Is a party even a party without the honored guests??

I wasn't sure, but it turned out that the answer is yes.

We were planning on Tosha and family to arrive on October 23 for a one month stay in Utah.  We were excited and had started making plans for the things we were going to do.  One big one was to do family pictures and we had arranged to do them with our photographer at the state hospital so that Ben could also be part of the pictures.  (Actually, taking the pictures on the grounds of the state hospital is actually "a thing".  Weddings, senior pictures and family pictures are so popular there that the hospital actually charges a $20.00 to control the number of people doing that at any one time of the day.)  Since we were going to be in Provo for the pictures, we decided to make a little get-away out of it and made hotel reservations for Sunday night so that we could visit Ben as a family and then spend Monday swimming and doing other fun things.

The day after the reservations were made---Tosha sent me a message saying that they had received notification that their vacation had been cancelled because they were being moved to SEATTLE in November!!!  That was one of those happy-bad news rolled into one.  I had already started the count down to seeing them again so it was sad to not be seeing them as planned.  However, the base in Seattle is only 12 hours and 35 minutes drive time which will be so awesome.  Also it is near where I grew up and near my relatives and the beach in Oregon---so many good things about it.

We decided to move forward with the overnighter (but cancelling the family pictures) and still visit Ben.  Ben has only seen the grandkids once in the past 16 months so we were looking forward to being on the grounds with them and Ben for a short visit and dessert.

But then, Ben had a terrible week at the hospital and was not allowed to have a visit on grounds at all. So we lost all of our honored guests..........but reservations had been made and people had gotten off work so we decided to press on.  I am not going to lie, there were moments when I watched the kids swimming or playing in the leaves that I really missed Tosha, Austen, Niki, Cooper and Ben.  It made my heart ache.  But happy moments were all around and I was so grateful to be there with the rest of my family, building sweet memories with these important people who were right there in front of me.

I am so happy that my grandchildren seem to love the water as much as my kids did.  Swimming together in the hotel pool was so fun.

Zander and Jessica

Scarlett and Scott

Elessia ended up with the job of catching Scarlett and Liam as they jumped into the pool...over and over again.

Jessica with both Liam and Zander

Cousins having a chat in the pool

 James loves his Aunt Jena!

 We headed to a park at Thanksgiving Point and found two Halloween floats.  I didn't get any good pictures by them but here is the front of one of them with James in the stroller.

We chased bubbles and played in leaves which is about two of my favorite things to do outside with little kids.  Liam and Scarlett ran and ran after bubbles.  We would have still been there, except we convinced them to play in the leaves.  That was so fun even though it was a bit cold outside.

Gary buried himself in the leaves and Scarlett dug him out and then decided

she wanted to be buried in the leaves as well.

Jena collected some leaves in her hair after being buried as well.

 Zander loves to flash his smile whenever you talk to him.

 Eating leaves was not his favorite although he tried it a few times to make sure.

 Gary filled a leaf barrel with leaves and dumped them like snow on Jena and Scarlett.  I wasn't sure how Scarlett would like that, but she popped out and said,

 "FANTASTIC.  DO IT AGAIN!" and of course, Grandpa did it again!

 James prefers his leaves one at a time.

After seeing Grandpa dump out leaves in the barrel, Liam headed across the field to get his own barrel.  He worked at it for a couple of minutes without any luck at getting one to move where he wanted to go.  Grandpa went to help him out and they rolled another barrel across the grass.

Scarlett thought playing and rolling inside the barrel might be fun, so she climb in and Grandpa covered her with leaves and then rolled the barrel with Scarlett inside.  Silly kids.

Liam and Scarlett then started rolling down a small hill.  Not to be out done, Jena and I joined them and rolled several times down the hill, laughing up and down.  (The next day, I wasn't so sure it had been a good idea as I was a bit sore.  It has been a few years since I rolled down a hill.)

Liam at the bottom of the hill

Throwing leaves is just the best!!! 

After lunch at McDonalds and time to play, we headed off to our next location for fun

which will be in the next post. 

But the answer to the question posed at the beginning is YES--it can still be a party without the honored guests.  Yes, I missed Tosha and family and Ben, but our time together is never wasted, because I was with the rest of my favorite guests--

Liam, Zander, Jessica and Elessia,

Scarlett, James, Scott and Chantel,

Jena,

and Gary!!!

Thanks for making time to make memories with me.

Love you all and Happy Fall day in American Fork, Utah!!!

Let's play in the leaves and roll down a hill again sometime soon.