When The Students Are Away...

This has become a summer tradition for Dan and I:

 


After the guys head to bed at night and leave for summer school and work in the morning we sit down and play a few rounds of Dutch Blitz. So far I'm up 6 games to 2. (If I did hastags they would be: hekeepstrying; winnerwinnerchickendinner; dutchblitz; morningritual; whenthestudentsareawaythehouseparentsplay; practiceforthegameswiththegirlsinthefall; solongasIkeepwinning; janaewinsmostgamesweplay hesagoodsport)

I Hate It When That Happens!

Just one piece and the border would be complete!

Time to hunt through all 55 million other pieces to find the 1...grrrr....

Pi Day 2015

Well, it's officially a tradition, pies for Õ day! This year was apple crumble and banana cream:

Not fresh crusts this year and made the day ahead so they set better. Both were pretty yummy but I think last year's banana cream pie was better. The girls voted on the flavors and enjoyed this special snack.

P.S. Keep scrolling, more posts have been added to 2014 in chronological order.

Early Valentine's Get-Away

Due to our crazy schedule, we took our personal day and attached it to our regularly scheduled time off to give us a few more days to play. We really struggled deciding what to do. After much pondering we settled on staying a little closer to home. We found a great place to stay; The Inn at Leola Village. It is very quaint and unique. This is the entrance and part of the property:

This shows the entrance to our room:

The rooms are all above and below the retail stores. It reminded me of Gardner Village in Utah but with places to stay on the property.

Our hotel room was just a quaint as the outside suggested:

(Photo from here)

We decided that we will be frequenting this location for future get-aways.

We spent time enjoying a show at a Theatre in Lancaster; And Then There Were None. We had a good time together letting go of the stresses of home, even if we were only about 30 minutes away.

Non-Wedding Summer Fun

Between all the wedding festivities, we managed to fit in some other vacation-type things; meeting Liz, visiting our families, Yellowstone, and Bryce Canyon.

Dinner with the kids. Jake's a Party Pooper sometimes.

Chipper LOVES Dan. Too bad the feeling isn't mutual.

When visiting from out of town, it's always a good idea to check the Temple schedule before showing up.

When we headed to Cedar, we helped Deb with her children which included a stop in Scipio to visit a petting zoo:

Bryce was beautiful. It was fun to reacquaint Dan with the canyon I heard so much about growing up.

While in Cedar we enjoyed an evening with The Bard at the Utah Shakespeare Festival.

The Green Show

Before the Performance of "The Comedy of Errors"

We joined Mom and Dad at the Cedar City Cemetery. I got to see my grandmother's new headstone that had been completed earlier in the year.

We took some of my nieces for an outing at Classic Skating. I roller-skated too, what was I thinking?!

Our time in Yellowstone was quick but great to be back in an area that played such a big part of our courtship. We saw a couple shows at the Playmill (Les Miserables and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat), we went on a hike, drove through the North entrance of Yellowstone, and visited Old Faithful at night. 

With all we did, planned and unplanned, it was tough to return to our "normal lives."

Friendly Competition?

It has become a tradition to have NCAA Basketball bracket groups for our families. We've had a good time following the games and bragging about who has the best method for picking teams. This year prizes were on the line for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places.

We received a text from Amanda saying that Jake wanted to prove his dominance to Liz and to open up the group to assist him. He seems to think that he won our tournament challenges in the past. Weeellll, ESPN kept track of last year's rankings and Jake didn't do so hot that year. Maybe this will be his year.

When the tournament ended, the results were as follows:

Broadbent Family Bracket:

1. JaNae
2. Amanda
3. Liz C.

Horrocks Family Bracket:

1. JaNae
2. Rebecca
3. Amanda

Yes, I have the best approach for picking NCAA teams. (Dan jokes it's by team colors or mascots but that's not the case, I do glance at their placements before selecting winners.) In fact, at one point this year I was the only one in the ESPN tournament challenge with a perfect bracket. Now by the third game that was over but I enjoyed the bragging rights as long as they lasted; especially since I was beating all the sports fanatics in the family.

After the results were finalized, messages went to the winners to determine what their prizes would be; favorite Hershey's Candy of course. The first prize ended up being an all expense paid trip to Washington, DC with Dan. (More on that in a future post.) Second and Third both requested Reese's Peanut Butter Cups of different sizes. Of course Amanda wanted this one:

Having her waistline and sugar intake as our concern, this is what was sent:

We made sure to include the following note on the Resse's:

Not sure what Amanda thought when it arrived but we thought it was very clever.

Liz asked for mini Resse's and she received her own package with her prize and certificate.

A fun tradition.

Oh, and Jake, there's always next year; hee, hee, hee.