Visit from the Cardons

Over the Pioneer Day weekend my parents came to visit.  As usual we spent a lot of time hanging out at our apartment.  Drew had gotten sick just a few days before and wasn't very comfortable, but my parents enjoyed being able to spend more time with him.  We hit up our usual spots of Leatherby's and Texas Roadhouse.  We also spent some time looking at a few houses as Michelle and I are looking for more space.  On Tuesday we went down with my parents to visit BYU.  Before arriving we stopped for lunch an Kneaders with Michelle's mom.  After a quick tour around the WILK we headed to my parents real destination, the BYU Creamery.

We even let Drew have his first taste of ice cream.  Drew wasn't shy about wanting more.  He loved it more than we would like to admit.  We will have to be careful as to not make it a habit of feeding it to him.

Before long we were saying goodbye to my parents.  We know that they had a fantastic time just relaxing and not having any specific plans and of course their favorite part was being able to spend more time with Drew.

We are glad you were able to make it and can't wait to see you guys up here again next year.

A Step Back in Time..... International Friends Unite!

A few weeks ago I got an email from an old friend and roommate that I had at BYU. In his email he made reference to a little club that we started in the summer of 2002, The International Friends. All of the guys in the group had known each other from their freshman year before they had gone on missions, except for me. I got adopted into the group after I moved back to Utah without knowing anyone to start school again. Tim and Ryan lived down stairs from me and after randomly stopping at their apartment and just sitting down on their couch and talking we became friends. Soon after Robbie, Scott, Adam, Nate, and Josh returned to BYU. Since the entire group served in different countries around the world and we each had met a variety of people from different parts of the world, we decided to make a club celebrating the diversity of people we knew. We even created T-shirts (that I still have) that we would wear to football games. Although our group was small, it was strong in spirit. We took the following pictures one summer afternoon up on “Y” Mountain. We all wore soccer jerseys representing our mission countries or language.

Andrew, Adam, Scott, Tim, Ryan, Nate, and Robbie

I know they look a little cheesy, especially the one with our shirts off, but it shows the things you do when you’re young and they now make for some good memories.

Several years down the road, after some of the members had gotten married and a few were ready to graduate and move on, we had an International Friends Reunion (no photos). We made new shirts (that I still wear) and had a BBQ up Provo Canyon. It has now been over five years since that last get together. All of us have gotten married, several of us have kids, and we are now spread across the United States, but we all have some type of contact with at least one ore more members of the original group. It only goes to show that once an International Friend, always an International Friend. We hope down the road we can all get together once again to reunite. Thanks Tim again for the great photos. It’s been a blast from the past and great to be reminded of some of the best moments I had at BYU.

ChuckyCheese……. What a Bonus!

To finish our time with Jill and the kids before they left for Oregon we took a trip down to Costco for some pizza. Our little lunch adventure turned into two hours of walking around eating free Creamies and other samples offered on a usual Saturday.



Drew was even able to enjoy a little taste of the action. We couldn't get him to stop chewing on the crust and when we took it away he just cried.



From Costco we attempted to try the arcades at a new Pirate themed restaurant, but when we discovered that they had no token specials we left and headed to our usual fun zone Chucky Cheese. With 300 tokens burning in our pockets, both young and old hit the games.


After almost ten tokens I hit the jackpot and got over 100 tickets in this game of skill, speed, and accuracey. I was quite proud of myself.




The basketball hoop was a favorite of the adults and as usual a challenge of who could get the top score. Darren beat everyone by a mile, but Jill was a good second. Although Michelle and I didn’t succeed with the basketball we both scored big on the hit the target with the spinning light game.



Michelle couldn't take everyone else having so much success that she tried the same game as me and hit the jackpot herself. What can I say, we are one amazingly amazing couple.

After the last ticket was counted we had over 1800 tickets in total for the kids to spend. Were the prizes worth the 30 plus dollars we spent, no, but no price can be put on spending time with the fam. Thanks once again for the fun times Jill. We can’t wait to see you again.