Beautiful Spring Weekend

What a fabulous weekend!
Friday night we hung out at home as a family. It rained so the kids went out and jumped in mud puddles. Collin does not have rain boots so he was soaked. We went out and bought him some (and picked up needed groceries.) Emily and I potted a few pots for the front of the house. Just a laid back night.
Saturday we all slept in and the cleaned the house. It took a couple of hours but the house looked fabulous. I spent some time this week weeding out baby toys and unplayed with toys. The toy room feels much bigger. Emily and I mowed the lawn while Landon went to the store to get the gas and oil needed for our weed eater. Our lawn mower refuses to start so my friend Alicia was nice enough to let us use hers. Emily kept showing her muscles as she helped me push the mower. It was hilarious. When we took the mower back Alicia wasn't home so we just left it in the garage. Emily asked me if she could go in their house because she had never been inside before. She seemed confused when I told her that wasn't appropriate. We headed over to our friends Kim and Jason's beautiful home for a BBQ. They invited over some other families and we enjoyed good food and fun times. We had to run just before 7 because of the adult session of stake conference. We met our babysitter at our house and headed out. My sister Rita gave a beautiful talk. We sat with our friends Shane and Amber. Good company and fabulous talks. It doesn't get much better.
Sunday we slept in and went to the regional broadcast at the stake center. More wonderful talks. I love the spirit that comes from listening to general authorities. We were home by noon so I decided to make homemade chicken pot pie. I rebought my favorite cookbook (Pioneer Woman Cooks) as Naomi Inherited it when she got married. There is a great recipe in it for pot pie. I also made her recipe for chocolate sheet cake. So good. My mom called and we visited while I cooked. We decided to go out for a walk after dinner as we were more than stuffed. Rita let us borrow her jogging stroller so went went for a long walk. I wanted to drop off my friend Delilah's baby gift and she invited us to visit with them in their back yard. Her two youngest are Emily and Collin's age so they had a blast and it was fun to get to know her husband Dustin more.
They shared with us how excited they are for their baby boy Jasper to join their family in just a few weeks. They had been told that she would be unable to become pregnant and so they started fostering children. They have adopted 3 beautiful children all within two years. A miraculous story when you listen to them. Their youngest adopted child was two years old when she found out she was pregnant. She had a one percent chance of caring full term. Now they are two weeks away. Dustin shared with us how exciting it is that this will be the first child that they can love right away because he is theirs right away. He said that as hey have adopted their other children they loved them but tried not to get attached because they knew that until the papers are signed that the children could be taken. I had never thought about that before. It was wonderful to watch them interact as a family.
After leaving them we stopped by to say "congrats" to our friend Elizabeth who graduated this weekend from ISU. We ended up visiting with them for an hour while our kids played. It was a lot of fun. Collin fell asleep on the way home do Emily and I dropped Landon and Collin off before heading back to Rita's to drop off the stroller. A perfect spring evening. Only three more weeks until school is out and we can do this more often. So excited!