Hannah's Farewell and Lyla's Baby Blessing!

My beautiful little (or not so little anymore) SIL Hannah Brown is leaving to serve a mission next month for the LDS church for 18 months.  She is going to the San Fernando Valley mission here in California!  Which means she will be less than an hour from us!!!  SOOOOO close!!!!  

We made a quick last minute trip over for the weekend to attend her farewell and also the baby blessing of our niece Lyla and I am SOOOOO glad we went.  It was really great to see and get to hang with family, but even more great to hear her testimony and realize how awesome of a missionary she will be.  Aside from the fact she has the crying gene that Chip also has and runs in the family, she gave one of the best farewell talks I have listened too and you could feel the spirit so strong.  I know that she will be an awesome missionary and the people here in Cali are very lucky to be getting her to come serve them! She has already been a good missionary as her two very vest friends growing up both are converts and were baptized when they were older, and now one is serving a mission too and the other is getting married.  Also, Charlie (her dad) got to speak as the high council speaker and gave a great talk too.  He had had an experience where he felt Hannah would be coming to California on her mission and told it and I hadn't heard it but it was very special and amazing.  What great examples of faith and living the gospel we have in our family.  I also got to spend more time with Hannah the past few days and just realize even more than I already knew what an incredible person she is and I just love her to pieces.  She is drop dead gorgeous both inside and out and we are very excited for her next adventure to begin!

Thanks Hannah for inviting us to come this weekend!

Beautiful Sister Hannah Brown

Also while we were there Becky and Ryan blessed there beautiful little 3 week old baby girl, Lyla Rose.  She is so precious, and it is amazing to think of the miracle of life and how sweet and innocent and perfect these little beings are when they come to earth.  It was great, and the only thing I am sad about is that in the pic below somehow we didn't get the memo about staying after church and so our little family was already home during this picture - BOO!!!  But anyhow - what a gorgeous family!

 I took a few pics of Lyla after but then my camera battery died so didn't get as many as I wanted - the one below is my favorite I did take tho!  She has so much hair, beautiful olivey skin, and is just so precious and tiny!  Love her to pieces already!

The kids had a blast hanging with their cousins and here they just all had sat down together and cuddle during a movie - was so cute I had to get a few pics!

 Ivy and Bladen both saying Cheese for me!

 Serious concentration on the show!

 We went to Jayton's basketball game on Friday night - he is on the JV team (altho he is a sophomore) and he starts and is awesome!  Unfortunately it wasn't the greatest game and they lost, but it was so fun watching him play anyways - and what you think - future cheerleader in ivy?!

 Altho here she was just chillaxin out!

We went to the Gilbert Temple on Saturday morning - the openhouse is going on right now and we have heard that it is AMAZING!!!! We didn't have tickets tho and the line was just too long for the kids to handle so we ended up not going through.  However, look forward to coming to do a session here soon!

 We then went and hung out at a park with cousins again and oh boy was it fun - the kids LOVED this big swing!  Big enough for 5 or more:)

 Chip figured out how to get the water on on the splash pad and the kids had so much fun playing in it.  It was a gorgeous day and altho they didn't have swim suits their clothes seemed to work just fine!

 Ivy wanted her dress off, but then decided she also wanted the diaper off too - she was pretty frustrated when I wouldn't remove it, but finally went running into the water too!  However, when it was off and then randomly came on and splashed her she sure ran fast for mom, and can't say she liked that - but we found it pretty funny!

Great weekend and so glad we made it work!  Now we need another trip to look forward too!