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.

BYU Moment

From my facebook post:  I posted this after Friday night's party at BYU with Jena.

Apologizes to my UTE friends, but I want to share my BYU moment tonight. We (Jena, Emily, Gary and I) headed down to a Halloween Party at BYU with the Best Buddies program on campus. They had Cosmo as a special guest and he headed in the room in a banana costume. Of course everyone loved it. He was heading around the room, shaking hands and posing for pictures. For some reason he headed over to the wall we were sitting by and extended his hand out to me. As we shook hands I commented that I spent 6 years at BYU and never shook hands with Cosmo....the comment was meant for Gary...Cosmo heard me and leaned over and gave me a big hug! No pictures but Cosmo later was happy to pose with Jena Hall

I think I am going to put "Shake hands with Cosmo" on my bucket list, just so I can cross it off!!!
#BYUCosmo #GoCougars

It is sappy, I know, but it really was a sweet moment.  I thought, "What a good kid you are under that costume.  Your mom should be proud of you."

Happy Halloween!!!!

Since when did Halloween become such a huge celebration???................there were parties and corn mazes  and spooky alleys everywhere.  It was crazy.

For example, Jena's party list:

Friday, October 27:

At Vista during the day, they had a Monster Mash and they were encouraged to dress in their costumes.  Jena chose to be a chimney sweep this year and I barely remembered to take this picture as she headed to the bus.

Then Friday afternoon, Jena headed to her theatre class for their Halloween Party at the Centerpoint Theatre (no pictures).  From there, Gary, Jena and Emily headed to Salt Lake and picked me up and we headed down to the Y Serve Halloween Party for young adults with disabilities.

They had pizza, played games, danced, and did karaoke (there is Jena on the stage with mic in hand).  She is so brave. 

So basically Jena partied from 8:45 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. on Friday but it didn't stop there.....

Saturday, October 28--We got up early and headed to "Boo at the Zoo" and met Zander, Liam, Jessica and Elessia there for a morning of trick-n-treating at the zoo.  Companies had tables set up throughout the zoo and the kids went from one table to another getting candy (except for IHOP who came tiny little pies which were delicious)--seeing the animals was definitely secondary for Liam.  Jena managed to get some candy as well so that was a win for her.

Jessica made this darling chicken costume from a pattern on Esty (Elessica's mother made the little hat.).  There were hundreds of kids at the zoo and three of them also had this same costume that their mothers had made although each of them had made the hat slightly different.  It was so cute.

Liam was a duck but he didn't want to wear the hat.  Once he figured out he got the candy with or without the hat at an earlier party, he was done with the hat.

 Jena and I's selfie in support of the preservation of the elephants in the wild.

I was pushing the stroller and Zander arched his back and smiled at me a couple of times.  I decided I wanted to try to get a picture, so I got my camera ready and called his name and he looked back and smiled this awesome smile!! Being a grandma is so great!

 Halloween decorations filled the park and I wondered if any of my clients who have nightmares were visiting the park today.  I hoped not.  Sometimes when my clients and their parents talk about scary decorations at parks and even Wal-Marts, I wonder what people are thinking!!  Do we really need to scary these little people around us????

Elessia and Jena checking out the giraffes

 And to prove that we were actually at the zoo, here is a picture of one of the giraffes enjoying some lunch.  Hopefully he and the animals weren't too distressed by all the costumed characters visiting the zoo that day.  (I have to say that I would be a very "lame" parent for little kids today---I can't believe the costumes that the kids and their parents were wearing around the zoo. It was nuts!)

But Jena was not done yet.  I dropped her off at the Legacy Fairgrounds where she helped Kalie and Bishop Watson pass out candy and coupons for the Rush at a community trunk or treat event.  She spent about 6 hours there before finally getting home around 7:00 p.m.

Monday and Tuesday:  And Halloween continued for her at her Provo ward's Halloween party on Monday night and then on Tuesday she headed to Hannah's family neighborhood and went trick n treating with Hannah's sister Kylie and Emily and Sara.  She got a lot of use out of her Halloween costume this year and she had an awesome time at everything she did.

Life as a young adult at Halloween time!

My New Office

 As a full-time therapist, I was moved from the intern's office in the hallway behind the work room into one of the pods with three other therapists.  My new office is a bit bigger and more of a rectangle instead of a square.  Surprisingly, it has taken a few weeks to get use to the new location.

 I switched the pictures in my office from one bulletin board to the new one.  One of my clients (7 year old boy) told me, " I LOVE that you took my picture from your old office to this one.)  He was so excited, it made me tear-up.

My office is now located on the south side of the building instead of the north.  I still have two beautiful window but now I get direct sun shining in during the day which means I have to rearrange chairs or move my computer screen to get away from the sun. (The blinds aren't room darkening at all.)

So this is where I spend a majority of my day, playing with kids, helping parents, and writing (always) writing reports of all kinds.  I like my job and I am amazed at the strength of kids and parents dealing with very hard things.  It is a privilege to help them a tiny bit in this difficult journey we call life.

I just noticed after about a month of being in this office, that my name is now outside my door.  No picture yet but I will add it after I get one.