A Pretty Good Week

This picture captures my sentiments exactly (you can find it HERE).

It has been a pretty great week, actually.

But I failed to take pictures of it, so here are some illustrations:

We drove down to my own private Idaho (my dad's house in Poky) on Friday night. We got there late, so we just put the kids to bed and visited adn introduced Niles to Papa Jim and Gramma Becky. It was fun.




Dad and Becky have a raspberry patch of industrial proportions, so early Saturday morning, the kids and Rich helped pick a bunch, then Becky sent some home with us. They were DIVINE...



Rich made freezer jam with most of them on Sunday evening, and it is so delicious! Garden to jar in 36 hours? Not too shabby. (THANKS, DAD & BECKY!!!)



Anyhooooooo, the reason we made the turn-around trip was to fetch my Gram from my mom. Grammy flew from AZ to SLC on July 18th and has been visiting my mother and helping my brother Sam & his family get settled in Tooele and his snazzy new job at Dugway. She was ready to come do some time at Casa Melin, so we went to get her. She'll stay with us until we head back down to Utah for our little family vacation on August 11th. We had a decent drive home from Idaho and got everything ready and had a restful Sabbath day, too.

On Monday, we made enchilada casserole and had the Petry Family (new to our ward from Washington State-via-Farmington UT) over for dinner and FHE (I wish I had taken pix of that cuz it was so fun, especially when James and Ava Petry got SOAKED). It was a rainy day and it was a good "down" day to just be home and get situated (although things are still kinda upside down from organizing all our "dumping grounds"--the office, the laundry room, and the craft cabinet). After FHE, before bed, we made s'mores over our tiny hibachi in the kitchen. They were so yummy with nutella and coconut marshmallows!

Heidi with her 'shmallow

roasting with great-gram

blowing out the fire on Heidi's 'shmallow

Gram tasting her first indoor coconut s'more--YUM!

***

Gram has been doing a lot of baby-snuggling, but I haven't taken pix of her and Niles yet (it's on my to-do list--my mom got some, though). It has been super-fun having her here. We've watched the Masterpiece Theatere Jane Eyre twice (because Addie wanted to watch it with us, so we happily obliged) and we both expressed gratitude for getting to live out most of our lives with our true loves (the Jane in this version is so great--actually, the whole thing is wonderful, I highly recommend it). We are having a relaxing, good time.

***

I found this picture on my camera, too:

That's Addie having a "tea party" (with Crystal Light, chicken nuggets, poppyseed muffins, and cheese) with her friend Sarah last Friday. She's such a doting mini-Martha!

SO, there ya go. I'll take more pix and keep you updated, but mostly I'm gonna enjoy some time with my Gram.