Life is Sweet: EFY and a wedding.

Saturday, July 9, 2016

EFY and a wedding.

The Monday after Father's Day, Mar and Hannah went to EFY.

Despite the fact that Jill and I have done the EFY check-in more times than we can count, it is NEVER the same from year to year. I won't mention that we comment EVERY YEAR about how things could certainly be done more efficiently. This year was no exception (sitting in a room in Heritage Halls Bldg 27 with lots of other girls and their parents + all their luggage, pillows, etc, while one guy sits at a table... silently... randomly calling out a single name every 2 minutes or so... no one to instruct on what the procedure is, just people standing... somewhat awkwardly and somewhat silently... waiting to be instructed), but we waited as patiently as possible until the girls were asked (as a group) to turn in their badges and then wait for their room keys. Of course, we were there with the rush. But we survived!

Hannah and Mar finally made it to their room.

Jill and I noted (because we've done this before) how every other group of participant's names-on-doors on the entire floor were done in a creative and cute way... except for Hannah and Mar's. Theirs was a post-it note. We decided that perhaps their counselor had skills other than making cute door tags with names. Guess what? We were right!! The girls claimed afterwards that they had the BEST counselor and the BEST group of the entire session. Lesson learned, EFY mama pros, cute name tags on doors do NOT determine the quality of the event.

After getting the girls settled in their room, we ran to get lunch, then dropped them off at their building.

While the EFYers EFYed, we worked on wedding preparations for my nephew Nate, and his bride-to-be, Lyndsay, who would be tying the knot that Saturday.

I can't recall ALL of the details of the week, but I took pics of a few.

9 batches of the Best Ever Rice Krispie Treats (recipe coming soon):

Britt got a blister on her hand lettering this cute sign (Hannah did the artwork):

Lots of Sandwiches (for a crowd), made and wrapped.

Pasta salad prepped and packaged.

Lunchboxes filled.

Most of the work was done by my sister, and lemme tell ya, it was a whole lotta work. A labor of love, for sure. The day before the wedding, my parent's house was filled with worker bees to help her bring it all together.

Meanwhile, back at EFY...

I nabbed a few pics from Mar's fb to share memories of

"the best week of her life."

She met a boy... they held hands... now she wants to move to Utah. Hah. (Actually, she's wanted to move to Utah for quite a while, but it has definitely INTENSIFIED recently.)

She also met some really great new friends... including Ali, who lives in Washington. Mar wants to fly out to visit her this summer. Seriously, I've never had a child so excited and thrilled about her week at EFY.

Ahhhhh, parting is such sweet sorrow.

Bill and I picked the girls up early in the morning on Saturday, ran them to Taylor and Lynnea's house to change for the wedding, then headed to the Payson Temple.

The wedding luncheon was going to be at a park across the street from the temple, so we helped set things up before heading to the temple ceremony. It was all so so beautiful, and we were blessed to have temps in the mid 70's (sandwiched in-between days of mid-90's).