Welcomed Visitors

Last Sunday Mike parents Dave and Sherrie came to visit us for a week. To me they are much more than just my parents-in-law. I’ve hear that some people just don’t get along with their in-laws, or that they don’t like them at all. A lot of times I have heard people almost complaining about having them in their home. I love being around Sherrie and Dave. They are fun and I feel like I can talk to them as if I were talking to my own parents. Maybe it is because I lived in their house and we are used to each other. We are so far away from both sides of our family that it really feels good to be able to spent time with them. Having our kids around people who love them and care about them is such a blessing.

Thank goodness my kidney stone pain went away right before they came on Sunday night, so we were able to go out and do fun things together.

On Monday we went to see the Gibbs Gardens. Mike always wants to go see gardens although I am not the garden type. Going to the outlet mall would be my kind of outing. However, I have to admit that the gardens were very impressive. We spent most of the day walking around beautiful landscaping stuff. We came back home to rest for a bit and give poor baby Mika some time out of her car seat. Then we went to the international farmers market. We love that place because you can find almost anything you can think. We bought some Mexican pastries, German chocolate, delicious shrimp dumplings, some type of French cake, and my favorite new thing Baklava (I had to look it up to spell it correctly). We then came home and ate dumplings and all sorts of treats.

Tuesday we went to an animal safari. It was super fun and scary at the same time. These animals are so used to humans that they come up to you and demand food. We were told not to feed certain animals like zebras and ostriches because they might bite. One zebra came to the window while I was distracted looking the other way and when I turned around she was terrorizing my poor Lisa. This zebra had almost her entire head inside the car and was showing us her teeth. Lisa was screaming and covering her eyes. I quickly rolled the window up. We were laughing hysterically but we were also a little scared. Lisa was fine and continued to feed the animals. To Lisa all the animals were just giant Ellas. The lesson we learned is that you shouldn’t use your own car. You should rent one of their vans so you are not worried about the long horns damaging the side of your car. We came back home and ate at a Mexican restaurant. Real Mexican food is hard to find and we love this place that is close to our home.

To stay true to their nature Dave and Sherrie worked for the next two and a half days fixing one of the bathrooms in our home. For some reason I knew that they were not going to spend a whole week without doing some type of labor. We are very grateful for the work they put into making our home look better. Between me having to take care of two kids and Mike working full time and going to school there isn’t much home improvement going on here. Thank you, and sorry that you felt you needed to do something other than relax.

Friday Night we went out to eat real Chinese food. We came home and ate Costco’s chocolate cake and tried to watch a movie, but we were all very tired and went to sleep.

Saturday morning they went back to Utah. We are grateful for the time we had together. My kids never see their grandparent so this week was awesome. Lisa loves Ama (Grandma), she is not sure about Apa (Grandpa) but by the time they left she was asking us where they were. Hopefully we can be together for Thanksgiving.

 When Grandma and Grandpa were here for baby Mika's blessing we forgot to take pictures so I made Mike put on a shirt to take at least one. Its blurry and Mike is actually wearing shorts underneath, but now we have ONE picture.