Last Sunday, we met up for monthly family dinner at Ben's and Adi's home in Centerville. Meatball subs were on the menu, and they were delicious! JB baked a Texas sheet cake for dessert that was, likewise, very good.
Adults and kids alike had a great time together.
On Saturday afternoon, JB and I traveled up to Davis High School in Kaysville to catch a matinee performance of the play Twelve Angry Jurors. The jurors were, indeed, angry, and the cast did a great job in this collaborative effort.
Oh yeah, our niece McKenna had the starring role as Juror #8! She knocked it out of the park—not that I'm biased or anything!
May 4th, aka Star Wars Day, has now become an occasion for holding a family party. And why shouldn't it?
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We gathered at Ben's and Adi's home last night for this occasion. Our puppy, Leia, was dressed to the nines in her Chewbacca harness:
Yes, I realize how odd it is having a dog named Leia not wearing any Princess Leia buns on the sides of her head. (We don't have any for her yet.)
Speaking of which, we sampled a number of Star Wars-inspired goodies, including as Princess Leia buns:
We watched a few episodes of "The Clone Wars" TV show. (It being a school night, we didn't try to get through a movie.) Kids of all ages—but more specifically, the niblings—enjoyed the various activities, such as decorating their own droids, a great deal.
Last weekend, we gathered in West Bountiful for monthly family dinner. I'm really glad our niblings have the chance to hang out and play with each other on these (and other) occasions, because it turns out that they get along really well and have a great time together. That is something I missed out on when I was growing up. (Having all of my cousins living in California and England contributed to the problem.)
Our niece Kate's sixth birthday occurred a few weeks ago. For her birthday this year, we were able to arrange for an outing with her in much less time than we did ... because, you know, the Pandemic That Shall Not Be Named.
At the store, Kate picked out a LEGO set. We took her and it to our house to build the set together.
Here's before:
It had been too many years since I last built anything LEGO. Fortunately, Kate has been doing a lot of LEGO building and understood the directions very quickly. We may be a bit biased, but she's one of the smartest six-year-olds we know, and she is great company for a Saturday afternoon.
Our nephew Graham turned five years old last week. Rather than postpone a birthday outing with him for many months this year (as we did in 2020), we instead arranged to pick him up Saturday afternoon. So, that hurdle was the first one cleared.
Graham chose to go get ice cream from Blacksmith. We were like, Twist my arm, kiddo.
Afterward, we took him to the Bountiful City park to play for a while. That was followed by video games at our house. A kid after my own heart, he chose to play Star Wars and Avengers LEGO video games with yours truly, and JB assisting where needed.
So, it was a productive and fun day.
Monthly family dinners with my in-laws resumed this month–at least, we had one on Easter Sunday. Jeremy, Alice, and their kids came over to watch the Sunday afternoon session of general conference with us, and then we enjoyed an Easter-themed dinner, followed by card games, together.
No one was more excited about this than Leia, who absolutely adores Spencer, Olivia, and Jake (picture here with our puppers):
