Wedding Bells, sunshine, and a birthday!

It's been a busy month!  Between ski trips for the kids and parent teacher conferences and work and making an offer on land, our month has been busy.  Yep - we made an offer on 10 acres in Etna, and it was accepted, and we hope to close here sometime within the next month!  Then we'll have to wait until the ground thaws before we can start thinking of digging a hole and building, so we may be in this lovely cabin for more than just a year, but it will work out ok.  All of the pieces are coming together.
Last weekend, we drove way down south to Saint George for our nephew Curtis's wedding.  It was a long trip and the weather when we left Star Valley was not what you might call excellent travel weather...like it was pretty much a blizzard.  Luckily we had an expert driver (Kip) and I tried to close my eyes and not make loud scared sounds, so we did make it to our first destination: Aunt Lorna and Uncle Phil's house.  And it was only like 1 in the morning.
The second day of travel was much less "exciting" thank goodness.  We made it to the church for lunch and caught up with cousins like Zach.

After the lunch, we had some time before the actual wedding, so we found an ice cream bar to celebrate Caleb's 14th birthday!

He was thrilled to *finally* get his own phone, which was fun.  I think maybe he was a little disappointed because it's pretty restricted; he does not magically have free access to any and all video games at all hours.  Ha! 
It is hard to believe that he is 14 years old!  He is thriving in this new environment, doing well in all of his classes at school, and even branching out and giving swing dancing a try.  He's got a teenage boy sense of humor and makes us laugh...sometimes just because what he said makes no sense. ;)  He is looking forward to spring soccer and getting warmed up to hopefully go out for the high school teams.  High school?!  How is that even possible?  We are grateful to have him in our family!  Happy birthday, Caleb!

McKinley was enjoying much more than just the ice cream...

She found a nice warm concrete block and took full advantage of the SUN!  We haven't seen a lot of that in Wyoming this winter, so I can't say that I blame her! 
Then it was off to the temple for the wedding, which went off beautifully and only had one awkward moment when the sealer started talking about what would happen later that night....but luckily he moved on quickly.  haha!

With the whole fam-bam!

THEN we hurried off in time to swing by Costco - because if you live in Wyoming and have a chance to visit Costco on vacation, you should always take that chance - before heading back into Hurricane for the evening reception.
It was very pretty and lots of fun, and none of my girls caught the bouquet so it looks like we have plenty of time before any of them are getting married. WHEW!

We left that same evening and made it to Kara and Wayne's (Kip's cousins), where we crashed - again - before going the rest of the way home on Sunday.  On the way we stopped in Mapleton for along overdue visit with the Allen family, but forgot to take pictures - what were we thinking?! 

It was a wonderful whirlwind weekend!