will be really fun.  We, along with all of you, are also looking forward to our family reunion in Newport and to summer visits from different family members to our home here in Utah.
We love all of you so much and are so proud of you for the wonderful things you are doing and the way you are living your lives.  I hope you are taking the time to read the talks in the Ensign from the recent General Conference.  They are all so wonderful.  We read President Eyring's talk, "A Priceless Heritage of Hope" last week in our family home evening and we studied Elder Nelson's talk, "Let Your Faith Show" in RS today.  They are both such wonderful talks. 
A huge "thank you" to Kevin and Amy for their recent blog posts!  I will try to do better and hope all of you will, too!  Love, Mom

In Suuummmer!!

Bella loves Olaf from "Frozen" and used to sing "in suuummmmeeer" from his song randomly. haha We are for sure in summer here in St. George!! Today the car said it was 108 degrees! Yikes! We are doing our best to keep cool by swimming and going to the splash pad.

We have settled into our new place and love it! We are backed up to the playground and b-ball court so the girls love to go out and play and ride around. 

Our biggest adventure since we last posted was our trip to Disneyland/California. We went with our friends the Noordas and it was a blast! We just went to Disneyland for one day...it was fun but crazy! We were so exhausted by the end of it. We planned out our day maximizing the Fast Passes, etc. so we were able to ride pretty much every ride we wanted to in both Disneyland and California Adventure. The girls even got to meet the princesses, which was a highlight of course. :) The other days we spent at the beach. I'd forgotten how much a LOVE the beach. Next time we are going to skip Disneyland and just go to the beach. :) Here are some pictures from the trip:

Pure joy on the teacups!! :)

Meeting the princesses...Bella wasn't sure about it all!

The whole group in front of Mickey...we were rushing all day we didn't get a picture until the very end of the day.

This is classic Bella! She is a nut! :)

Celebrating Zach's birthday at BJ's Pizza in Huntington Beach...you wouldn't know it but Addi had just vomited all over us before this picture. :(

On Easter Sunday after church we went to Laguna Beach, had a picnic and walked along the beach...it was sooo pretty!

We were so sad to come home!! Can't wait until Newport! :) Life goes on though...we got home and a couple days later the girls and I left again to go up North. I was attending a blogging conference while Mom and Dad graciously watched the girls. It was a fun weekend to quickly see everyone up North.  The girls had a BLAST!

Bella loves her Grandma and popcorn! :)

Jake being silly and everyone jumping on the trampoline.

 After being gone for almost two weeks we got settled back into our routine and doing all the end of the year stuff. My Singers Company group did their final performances and Addi graduated from her first year of Preschool! :)

The girls did a fabulous job!

Then we just celebrated Addi's 4th birthday! I can't believe she is 4! She is so smart and loves to play with friends. We are so grateful she is in our family!

The birthday girl!

We couldn't start the summer without a trip to the ER for Zach...he had kidney stones again. Poor guy! This time was worse than the other times so we ended up in the ER to try to help him get on top of the pain. And no wonder it was worse when he caught this in a strainer a few days later:

Nasty little bugger!

Thats about it! Sorry for the novel of a post. :) We are just enjoying summer round here and excited to be with everyone at Newport soon. Look forward to hearing from everyone.

Love you!
Amy and family