Yummy, Yummy Yummy Yummy Fruit Sal-ad!!!

--> {For 18 months – Jan ’17 to Jul ’18 – I’m posting our letter to Miranda while she's on her mission to Cochabamba, Bolivia.  Our letter titles are taken from a list of family sayings & catchphrases we recorded onto a pillowcase she has with her.  You can read her adventures on her mission blog: www.hermanamadsen.blogspot.com!}

First of all, this morbid coolness:

Monday, like we were saying on Hangout, the kids & Dad packed up and went to SLC for a little getaway so I could get a lot accomplished at home without any interruptions... It was so awesome.  I ended up choosing sorting/ weeding through/ deleting/ backing up all our digital photos.  I watched every video, trimmed them, deleted about 10,000 bad shots, and caught up to this last December, and it feels so good! 

They stopped & hung out at The Boy Store because they couldn't check into their hotel yet:

Lingered at JCW's eating the best burgers & fries in UT:

Then checked in and did the first obvious thing:

Then did the next obvious thing... a pizza (and another smaller cheese) big enough to feed them for 2 days:

And rented a movie, etc.  Relaxing from all homework & house chores... nice.  Then in the morning they went to Hogle Zoo, stopping by the Village to see the old stomping grounds - a little family history.  =)

Then went to A Wrinkle in Time (classic children's book that was hard for me to get through... probably because the author read her own book - hardly ever a good idea), and they were pleasantly surprised, because they had heard that so many people didn't like it.

Then the good ol' Restaurant That Can Fill up Your Teenage Boys... I think that's the official name, besides Upchuck-a-Grandma.  

They came home on Wed afternoon and vegged the rest of the day, not even any Mutual!!!

On Thursday, Halle & Kierste made whole wheat bread by themselves.  I helped them grind the wheat:

We had so much dough that we had to put some of it in a bundt pan.  =)

Carlie made our dinner that night... I'll give you 3 guesses what she chose for dinner.  Yep.  Beans & Rice:

Then she made something else cool, too:

And this came up in my feed this week.  SIX YEARS AGO:

It looks like Melanie's Formal has gone out of business.  =(

So Friday, we drove up to Sandy and headed up the main road, then went off into a ravine on a dead end road to this totally sketchy house.  

We went around the back of the falling apart property, went into the lady's basement, and there was a wonderland of ball gowns for Carlie to choose from for Prom!  Here's a preview, but we can't spoil it.  =)

All day while we went to Costco and One Stop Dress Stop (it really looked like the name meant we weren't coming back), we had this little cute sister with us - the ELEVEN year old Hals.  =)

Then, since Carlie was going to Prom with Andrew but never got to see him, we threw this game night party.

This is the night I realized I'm in that weird age group where some of my friends are starting to be GRANDPARENTS, but at the same time, some of them can still be announcing baby news... This is a couple I graduated with, so they're not older or younger than me:

Saturday, Carlie took the twins to use their birthday Swig GC's:

THEN WE DYED HAIR.  After I had colored my own, I colored Carlie's... and H&K begged to have their hair red, too...

Then, after all the hoopla was over, Carlie took Morgan to use his Swig card, too, from his bday.  Poor, poor Carlie, having to drink that many dirty sodas in a day:

Today was Stake Conference. Dad was super sick last night, and then went to sleep when we left for the conference.  I wasn't feeling 100% and was super tempted to have everyone watch the tapings of Conference from last week instead of trying to get everyone to the Stake Center.  I'm so glad I didn't give in to that.  At least 3 of the speakers were inspired by Heavenly Father to tell me things I needed to hear personally.  I mean things that I was currently crying about during the conference... and then they said, "This is not what I had prepared, but I feel the need to tell you..." and then Heavenly Father spoke directly to me.  He's watching me, and cares what I'm doing.  He sees our family, and knows what we need to change.  He knows I'm trying my hardest, and I don't know what else to try.  Then He tells me.  Now to try to implement what He said... the hard part.

The coolest talk was by a lady who talked about keeping our families safe and guarded.  She had an acronym: SAFE

S - Scriptures, of course.  In them ye have eternal life.

A - Attend all 3 hours of church, seminary, mutual, temple. When you're in the right place, the Lord can speak to you.

F - Family.  Councils, FHE, scriptures, prayers. The bonds we make carry us through hard times.

E - Eternal perspective.  Keep repenting, see our potential.

Here is the girls' hair in broad daylight:

I'm the worst at taking pictures when my parents are here.  I think I'm just so happy to have them there, that I forget that pictures are a thing.  We had them to dinner and it all turned out so yummy.  Missed Daddy because he was languishing on our bed in his misery.  But after some more sleep after dinner, he still had to walk out the door and go to work a night shift!!!

So here's the lame proof again that my parents are here.  Maybe putting these pictures on will force me to think of taking real pictures with them.  =)

Grandpa shared some awesome memories he has of his Grandma Miller, whom I remember very faintly.  I love hearing about when he was younger... hopefully all 4 of your grandparents will start sharing more of those life memories with all of you.  How valuable is that!

After they left, we played a round or two of Telestrations.  The kids share their booklets on the Apple TV so everyone can see it... 

Ok, memes. First, Easter/ Conference aftermath:

Second, some gun memes because of all the hoopla going on.  You'll have to catch up on it all in a couple months.

(London has some of the most strict gun laws in the world, and London's homicide rate officially surpassed NYC recently, so they are seriously putting millions of dollars into initiating and enforcing a ban on KNIVES.  When are people going to realize that taking weapons out of good citizen's hands is not going to make violence go away?  It just leaves good people defenseless and bad people powerful.)

And this one is good:

And just some silly:

Love, us!!!!  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxxooxoxoxooxooxoxoxoxooxxxooxoxoxo