The Holt Happenings

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Grandma's 90th!

We are now only 5 hrs away from my grandma, cousins, and uncles, and 8 hrs away from my sister. It is going to be so much fun :) We headed over to IA and my Grandma is doing fabulous for 90! It was her big birthday weekend and it was Kai's too. She wanted to take him to ride the train and they loved it, mostly, Tristan wasn't too sure at times :) It was super fun for them :) Grandma Gayle is awesome, so loving fun to be around, the kids are naturally drawn to her. It was so nice to be able to meet up with mom and dad there and bre as well. It is going to be a fun meet up place :)

Telling Gram about something serious...

Aunt Becky and Meili spent some special time together painting eachothers nails :) It was pretty cute :)

Climbing Grams tree

Uncle Jerry and cousin peyton :)

Gram even had a little pinata for Kai to bust open and mom made brownies, it was so fun for him :)

2 birthday parties! can't beat that! Mei and Uncle Keith :)

Grams 90th party!

Gram and her kids :)

I just had to get a 4 generation photo!!!

My big man is 6 yrs old

Tristan says 'Hi!'

It was such a fun reunion :) So grateful for such a wonderful family :) life is good :)

Nauvoo

It was hard to say goodbye to our parents. It's so much further away than we have ever been. They were such a big help unloading us and even staying for an entire week to help us get settled. As hard as that was, we were super grateful to have something to look forward to. Shel and Bre were going to nauvoo, so with it being only 3hrs away we hit the road and got a hotel for 2 nights! We got up early and did initiatorys in the nauvoo temple while my niece babysat. It has such an amazing spirit in that temple. I was actually crying it was so special there. We spent the first day at nauvoo and the second at carthage. It was an amazing couple of days with our awesome family! Afterward they decided to bring the party down to my house and we hung out for 2 more days before bre and shel went their separate ways home. It was such a blast, we even surprised Kai at the last minute and celebrated his 'blue ninja' birthday :)

Doin it like the pioneers did :)

Emma smiths yard

We happened upon someone that told us they were going to do a rehersal of the nauvoo pageant that didn't start until the following week, so we felt super privileged to be able to witness that. The last song was the spirit of god and it was so angelic and powerful, this pic is pretty awesome :)

We also got a chance to watch a concert, which was so funny for adults and kids alike. It was musical and so funny I almost peed my pants watching it. Everyone there enjoys what they are doing so much it's just so fun to be around them :)

Carthage was truly a solemn place. It was so crazy to be in the presence of where those amazing men were.

The jail cell

amazing to see the bullet holes in the door still

Outside where joseph fell

the window

ms mei is standing in the smith family cemetary

cousins outside the smith summer home

my sisters are cuter than I am... :) sad that D wasn't there!

Once we got to my house we took everyone the following day to a little lake about 5 miles from our house. It has a splash pad on one side and the lake on the other. It was luke warm like the ocean. It was so much fun! We will definitely be doing more of that. The kids couldn't get enough, we were there for like 4 hrs :)

vacation not complete without a stop at culvers!

family sandwich!

Kai was so surprised. Rich took him 'froggin' at about 9pm when the big bullfrogs come out and they caught and released several. When he got home we jumped out of closets and threw balloons at him. I whipped this cake up in like 2 hrs complete with a few cakepops (per his request) since we have been talking about this forever, I knew exactly what he wanted :) He was thrilled! Especially that everyone could be with him to celebrate :)