Families can be together forever

In July the song we are teaching in Primary is Families Can Be Together Forever. This is the flip chart I made for it.

Celebrating Grandpa Henderson

We had a whirlwind of a weekend in CA to attend Grandpa Henderson's celebration of life. It was such a great party! Great food, great company, and most of all great memories of Grandpa!

 

There was of course a little golf theme! 

I am so grateful for the years we had to build a relationship with Grandpa and get to know him. He had the best sense of humor and was such a hard worker. It has given John a sense of where he came from in his family because in so many ways they are alike.  I am proud of Grandpa and so grateful for Grandma Henderson and the care she gave to him in the last few years of his life. She was patient and even in the face of such a terrible disease she created wonderful days and happy memories.  

While we were down there we also had to resupply Johns stock of surfboards! We got 20 this trip! 

The boys were troopers will all of the driving! 

 

We may have had to bribe them with a slurpree or two :) 

The best news we just found out that one of the gas stations in Hurricane has been transformed into  a 7-11.  Slurpees all summer  long!

How sweet is this picture too!

I sent the boys to bed and when I went upstairs this is how I found Caleb and Beckham. Love my boys and love how they are starting to really learn to have each others backs!

SLC

John also got to escape with Beckham this weekend to go to SLC to sell some surfboards. They decided to take a tour of the Conference center while there.

John also got to see his childhood friends Joe and Dan.

Such good times for the boys! We missed them sooo much (wink wink!) Okay, we really did, but on the bright side I got SOOO much done at home!

So sweet...

Apparently Over the Big Moon has gotten big enough that our website has a worth. They estimate our website worth at $8503. I wish! I sent John the link and this is what he wrote back:

Pretty cool that you are on the radar. But…. you are worth more than that in my book….and I’m your husband and an estimator. I know.

He is so sweet!

Mothers Day

What a great Mothers Day Ive had. Ive been SPOILED!

I woke up to my favorite breakfast and beautiful cards and a gift card to Home goods! My Dad bought me some plants for our yard and I'm so excited to have things filling in.

I got to get ready for the day all alone, and then when it was time to go to church I walked out to a bow on my car. John had snuck out last night and washed and detailed the inside. Then this morning he vacuumed the whole car out at 5:30 - with the whole vacuum in the car so we wouldn't hear it. He is so good to me!

Church was beautiful and then I took a loooong nap when we got home. I spent some time playing on the computer, and then had the BEST dinner ever! Homemade lemonade, flank steak, baked potatoes, green beans, and Key Lime Pie for dessert.

Other highlights of the day were chatting with Grandma Henderson, John detailing the boys (he cut all their finger and all their toenails), watching the 3rd period of the Kings game, and then them winning.

My house is clean and I haven't done a thing today! Seriously its been the best. The last couple years have been hard on Mothers Day. Part of it is not just that I miss my Mom, but there was also guilt about enjoying myself. I know it doesn't make much sense but it felt like enjoying Mothers Day somehow wasn't acknowledging the loss of my Mom.

Today I felt no guilt. It was just a wonderful day. Even in Relief Society when the lesson was on death and I thought a lot about her and her whole experience. I was touched and cried, but it was for joy. I am glad that I have come to this place.

I'm so lucky that John takes such good care of me and treats me so well and I feel so blessed that I get to be a Mother!

 

I'm one lucky Mama!

Philippines Day 10 - Cebu City & Home

We packed up early in the morning and visited with some friends at the hotel and made sure we were all packed up. Then we checked out but left out bags at the hotel. We went and did a little more shopping. They make a bunch of guitars there and Caleb really wanted us to bring him home one. Then we visited a couple more people, picked up our bags, and then were off to the airport!

I couldn't leave without a picture of Julies :)

The trip was an amazing experience. I loved the Philippines - I loved the people! Most of all I loved being able to see John back with people he had served and loved so much. We already have our savings plan laid out so we can take our boys back in 5 years!

Philippines Day 9 - Lapu Lapu

We woke up on Sunday and got ready for Church and then took a walk to the beach and ended up chilling in the hammocks again, it had the best view!

One of the hotel employees was the Stake Relief Society President and John knew her and her son when he was here. He was without a missionary companion for a week due to Visa issues and her son filled in as Johns companion. She was nice enough to leave word that she would take us to church, which was a good thing because John didn't remember how to get there.


The ward members were so great and John still knew a lot of people! Its amazing how we can be on the other side of the world and feel so at home with people! I love how church brings us together and makes our differences, even the language barrier, seem to disappear.

We had some lunch after church and John had the BEST mango shake hes ever had. He had to get a second one.

Riding a trike with our second mango shake.

 

We took a taxi out to Minglanilla, one of his areas, that was about 45 minutes away. We were trying to find a few people that he had not been able to get a hold of by letter. It had a really weird feel to it, we just felt really uneasy. We still found people who were kind and helpful though. I did stop a basketball game mid-play and the players just stood there gawking at us :) 

We headed out to a really remote village next and he asked me if I was ready to really "stir things up." Sure enough the minute we hit the village people started pouring out to see us. The kids especially were taken with me. John was talking to the adults so I started trying to communicate with the kids. At first there were about 6 of them. As we walked around more started gathering and all of them just continued to follow. me. When I pulled the camera out they were so excited! Here is the last picture I took....can you find Lisa?

Our last night for Lechon Minok. The rice comes in the little woven palm leaves. The little green things are the calamansi.

SO YUMMY! Even though we were having the best time, we were getting homesick for our boys and were ready to be packing up to go home the next day!

Philippines Day 8 - Cebu City & Lapu Lapu

We headed into Cebu to do some souvenir shopping and also to go the Temple.

It was a wonderful experience to be able to worship there. After the Temple John was craving some McDonald's so we headed up the street to eat and since it was in a mall we walked around for a bit in the AC. There was one other place John wanted to go check for some souvenirs and as we were leaving the mall there were a couple of motorcycle drivers offering rides. We had rose them all over Moal Boal so after talking to them John told me to get on the back of one of them. The guy took off and we left John and the other guy behind. I had to pay for us to get out of the parking lot and then he was blazing through traffic on the wrong side of the road! I finally yelled, "where is my husband!?" He said we would find him and sure enough in a just a little bit I see John winding though traffic on the other side of the road. This was about the dumbest thing we have ever done. At least they had helmets for us, that was a first! I seriously thought my life was going to end about 100 times in 10 minutes!

The place we ended up was not safe. The city was quite a bit more sketchy than the rural areas we had been in. With the help from some Filipinos we were finally able to get a cab and get out of there! We did some more swimming and snorkeling when we got back to the hotel and decided to have dinner at the Cove restaurant at our Hotel. They had a big beach party going on.

This is the restaurant menu. You pick your fish, crab, or lobster and then they cook it up.

We had crab, garlic rice, salmon cakes, and veggies. It was yummy!

10 years ago from this night we were talking about getting married...we made the right choice!

How cool is the restaurant chandelier. Its all shells!

Philippines Day 7- Bais & Lapu Lapu

Today was a big travel day again. We headed out from the La Planta early in the morning and caught a bus down to the Santander Express and went back over to Cebu.

My fan - lifesaver!

Rice fields

From Santander we took a bus up to Cebu city. It was a long windy road on the coast and we both were feeling motion sick. We took some Dramamine and then we knocked out. This is one of my favorite pics from our trip.

It was so fun to be off on this adventure - just the two of us! In many ways it wasn't a really romantic trip, although there were definitely romantic moments. Rather it was a comfortable, fun, and relaxing trip. It was like a road trip with my best friend when I was in college. Maybe that's the reality of 10 years of marriage. Gone are the dramatic romantic dreams replaced with the peaceful comfort of true companionship. It was the best!

It took us 3 hours on that bus to get to Cebu City. Then another 30 minutes in a taxi to get over to Lapu Lapu Island. There are 2 bridges that connect Lapu Lapu and Cebu so it was easy to go from one island to the other. The city seemed much more dense and in many ways felt poorer than the rural parts of the Philippines. Maybe it was because it was contrasted against the new and modern, plus it was much more populated.

We checked into the Maribago Bluewater. It was a beautiful resort! Very comparable to what you would find in Hawaii. It was made for tourists (most come from Japan and Australia) so they spoke English and it was very modern and clean. The staff loved finding out that John could speak Visayan! He was the hotel darling for a couple of days!

The Lobby. No walls at all.

The shark pool. It was one of the many decorative ponds around the hotel.

Pool 1 - this was my favorite! It was a huge circle and I loved the big water platform around the whole thing you could sit on. John loved the slide! It was nice to swim in the ocean and then come jump in the pool!

The rest of pool 1

Pool 2 - This one had a big waterfall on the far side and the circle part on the left was a cool kids pool that was shaped like a bowl, only it didn't get very deep in the middle.

The hotel's private white sand beach. We did more snorkeling but this beach was really different since it had tons of huge crabs! I also saw a lobster here. It was in a cove so there wasn't coral.

Our room is the one lit up

Each area leading to rooms had a big pot of water to wash the sand off your feet

After we checked in we had a huge buffet for lunch and then did some snorkeling and relaxing. It was so nice to just rest in comfort and style! That night we found 2 hammocks on our walk by the beach so we relaxed by the water, listening to the sound of the water, slowly rocking. It was dreamy!

The we went and sat by the pool, sipping mango shakes and Pina Coladas for dinner while watching the fire dancers.

I think we were in bed by 8:00 and we were out!