Labor Day

Jessa ~

So, Labor Day is gonna get its own post. You've probably already heard most of this, but now you get to hear it all again a few weeks later. Deal. ;)

So, instead of the traditional camping, we did a stay-cation and camped at your parents house. Of course, BJ and the girls were the only ones who camped, but the girls loved it. We pitched a tent and put them in sleeping bags and everything. They even got rained on once. Peter and I, however, slept inside. And since he has been sleeping all night long for at least a month now (we're talking 10-12 hours), I ended up getting great sleep while we were there. Awesome.

We went up Friday night, got the tent set up and just had some casual fun. Saturday morning we got up and went up to Deer Creek reservoir to go boating. Bad timing. It was windy and rainy. But it was still good for fly boarding, which was, as you'd expect, the center of attention. I apparently didn't get any pictures there, though. Probably because I was busy holding a baby and girls all while cuddled under a blanket. :D

We left early because BJ had a work party in Herriman at his boss' house. Kessa has been counting down to it for at least a month. Literally. We've had a countdown chain hanging up in our kitchen that she faithfully cut every morning. No way we could miss it. It had a bounce house! (That's actually what she was counting down to. This house was super nice. Really large. Beautifully landscaped backyard. Trampoline. Swing set. And a rented bounce house. Abby didn't get much of a nap all day, so she was pretty cranky, but overall did decently well. Kessa was in heaven. She's all about making new friends and being a social butterfly lately. It was also fun meeting all of BJ's coworkers, finally. I've only ever met one before. (Well, and one more that didn't work there at the time, and as of the party still hadn't started working there, but had been hired to start the next week or so.)

This is most of BJ's coworkers and their families. I did get the memo about the matching shirts, but we got locked out of your parents' house and they were still up at the lake, so my shirt sat in our bedroom. BJ has his Day One shirt on, but he chose to wear his black one, which not many did.

Sunday was a busy church day. The girls stayed up with your family while BJ and I came down to our ward. He had to do tithing and I needed to deliver some stuff to 9 different primaries. Turns out, that takes most of my day to do, especially when I have to factor in feeding Peter. My church attendance ended up being a half hour of sacrament. But at least now I know I can do it!

Monday morning ended up being our most event-filled day. Which was appropriate as was the actual holiday. We had these really yummy waffles filled with crystalized sugar, but they had to take time to rise before they could cook, so we pulled out the nerf guns and had a war. We divided up into teams and went to town. Would you believe it's only my first ever nerf gun war at your house? It was actually really fun.  (Surprise, Tianna! Something everyone else loves is actually fun!) And I did a lot better than I thought I would do, considering my past experiences with Laser Tag. After 3-4 team battles we opened it up as a free for all. I did far worse on that. Hah!

Have you heard about the ALS ice bucket challenge? Basically, to raise awareness and funds for ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease), this challenge went viral. Someone challenges you and you have to either donate $100 or dump a bucket of ice water on your head and donate $10. Then you get to challenge 3 more people. It's seriously all over Facebook. I know a lot of people are really sick of it and/or think it's stupid, but I think it's a brilliant marketing ploy. Utilize the power of social media peer pressure. Yeah, it's been made into something fun, but doesn't fundraising often do that? Anyway, I got challenged a few weeks ago, but I'll blog that in another post. The next day, the neighbor girl challenged Kessa. And then her cousin challenged her, too. So we talked a lot about it, and she decided to do it. I think she mostly wanted to challenge other people.  Hah! But she also decided to donate $1 of her own money! [proud momma] It was really cute! She challenged Nick, Chelsea, and Grandma Homer.  I challenged Teresa, so she did her challenge that day, too. Videos when you get home.

Then during nap time I stayed home with the kids while everyone else went on a massive zip line and checked out Nick's tree house.

But, of course, the epic part of the day, as you've surely heard, was the First Annual Indoor International Mini Golf Tournament. While everything was getting set up, I was packing to go home. I actually hadn't planned on staying for it, but Kessa had helped Resa and Steven set their course up and wanted to play it. So we ended up staying and becoming The Press. We've got a bunch of videos that we hope to edit into a movie. It was pretty epic.

There were three courses: The first was up in your parents' bedroom/bathroom. You started up the stairs of the bathtub, hit it through an obstacle course of balloons taped to the ground and papers set up in a zig zag fashion, then up a cardboard box into the hole. The next was Shawn's. It started on the landing, then went down rain gutters on the stairs, shooting into the living room. Hole in One if you got it into the planter box that big fake tree is in. Otherwise you had to hit it through a few obstacles into a hole. The last hole was Nick and Chelsea's in the family room. You started by standing on the arm of the sofa and hitting it off the shelf that pulls down on that cabinet thing. It went down a piece of cardboard onto the coffee table, which had a perimeter of books set up around it, then down another board, around a corner, then up to the hole, which was cut out of a paper plate.

But that's not enough, oh no. Everyone dressed up and came up with names from whatever country they were from. It was hilarious. But I think my favorite part was when we were all gathered 'round Shawn's course on the stairs, when Aunt Cher and Grandma Goddard unexpectedly showed up. Next thing you know, Cher is dressed up and carrying Jax around as part of her costume and participating in the tournament. Awesome.

At the very end, Kessa won the entire tournament by popular vote and got an old trophy of one of the boys'. Some little league basketball trophy or something. She adores it. She carries it around and begged to take it to the cabin (I didn't let her because I'm a mean mother). She's even started to build her own mini golf course a time or two, but it always got cut short by other activities. Like dinner and such. 

Other random photos:

BJ and Abby hanging out on screens.

Teresa and Kessa having way more fun on screens.

Peter has started to smile! But it's really hard to get a good picture of it when he's on your lap.

One time I was looking for Kessa and found her out front wrapped up in the blanket, playing house. She was "sleeping."

And because Peter is just as awesome as his Daddy, he gets this outfit. Which is actually one of my favorites right now.

Overall, we think Labor Day Stay-cation is the winner. It was nice to still be able to do things at home when needed. It was nice to be able to sleep in the house with a newborn. And we still were able to do incredibly fun things and have yummy food and play lots of games. Win!