Lesli's family

We had Lesli's family stay with us last week. We had a lot of fun with the cousins around. Here we had a farewell dinner for Brady's family (Wednesday night) and they loaded up the moving van and headed to Montana Thursday. It's been fun having them live so close and get to know them better these past two years. Good Luck Montana Kellers.

The next day we met Lesli and Ryan at Lagoon (after basket ball camp, the older kids missed out because they had basketball and then went to help Brady load the moving van).

George and I got to hang out with baby Charlie while Morgan and Rylie rode music express and everyone else got to experience WICKED. It was a first for Lesli, Ryan, Isaac and ANA (yep she finally tall enough to hit all the big roller coasters).

Here's George and going for spin.

Morgan talked Rylie into riding the Colassal Fire Dragon, the first time she had her eyes closed, the second time she was super brave and kept them open. They both survived to tell about it.

The wicked crew.

Since Rylie rode Morgan's ride Morgan had to ride one of Rylie's favorite rides...

...she's looking a little anxious.

We then got hailed and rained upon and decided to head home to dry off and eat dinner. Then the older crew returned with Ryan to race through all rides again.

On Friday our cousins went to visit some other family and then we met up with them at the zoo. Once again the rains came and we decided to head to dryer ground and ended up at the Children's Museum at the Gateway. The kids had a blast, Carlin ran into a friend and talked adoption and Lesli and Ryan were beat after chasing kids around for three hours : ) That night Grant babysat so the adults could go to a movie and have some grown up time. Lesli and I ended up talking way to late into the night, next time we'll have to sit down. Saturday everyone just chilled for awhile and the kids played and played. We loved having them come visit and hope they'll be back sooner than later!

basket ball camp last week

All the kids went to basket ball camp last week. The younger four were in the morning and grant and tanya in the afternoon. So here is the morning crew before and at the awards ceremony. They all had a great time.

John Waite Concert

Not the greatest pictures, but Troy took me out on a date to see John Waite (big hit for him was I ain't missn you). Troy loved John Waite and the Babies back in the 70's and 80's, what am I saying he still loves to listen to him. I think he's a tad sappy, but live he was great to listen to... a little more rock n' rollish. He played at the Sandy Amplitheater. We decided we must have been sitting down with all of the season ticket holders who didn't know what was going on. Everyone shouting out and singing along was up on the lawn.

Tiff's visit

Every 4-6 months we get to see Troy's baby sister, Tiffany, and her cute family. Sawyer comes down for doctor appointments at Shriners Hospital. This time I was so surprised to see these two social boys. Usually it would take Ruger, their oldest, a bit to warm up to us and then he'd let us play trains or something with him. But he recently got hearing aids and he is a different kid. Chatting constantly and hanging out with everyone, it was fun to see him so excited about everyone and everything. Even Sawyer was just fine with everyone and chatting away. He would hide behind his mom on other trips and this time he walked right into the room talking and checking out the dog. It was fun to see them so happy to come visit. Tiff as usual was just darling, even with her cold. And Tiff, don't tell Jason, but I think that is the chattiest (is that a word) I had ever seen/heard Jason. Glad they would come and stay, I've missed having friends and family come stay with us (everyone is afraid of us now that we have so many kids). The woman who lived in the shoe with all of the children she didn't know what to do (so she whipped them all soundly and sent them to bed or how ever it goes), probably would have benefitted from some company.

Tanya's Art Work

These are some of the pictures Tanya painted in school this past year. She can paint anything she has a picture of. I think this one of her and the horse is my faorite. It looks just like her.

cooking class

The last couple months I have taken an Italian Cooking Class. The first class we made Pavlova and a sweet and tart chicken, both of which were really yummy. Troy was out of town that week and didn't get to taste it, so I made them both the other day and they turned out wonderful. So I took some pictures and just wanted to post them.

Knee scoped

before and after

Wednesday I spent the day at the hospital with Troy. They did a little exploration of his knee and cleaned it up a bit inside. It's all prep work for the big surgery he has to have in a couple months. He's had a ton of pain this year and has stayed alive by downing a lot of Advil. They took x-rays and couldn't see anything wrong, he went to physical therapy for a few months which seemed to increase his pain, had a cortisone shot which lasted 2 days and he even had ground up roster comb injected in his knee. Nothing was working, except the advil, so he finally returned and begged for an MRI to be done. The MRI showed he was missing maybe a centimeter of cartilage in his knee. We went to a surgeon who looked at it and agreed, but wanted to look inside before they decided to replace the cartilage with cadaver cartilage or a metal plate. The results on Wednesdays exploration was that he is missing about a quarter sized piece of cartilage, had some seaweed growth they needed to clean up and his bones that the patella sits in never developed correctly and so his knee cap sits off to the side and they need to recenter that. So what was to be sort of minor is now going to leave Troy on crutches and with a brace to keep his knee from bending for a month. He has business in Brazil and China this month so he's going to put it off for a bit (but he always seems to travel a lot in the summer). It is just painful for him to even think about flying with a brace on his leg! We'll see if it slows him down... highly doubtful. The doctor told him not to drive for a couple days and as soon as I left the house Thursday he was in his jeep heading to work...