Mother's day and Pre wedding

Fiora got her braces off, yay! She looks beautiful and grown up. Aunt Wendy said when I posted Fiora's smile on facebook: "I told you that you should leave them on until she is out of high school. Now look what you've done--she is gorgeous. You need to make her wear pig tails and paint some acne on that beautiful skin!"
Krystal had a bridal shower May 9th, we celebrated mother's day May 10, Krystal had a bachelorette/make things for the wedding party May 11, and she had Savanna do her nails for her wedding May 12, so for three days there was non stop Wedding Preparation fun with a day of celebrating mom in between. Kali and Heidi did a great job on the bridal shower, and Holly did a great job on the bows we made, and mom did a great job organizing everything so it would happen. It was so wonderful to have Karli Sue there, she has moved back from Ohio and we are all rejoicing.  Poor Katy was a little overwhelmed with everything but is a really calm and sweet baby.
Mother's day we went back to Kali's for family dinner and to Skype Kynsie Lark, the only person missing in our sister/mother pictures. She is serving honorably in North Dakota and it was so fun to talk to her. Krystal gave all the mom's in the family a mug that said "I'm a mom, what's your superpower?" For mother's day, Jared gave me a set of expensive knives I have been wanting for a long time, makes kitchen work so much easier to have nice knives. Weston wrote me a fun and appreciative poem, and Savanna and Fiora made a "how well do you know your mom?" video. I felt very loved and happy on mother's day surrounded by so many people I love.  Here is a link to the video if you want to check it out, Savanna spent a lot of time editing it. 
https://youtu.be/UcCrKDPkHmY

Kali, Heidi, Heather, Krystal, Holly, Rachel, Karli Sue and Katy Sue

All the Barrett grandkids (except Bourne 3 weeks old) on Mother's day

 Fiora is involved in a Shakespeare play this year in 6th grade, Much Ado About Nothing, which commences this evening! She plays Camille, one of lady Hope's ladies in waiting, and has only 7 lines but mastered them beautifully. She was so excited about participating in this play! She loved every rehearsal and looked so beautiful in her costume. She insisted on receiving roses after her performance, as a true artist would receive, so I better go do that. Good luck Fiora!

Spring

 Spring is a wonderful time of year, and we have seen some new beginnings this spring that are joyful and wonderful. The Payson temple is complete and we took the kids to see the interior prior to dedication. It was beautiful inside and out, and a wonderful spirit was there. My favorite part about it was the color glass windows and ceilings, and the beautiful art on the walls. We all 5 stood in the sealing room and looked into the eternal mirrors and are so happy to be an eternal family. Glorious.

Another new beginning was the birth of our nephew Bourne Fire Barrett, son of Jesse and Kelsy. He is beautiful and healthy and a sweet tempered baby. We got to watch Knightly for a couple days while Bourne was being delivered, and it was a joy to have him with us. Love those cute boys! So happy and grateful to be apart of a beautiful growing family.

Weston started his first round of braces in April, he will have to have them removed to let some teeth grow in and fall out and put them back on, but his teeth were coming in wrong because of crowding so the orthodontist is trying to straighten out some teeth so the permanents will come in right.

Our soon to be brother in law Kollin went through the temple for the first time which is a wonderful new beginning for him. He chose the Salt Lake temple which is where I first went through the temple and it was a special visit for me. Loved being there with my wonderful family doing family names.

 My dad is going off sugar for the first time for a few weeks. He looks thrilled doesn't he?

Jared took us up to Salt Lake to try a restaurant where the owner grows all her own food and/or purchases only locally owned, organic, insult-free food. She showed us around her garden and bistro and we were very impressed. The food tasted fantastic too! We loved Avenues Bistro on 3rd.

 Savanna takes a lot of selfies, there are a few funny ones. She is so cute with kids. We had fun at Aeven's second birthday and Savanna took some selfies of our cute little nephew, son of Justin and Kali. Can't believe its already been 2 years since Aeven was born!

San Fran continued

Day4
We gave back the car Sunday night thinking we could just use the public transportation for cheaper than it would be to pay for a rental and park it every day, so Monday we optimistically set out to shuttle to the airport, take the BART metro system up to the bay area, and find MUNI buses to take us around the area. To our dismay, the BART round trip tickets were $72.00 for our whole family, and it was crowded and slower than expected, but we made it up to the bay area at about 9:30 (we left the hotel at 7:30). We walked around Pier 39 but after spending so much money on transportation Jared was not about to let the kids buy anything there, so we just looked and found the sea lions and I dared to ask for 1 bowl of clam chowder for us to all sample. We made our way to the Alcatraz landing station and boarded a very crowded ferry (they transport 5000 people a day to Alcatraz). We had to stand and wait in line a long time, and then hike the rocky island, and walk the audio tour, and our legs were very tired from all the walking all the other days, but we still enjoyed the historical Alcatraz tour. It was very interesting! We had to walk a ways to find a lunch place after that, not knowing what bus to take, but found a chipolte taco place and filled up. Then we visited the Aquarium at the bay, which was nice, but kind of a let down after the Academy of Sciences and Exploratorium, but at least it was small so we didn't have far to walk around! We made our way back to the BART on the MUNI buses, lots of standing at rush hour, and in a couple hours made it back to the hotel. (As you can see from the pictures we none of us were too happy with public transport, we were all wondering why we gave back the car Sunday). I ate a lot of chips and salsa that night, but was grateful that my digestive system seemed to be hanging in there despite the off diet. Movement seems to help me digest well. Weston solved his rubik's cube! He had some help from google but still amazing that he could follow all the algorithms to make it happen. The girls swam and Jared watched a basket ball game and again I crashed.

 

 

This Rubik's cube kept Weston entertained for hours on this trip!

Day 5 April 7

Our legs were all conditioned for walking by now, so today was better as far as energy level.  Jared started off the day by hiding $20 bills around the hotel room for the kids to spend as they desired at China town, and we set out to get back up to downtown SF without a car once again. This time we opted for the cheaper, faster, and closer train station to get us up there, which was again very crowded but only cost $36, whew. We bused right to the china town entrance and shopped for most of the morning, seemed very touristy there instead of authentic but still cool. The kids all found something they loved to take home as a souvenir, even me, I found a small metal cable car you assemble yourself, like a miniature model airplane only a cabel car. I navigated us to the fortune cookie factory and then to the House of Nanking for lunch. Everyone but me was still full from breakfast, but I enjoyed every bite of food there, another highly recommended food place if you are asking me. We found a cable car and crowded on and went to the cable car museum, very interesting! Then we rode cable cars all over the city for an hour or so, and the kids were really bored, but they found ways to entertain themselves by trying to make Fiora smile, and soon were laughing and bouncing back again. (I took a picture of Sav trying to make Fiora smile, and as you can see the boy next to her was also very entertained by this game.) We stopped at fisherman's wharf and explored the fish shops. Jared splurged and bought us  a $30 dungenes crab to all share, seems everywhere we went people wanted $30 for something. We even had to pay about that to go to the top of Coit tower and look over the city and bay. Not sure that was worth it, but we got a cool I Heart SF stamp. :) We were done by then, so we started busing our way back to the cal-train station and it took 45 minutes to get there,so we barely made the 5:56 train back to our hotel. Whew! The Lord was really with us that day. We ate lots of continental dinner items that night. The amounts of sugary, gluten and soy filled food finally caught up to poor Fiora who is weak like me, and she threw up big time that night at the hotel. Savanna refused to sleep with someone who might throw up so she ended up on the floor, and with Weston still a coughin all night, that was an interesting night.  But we had one more day to enjoy!

Day 6 april 8

We enjoyed one last breakfast at the hotel and packed up and checked out, and shuttled to the hotel to re-rent a car. It took a while, but so worth it to be able to just drive where we wanted to go! We went to the San Francisco Zoo, which was well worth it. It was a beautiful warm day, no wind, and there were a lot of cool animals and beautiful habitats for the animals. The gorilla's were totally entertaining and they had an "eagle island" with two beautiful eagles, and a huge grizzly bear swimming around. We spent 2 hours walking around there and then hiked back to the car so we could make a matinee of "Cinderella." We only splurge on movies at the expensive theaters when we are on vacation, and it was a beautiful movie that brightened my spirits and helped me smile a little more at people all the rest of the day. We found an "In and Out" to eat dinner at before we drove to the airport to catch our flight, sometimes I have to choose the lesser of two evils when we go out to eat, and it was either burgers and fries or pizza/sandwiches, so I chose unhealthy oil over clogging gluten. We took our time there and had fun relaxing at the airport. We got back to Utah at 12:01 AM and were thoroughly worn out. Paying that last $50 because we parked our car at the SLC airport was tough, but for a family of 5 a nice trip will just cost money! And lots of wonderful memories were made so it was way worth it. We were so blessed to have this vacation and no find our way everywhere and not be stolen from and have stamina to do all we did. We LOVE SF!