Nevada parties

Last weekend we missed out on some parties in Nevada.

Carolina got baptized:

Carolina, Marianne and Robert--Carolina is wearing the dress Marianne wore for her baptism.  My mom sewed it.  I'm pretty sure Desi did the hair.  Desi is the only person who shares my DNA who is good at hair.

We also missed out on celebrating Marcos's birthday:

How cute is that kid?  I adore this picture.

I love seeing my parents surrounded by grandchildren:

thank you Olivia for posting these pictures so I could nab them...

I love every single one of those kids so much.  I really appreciate my siblings having such wonderful children.  Not all the grandchildren are pictured here.  These are only Marianne's (minus Clarissa), Olivia's and Enoch's.

Good job Marianne, Olivia and Enoch.

We had our own little Nevada party here.  It was sort of a send off for Hans who leaves for his mission to Nevada in a few weeks.  We had the Jorgensens over which is always a good time.

Before, Emma and I set a Nevada themed table.

silver candlesticks for the silver state

I made a Nevada shaped cake (sort of Nevada shaped).  Like most cakes I make, the idea looked better in my head before the cake was made.

It was sort of a lumpy elongated Navada but it was chocolate so that is something of a consolation.

As is often the case, I didn't take any pictures of the actual festivities because it did not occur to me.  We were having a good time.  We had dinner (beef--that's Nevada food) and played a Nevada trivia game and Adam created a game called "Nevada or Not Nevada."  He showed pictures (he'd found on google earth) and we had to guess if they were Nevada.  Some of the pictures were from Botswana or Peru or other desert climes.

Of course we also sang the Nevada state song.

Because why wouldn't we?

My favorite part of the evening was when Emma and Freja had slipped away to do Emma and Freja type things--they sing and play the piano and read each other stories they've written and draw pictures, Braeden and Leif had gone to a party, and Mark was entertaining Britta and Inge.  The adults--including Hans--lounged around and had a great talk.  We talked about missions and challenges and discouragement and perspective.

It is hard to top an evening spent with comfortable like-minded friends.

After they left, Mark said, "Janet is my hero!"  I asked him why and he said, "I'm exhausted playing with those girls and Janet does it every day!"

I had to laugh.  He was one exhausting preschooler himself.

But Janet's my hero too.  For a lot of reasons.