Bells and Whistles: First Half September 2020, Brenda Visits

So all of the pictures in this post of crazy mixed up, but I am just going to go with it in an effort to be speedy. In September, my friend Brenda came!!! YAY!!!!! She was making a cross-country journey, stopping at lots of national parks and cool things along the way. Then when she got to Utah, she stayed with us for two weeks. It was awesome! Only unfortunately, her kids had online school which was really lame, and my kids had school and soccer and stuff, but we did some really fun things anyway.

Here we were at the nice little spot up Blacksmith Fork a bit, having a great hotdog roast while kids played by making boats out of wood and floating them in the creek.

And we got Gremlin! Our Golden retriever puppy. She was pretty darn cute!

The boys were signed up for rec soccer in the spring, but it was cancelled due to COVID until Fall. Wyatt's face here is HILARIOUS.

While Brenda was here we made her delicious coconut cake twice-- you make a box mix cake, poke holes in it when it comes out of the oven, then pour a can of coconut creme on top, and a can of sweetened condensed milk, put in the fridge for several hours until chilled, then top with Cool Whip. And you can put shredded coconut on top. It totally became a trend in my family and everyone was making it. Well worth it-- it is delicious. I think Brenda originally made it with white/yellow cake, but I insisted on chocolate. yum!

Jethro was into spike ball, so one night we borrowed it from the Shocks and the boys played.

Everyone loves Gremlin!

Brenda went on a horseback ride to keep up our streak for the THIRD year in a row! This time was way better because it was on my dad's beautiful horses, with my dad, in the Wellsvilles.

Brenda had told me for some reason that one thing she wanted to do in her lifetime was milk a cow, so I was like, "pretty sure when you come I can make that happen." and I did! :) We were at soccer practice for Wyatt, and on his team is a boy whose mom grew up on a dairy close to where we were, so we hopped over and crossed off Milking A Cow from her bucket list!

Marina time!

We went to Megan's cabin and enjoyed visiting and the kids enjoyed playing.

The first night Brenda came, we had to go into town for something, and I had the idea that it would be awesome to prank Jethro somehow, so I couldn't believe it, but Brett drove all the way to the South Walmart (we had been over in the North side of town), then we came in, trying to sneakily look and find him before he saw us, and he wasn't anywhere, and then we asked some people and they said he was in the break room having his dinner, so when he came out, Brenda came up behind him and asked, "Excuse me, do you know where to find the adult diapers?" (because we're hilarious like that) and he was about to answer her, when he was like- wait a minute...! And then he's like, Sister Miller!! It was good times. Amazing how much fun you can have doing a dumb little prank. :)

Then Brenda and Brett helped Jethro "zone" which is straightening up your rows and bringing things to the front, and I thought it was so funny because Brenda was like, "this would be such a great job--bringing order and tidiness but not having to really think hard about it because it's not your stuff" and Brett was like, "they need to invent better shelving units because these pop bottles are supposed to just slide to the front but all of them are falling down." hahahaa. Oh my funny friends!