A Visit from Stephanie and Mark

We had the good fortune of a visit from my childhood best friend and her family this weekend!  Stephanie is one of the women I spend a getaway with each year, with our other friend, Sara.  Sara lives in Spokane, where Stephanie and her family were headed for Thanksgiving when they stayed here a few days on their way. 

Steph and Mark live outside of the Portland now.  It's great to see every year for the girls getaways, but we never get to let our families mesh.  They have such a beautiful family.  We thoroughly enjoyed getting to spend as much time with their whole family. 

The Boise Temple Re-Dedication fell on the very Sunday they were here.  So they actually got to attend it with us.  Our bishop was sweet enough to mail them a children's recommend for it because this meant their oldest, Tori, could also attend being a baptized member.  So they were able to have their ward leadership interview Tori (Brielle was also interviewed and given a recommend in our ward) and the 6 of us attended the re-dedication at the Ontario Stake Center.  Some beautiful talks pertaining to temple work were given.  I'm so excited to have our temple back up and running!  What a joy and a relief to be able to attend the temple with so much more convenience now.

Our little ones really hit it off.  

Mark and Stephanie's children are the same or close to the ages of ours.

Ashton and Brielle printed off some Thanksgiving coloring pages for everyone to do.

  Our oldests, Tori and Brielle are exactly the same age and had a BLAST together.  

So much giggling!

 It was so fun to watch and think back to older days as a child with my friend. 

Here they are making No-Bakes.

Our favorite part was just having the chance to talk, catch up, and exchange thoughts on all sorts of subjects.  These two men are super well-read and it was fun to hear them dive into so much interesting conversation. 

It's a humbling thing to reminisce the days you and your buddies used to dream and share your dreams of what life would hold and then look at how things unfold.  We truly are so blessed.  I especially remember the years of boy talk- talking about getting married someday and what we hoped we'd find in our husbands.  All three of us (Steph, Sara, and I) married very intelligent men who honor their priesthood, honor us with love and respect, work diligently to be good providers, are family men, and consciously try to be better each day.

We watched a couple of movies down in the theater.

One movie we watched was one that Stephanie and I loved as kids, "Rigaletto".  

I still love that one! We loved the music from it.

Mark loves to cook and he had offered before they even came, to help out with any of the cooking.  He showed us his tricks for a juicy oven roast beef.  I was excited because I actually do that meal all the time but always want it to be juicier.  He also made a butterflied pork loin in the oven.  Super yummy.  I felt bad at first to let him even lift a finger in the kitchen as our guest, but it was easy to tell right off that cooking was enjoyable for him.  I've thought a lot about that contrast lately of cooking to eat and cooking for enjoyment.  Not gonna lie, it seems so foreign a thing to me to cook any longer than it takes to make something edible!  But there is definitely an art to it out there that I've never had the patience to explore...  I did very much enjoy eating it, though!

It was all good times!  Wish I wasn't missin' out on the fun everyone will have in Spokane, but we have family close by so it makes more sense to stay home for the holidays.  My own family is so far away and I don't usually get to see them for holidays, which is super hard.

...But THIS year... they are coming here!  My whole family from all different parts of the West, are meeting up at our house for Christmas!!!