Sweet Cedar City Silliness with a Sister and a Mom

Back in May, I was lucky to be able to go with my mom and April to Cedar City for a few days.  We stayed with Jake and Kelli and got to go to Jake's graduation and Brooklyn's baby blessing.  We also took an afternoon and showed off our golfing skills (and golf cart driving skills) at Cedar Breaks Golf course.

First off, SUU Graduation...

This was an inspiring picture in the hall of the big arena where Jake's graduation was.

I think that's a picture of Jake walking across the stage.

Live action video from the graduation scene...

Jake had lots of support there.

April had the better camera.

Love birds.

Random shot, but the only one I have with mom in it.

There's Grandma Rich talking to Mandy and Rex.  Jake talks about her all the time and I'm glad I got to finally meet her.  She's a wonderful woman.

Hayley's braid looked so cool that I had to have a picture.

  Kelli worked so hard and made such a yummy dinner for everyone!  We ate like royalty.  Sweet and sour meatballs and rice!  Fruit salad!  5 food group salad!  Chicken Queliguin salad!  Jello Cake!  I was in heaven.  She even custom-carved a watermelon and filled it with the fruit, which really deserves a blog post in and of itself, but for the sake of time and lack of my photography, here's what I do have...

Family togetherness carving the watermelon.  LOVE THAT!

The glorious creation.

Some of the food... YUMMY!

Getting ready to picnic outside Jake's apartment.

My gift to the 3 graduates: April, Jake, and Micah

 The next day April, Mom and I went "golfing."  Mom actually just rented a cart and tagged along with us since her arm was hurting.  We had so much fun!

Join in some of our fun for 2 minutes and watch this smilebox video starring April and her pink-handled driver. 

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To top our trip off, we got to see sweet Brooklyn get blessed by her daddy.  She is so precious to us and we loved getting to spend time with her and Parker.

Gettin' all clean for her pictures.

 I recognized her sweet little blessing dress!  That's the same dress that Lily and Amara were blessed in!  The dress is special not just because of the special spirits that wore it, but because of how it came to us.  My mom was living in Arizona and wanted to sew a blessing dress for Lily, so we counted on that.  But time flew by and she was under a lot of stress, and before she knew it, there wasn't much time left and she still hadn't sewn the dress.  She didn't have much money to buy a dress, which added to her stress.  One or two days before she was going to leave to Utah for the blessing, she went visiting teaching and mentioned her predicament to the sister that she visits.  She didn't know how it was all going to come together, but she felt God would bless her for going visiting teaching.  The next day, there was a knock at her front door, which was unusual.  She opened it and there stood the sister she visited with the day before with a little white gown in her hands.  She gave it to my mom as a gift with a smile and then they parted.  My mom later noticed the price tag was tucked inside and still attached to the dress, revealing that the dress cost much more than my mom could have spent.  So the gown was a gift given with love and that sweet sister delivered God's blessing that day.

Getting all ready for the blessing.

Parker is a proud brother.  And so handsome!

Kelli's dad was photographing.

Too many pictures!

Such a great family!

Parker smiled for me!

Parker and Brooklyn brought us so much joy!

Parker proved to me that he was a good eater!

I loved his method with the jello cup.

HAND DIVE!

April was burping Brooklyn

 On our way home, we passed the Payson temple being built in the distance.  I snapped a picture as we were hurdling down the freeway at 70 miles per hour.  Little did I know that Jake and Kelli would call Payson their new home in only a month.  They live there now, right by the temple being built. 

Payson temple construction in the distance.