That is one tall building...

It's been way too long since I posted, so here is a long post to summarize the last week...

The title of my post comes from my niece Jenni. Last Monday, May 4 (Steve's birthday), Steve, Chelle, and the kids came up to visit me at work. I met them in the underground parking lot, and we went and had lunch in the cafeteria, then they came to my office, and we went to the 26th floor and looked at the view. When we came back down and went ouside, Jenni finally got to see the building (since we had been inside the whole time). Jenni looked up and said, "Wow. That is one tall building!" I thought that was so cute. I'm so glad they came up. Jenni and Joey were so cute, and Chelle had never been to the Church Office Building, so it was fun to show her around. Here are some pictures from that day (and happy birthday, Steve!)

The next two pictures are ones I snapped when I was walking to work from the bus stop the other morning. The flowers and temple were so beautiful in the morning light! Temple Square is just so pretty in the spring!

On Friday night Jan and I went over to Adam and Stace's house. We haven't been over with just them for a long time, and it was really fun. The kids were so excited to have us there. Stace made us dinner, and then we played games at the table. Here are a few pictures. I love how it looks like I have a halo in the first one:

Brady really wasn't stabbing Camden with a fork, but it sure looks that way!

Janice got this picture right as our dominoes were falling down. Cool!

After dinner, we sat and talked in the living room for a little while trying to decide what movie to watch. Adam played with Brady and Camden on the floor, and they loved it! Then we watched part of Cars and part of Sleeping Beauty--but Josh wanted it to be dark like a movie theater, so we had to watch it all laying on Adam and Stacey's bed. Thank goodness they have a big bed! It was really fun.

These next three pictures are from Saturday. We went to breakfast with Lisa and JoAnna, our friends from our last ward. On the way back, as we were coming from the freeway, we saw a huge column of smoke. We saw that there was a big building on fire right near our church. We went to a field aways away, and watched it together for about 45 minutes. We were so sick to think that it might be a condo complex--there are tons of them around there. But we found out later that it was a firefighter drill, and they were burning an abandoned house. It was such an awesome sight to see the power of the fire as it just consumed the whole house in such a short time. I had to snap a few pictures:

Finally, tonight we went to visit Mom for Mother's Day. It was really nice. We had Jan and I, Dan and Ems, Adam and Stace, and Steve and Dave came a little later. It was really nice to talk and joke, and Dan was teasing about playing the Ungame. We gave Mom her gift--it was actually a combined Mother's Day/birthday gift, so she already knew about it. But I thought it turned out so nice. I got the idea from my friend Debbie (thanks Debbie!) to do a picture pedigree chart. It took us awhile to find all of the pictures--we almost didn't find one for Dad's father's parents. Thankfully, we were finally able to find the pictures we needed, and Emilee spent hours making it all look nice. I love how it turned out--it gives me such a family feeling to look at it, and think of the legacy I have. It makes me realize that these were real people, who were once young like me, and had hopes and dreams and worries.

I'm so grateful for the gift of family, and for the love I feel for them--even those I didn't really know. I'll end my post with the picture pedigree:

**I decided I'd better take this off, since it has full names and birthdays. :)