Visiting Friends

After the family reunion, Robert, Nate and I visited some friends from our BYU days, Seth and Cheyenne Bigelow. They have two little boys, Brody and Bryant. The Bigelows lived directly underneath us in our first apartment in Provo. We always hung out with them and we have great memories because of them. Among them are carving pumpkins and combined Thanksgiving dinners.

We stayed a couple of nights with the Bigelows. They were nice enough to let us invade. The boys had a great time playing and it really made me wish I had a sibling for Nate. A brother, if I could choose. Anyway, there were great toys there and a swing set. Nate was in heaven.


Bryant is on the far left and Brody is standing to the right. Nate's right there in front not looking at the camera like I was begging him to. Brody is three months younger than Nate. Cheyenne and I had a lot of fun being pregnant at the same time. It was really nice to share that new experience and fun time with close friends.
Cheyenne is one of the sincerest and nicest women I have ever met. I picked up a lot from her, and I feel really good about that. Mainly, though, that she is friendly with everyone. My time in Provo was one of the best times because I had such great people around me. I am truly grateful for the friends I had there. Cheyenne is a great person and wonderful mother. I miss having her around because she was always happy no matter what. She could always make me smile. Thanks, Cheyenne for everything you and your family has blessed me and my family with.
After the reunion and visit with the Bigelows in Utah we were planning on heading back up to Idaho. We realized on our last night with the Bigelows that we really didn't have a reason to rush home and that the 11 hour trip down to Arizona would totally be worth it because no one would be expecting us and we could have a ton of fun surprising all our friends and family. Also, Robert would be able to go to opening night of the Dark Knight with his brother and that idea really got him stoked for the surprise visit. So, we packed up the car, made a quick stop at the grocery store and were off by 6 am so we could beat his family home.

We got to Casa Grande about and hour ahead of Robert's parents and decided that we wanted to make a quick stop to surprise our friends the Greers.
We had planned to visit the Greers earlier in the summer but had to cancel our plans for personal reasons and I knew that that bummed out Becky. We have a really good time together. So we pulled up to their house and our surprise wasruined because Ryan had just pulled in from work and saw us. I think he was pretty excited to see us even though our execution was less than flawless. He said he wouldn't tell Becky and let me go ring the doorbell. When she saw me, Becky let out a squeal that was heard for miles. That was so worth the 11 hour drive. I got to spend a couple of days hanging out with Becky and her two kids, Miriam and Ben. Becky was a huge bright spot for me in Arizona. She was able to let loose and enjoy life which makes her incredibly fun to be around. She was my workout buddy and we had great talks that could last for hours. We love the Greers.

After we surprised the Greers we hurried back to Robert's parents' house and hid. We weren't able to fool Charlie because he saw Nate running around in the backyard before he got inside, but we scared Sandi so bad she turned bright red and had to take the few deep breaths. It was awesome.

Then, that night we headed into Phoenix to go see the Dark Knight. Amy, CW's wife, set the whole thing up. She convinced CW to go to the midnight showing that we could go to even though he wanted to wait, she bought all our tickets in advance and then she led him to the theatre where we followed them quietly in. We got within 5 feet before CW turned around and realized it was us. My only regret during our trip to Arizona is that I didn't have a camera to capture his face. He was so surprised and we could see that he was touched that we would go so far out of our way to see the movie with him. After all, those two men seeing a Batman film without each other would be a cardinal sin. Especially since they've loved Batman movies since they were kids. They even had Batman widgets on their Macs that counted down to the premiere. Also, the movies were filmed in Chicago and I think that was a fun link for them to share together since they have both lived in and loved that city.


After all the Batman fun we didn't get home until 5 am. Yuck. I felt so weird the next day. I am not one of those people that can still function with little sleep. I walk around in a haze all day feeling sick to my stomach. Despite that we wanted to go visit our other great Casa Grande friends, the Colvins. They just added a third baby girl to their family. Brooke is a super mom and I LOVE her. She and I were visiting teaching companions and we really clicked. Brooke is so even and mellow. I love that about her because it seems like I never escape drama. (I know that that might be my doing, but that's a completely different post and we don't want to get into that here.) Anyway, Brooke has two older girls. The oldest is Avery (right) and the younger is Hayden (left). Avery is beautiful and she and Nate got along really well. When we left Arizona, Hayden wasn't very old and she was just learning to walk. She was my little cuddle buddy. She'd sit on my lap and we'd play. Brooke and I would get together pretty frequently and scrapbook and let the kids run around. We also found that we had a love for the same cooking show so we'd talk cooking and recipes.

As we were getting ready to say our good-byes, I wanted to get a picture of the kids hugging. I told Nate to give them each a kiss good-bye and tell them thank you and this is what it turned into. Look at Nate. I don't think he's enjoying himself at all. Two cute girls kissing him at once! I think he'll remember that for the rest of his life! After we got this picture the adults started talking again and the kids ran back into the bedrooms to play. When we went to go get Nate we found him chasing the girls around the room saying, "Avey, Hayden, hug?" And when he caught them we watched him plant kisses right on their lips. Then they'd giggle. I think I should have thought the kiss good-bye through a little bit more.The drive back to Nampa from Casa Grande is 16 hours. We didn't want to do that all in one day, so we decided to break it into two days and stay the night in Vegas with my sister, Krista. She was a great hostess. She had Hawaiian haystacks waiting for us when we got there, tons of food for Nate and for our drive, and she even let Robert and I have her bed while she slept on the couch. It was good to see her since we don't really see each other very often anymore. I'm so grateful for my family. They are all really good people.

So we got home the next day after another morning starting at 6 am. I can't tell you how happy we were not to be in the car anymore.