Vancouver Open House

It was great to be up in Vancouver for Chris and Amy’s open house and so fun to visit with people I hadn’t seen in awhile. The desserts were fabulous… hand dipped chocolate caramel pretzels made by my cousin, Elisa, strawberry trifle, lemon bars, rich chocolate brownies, white chocolate popcorn in monogrammed bags (designed by Amy of course) and Amy’s favorite Mrs. Fields ‘nibblers’ cookies.   Amy sewed the adorable banners.  The pictures show each of them growing up and one string of them dating.  Love the idea.

  Matthew helping himself to appetizers all night.

It was especially great to have my Dad’s sister, Dianne and her husband Jeff fly in for the open house.  We had a great time visiting, hearing their stories, and playing games.  Plus they were tons of help!  It was great to see them… and it was great to spend a few extra days with Amy and Chris and be home for awhile with my parents.  So glad I was able to come!

Feeding the ducks and other fun things…

It wouldn’t be a trip to Grandma and Grandpa Walton’s house, unless we walked to the pond to feed the ducks.

After a fun filled wedding week in Utah Chris headed back home to Germany while Katie, Matthew and I hitched a 14 hour ride back to Vancouver with my parents.  It was Chris’ idea actually.   When we were looking at flights for the wedding Chris checked out flights from Vancouver to Frankfurt and came up with the whole plan.  He’s fabulous that way.

My mom took the whole week off and we spent our days getting ready for Amy’s open house, decorating and organizing the house, sleeping in, shopping, eating fries and gravy at Costco, doing a session at the new Vancouver Temple, and watching movies like Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility.  It was wonderful.

It was great having Mike there too. He is the best tutor for all things computer and photography related… plus he’s just so fun to talk to... especially late at night.  He was good to endure Katie’s relentless pleas to watch movies or play games with her.  She was so 10 year old silly and I kept reminding her that she’d better stop acting so crazy around him or else he was going to tell stories at her wedding.  She said, “Mom, he’s the one that’s starting everything and he’s not married yet so I’m going to tell stories at his wedding.”  It was sure fun having him around for the week.

 

    The duck pond in Grandma and Grandpa’s neighborhood.

Mike tried out his new extreme video camera on the kids all week including strapping it to Matthew in a make-shift ‘diaper-cam’ so we could see life of a crazy toddler from Matthew’s view.  It was pretty funny.

Below, Mike is hitching a ride home on the back of the van ‘Back to the Future’ style.  Matthew thought it was so funny.

 

Playing in the backyard.

 Cutie pie Matthew – almost 2

Katie – almost 11

Baggage

I regret not getting any pictures of Amy’s fabulous reception… but I was too busy talking to family, eating great food, dancing and having a blast.   After the Cafe Rio catered family dinner at the Salt Lake Hardware Building, everyone introduced themselves and some took the opportunity to say some nice words to the bride and groom.  As a surprise to Amy and Chris… Scott, Dan and Mike wrote a little song and asked Chris to sing it with them.   I LOVE IT!!!   I have such talented brothers!

Married

Chris and Amy Silva came out of the Mt. Timpanogos temple on March 18th grinning from ear to ear. 

The sealing was absolutely wonderful and I seriously could not keep it together, granting myself an unwanted but expected ‘crying headache’ for the rest of the day.  It doesn’t help having both Walton and Polley emotional genes.  Looking at Amy, or my Dad, or my Mom,  just made it worse, because we were all a joyful wreck.  Just after the sealing I turned to Scott and said, “how are you all composed?” to which he replied…”I’m just thinking about hockey.” 

It was wonderful to be in the temple with my with whole family except for my youngest brother, Brian who is serving a mission. Being in the temple helps me focus on what’s important.  Eternal perspective.  Family.  Love.   I always feel like my vision is expanded and my love, limitless… but today I felt it even more and I’m grateful for that.

Boy do I ever feel honored to be Amy’s favorite sister.  Ok fine, I’m her only sister.  She’s stuck with me and while I haven’t always given the best advice… (she swears I told her ‘boys only like girls with long hair’ WHILE she had short hair) I have always been able to truly feel whatever she is feeling… and so today I feel blissfully happy.  Amy, my heart is just bursting for you and I love you so much.  Chris, welcome to the family.  We couldn’t feel more lucky to have you.

   

 

 

 

Annie, Molly, Leah and Katie

Amy and Mike

The Bridesmaids… Elisha, me and Sarah

The groomsmen

Mom and Dad with Chris and Amy

5 of 6 siblings.  Brian in Arizona on his mission --  We sure missed him!

My sisters… Elisha, Sarah, Amy and I.   I love these girls.

 

 

Scott and Elisha, Molly and Foster

Dan and Sarah, Annie, Leah and James

Scott’s little boy, Foster, is about 8 months older than Matthew but you can barely tell since Foster’s such a skinny kiddo and Matthew’s on the ‘solid’ side with an extra chin and everything.  But when Foster speaks and Matthew just grunts, you can tell there’s a big difference.  They’re so cute together though!

Here’s Scott and Chris making the boys laugh…