Let's hear it for the boy

Almost 2 weeks ago my little brother came home from his mission in Denver, CO. And 2 days later made the trek to Utah to see a bunch of us! Party time! It ended up being just as fun, memorable, and action-packed as I hoped it would be. And I got to have more meaningful one-on-one conversations with individual people than I thought I would in all the chaos.

Mostly it was great for my girls to get to get re-acquainted with Derek and have SO much fun with him, and my sisters, and my parents, and Donny and Christine and Taylor! After they all left for the last time Monday morning, Whitney said sadly "I'm going to miss them a lot." Uncles and Aunts, Grandparents and cousins are the best!!

And I also had fun remembering just how much fun Derek is. He's not just the spiritual, hardworking missionary we've heard from for the last 2 years, he's also hilarious and caring and knows how to be a bit silly. :)

So here's my pictures and a few I stole from Melissa.

So Friday night I stayed up until close to 2am- the latest I have in a long time! Everyone got there around 10 and we had a party until it was finally time to sleep.

The next morning we were up at 8 and Grandpa Jamie was making pancakes. What a fun wake-up for my girls! A house full of people to play with!

Soon we were off to Provo to eat lunch before the BYU game.

Taylor kindly offered her cute apartment for our use.

I got shots of everybody:

Donny and Christine

Katrina, Phillip, and Melissa (with Lydia on the ground, she is SO CUTE I'm sad I didn't get a picture)

Jenae, Kate and Eric, our cousin Ryan, Dad, Derek, and Taylor

Whitney and my mom (Whitney is a pizza-eating machine by the way! Katelyn of sourse packed a sandwich to eat since she doesn't like pizza...)

Then we walked to the game in the gorgeous October sunshine!

The game was a total blowout win, which was nice. We got to sing the fight song about 8 times!

I love watching football with Eric. :)

and with no children! My mom babysat my girls and Lydia so we could enjoy the game.

Thanks mom!

Group shot of almost everyone

In addition to the fun game, the afternoon was also full of

fashion statements

and girl trips to the bathroom. :)

(I got up to go-pregnancy calls- and as I walked down the row everyone followed me! I turned around and there was a line of girls joining me, it was funny.)

I didn't get any pictures at dinner at Katrina's, or my house that night or Sunday night. This is Monday morning before they left. It was inside-out and backwards day at Katelyn's school, thus the strange clothes. :)

Anyway, I'm still feeling the lingering happiness from that weekend.

Along with the sadness that I wasn't there for the party this last weekend for Derek's Homecoming talk in church. Ahh the difficulty of living 12 hours from my family... oh well at least they come up here a ton and I get to live by whoever's attending BYU at the moment. :)

It's a good life.