{Seven}

It seems that overnight my baby boy turned 7, but I guess to be accurate, over the weekend my 6 year old boy turned 7.
Ben is such a great kid! He's the funny one at our house. He loves his sisters and plays so well one on one with each of them.
He is his daddy's buddy and while I'd like to say he's a mama's boy, he thinks he's getting a little big for that : ) But hey, you will still catch him cuddled up with me on the couch quite often and I'll take all I can get.

Ben had a mostly lazy, chore free morning followed by a trip to the golf store with his dad. After lunch his friend, Jason,
came to spend the afternoon. When given his choice of desserts Ben chose chocolate fondue with dippers over the traditional
cake and ice cream (yeah, no cake decorating for me : ) After all the chocolate yumminess, he opened lots of boy toy fun.
Next it was off to Golden Skate World for rollerblading, soccer & gymnastics fun all rolled into one. Is if that wasn't enough, we topped the night off with homemade pizza and the new Karate Kid movie. If you ask Ben, it was the best day ever!!

{Flashback Friday - England}

**In an attempt to blog the unblogged I'm going to do some flashback Friday posts. When I post
the next flashback the current one will be moved to it's chronological date within the blog.

First up . . . I thought since my parents came home from their mission to England this week,
I should post a few details and pictures from my trip to visit them last December.



It has been 18 months since I have seen my parents and it was so good to see them. I debated long and hard  about taking Sarah because my parents haven't met her yet, but in the end I went child free : ) I'm grateful for an amazing husband who stepped up and took care of everything, including a sick Sarah so that I could go.

December is not tourist season in Manchester England and many of the sites were closed for the winter. My favorite place we were able to visit was Chatsworth House. I won't go into the history but they used this house to shoot the scenes of Mr. Darcy's Pemberley Estate in 1995 version of Pride and Prejudice. It looked so different with the snow and all the Christmas decor. I wasn't able to get any good images to really represent the sculpture gallery because they had it really dark with heavy decorations and blue lighting. My favorite piece of the day was the Veiled Lady. She's carved out of marble and is simply beautiful. The great dining hall was incredible. Can you imagine being invited to have dinner in such a grand room? Can you imagine the clean up afterward? All the delicate intricacies and art throughout the house were amazing it's hard to think it was actually someones home.

Most of my trip was spent enjoying time with my parents. I think the last I had this much one on one time with them was when I was two and didn't have any sisters or brothers yet : ) They were able to take off a couple of days from the mission office so we could relax and see a few things. We watched movies, did a little shopping, and saw a few tourist attractions. I even crocheted a hat and finished a book. It was nice to go to church with them and meet friends that have been so good to my parents. Thanks for a wonderful time mom and dad

{Vacationing}

Thankfully, Hurricane Earl didn't devastate the Outer Banks of North Carolina and we were able to leave
Saturday for a week at the beach with my sister Stephanie and her family. We are having a wonderful time : )