Birthday and Blessing

  Last weekend we went to Idaho to celebrate my nephew's birthday and my nieces blessing.  It was really fun.  Conner had an angry birds party, which was really cute and Elizabeth did such a good job.  The kids were really cute playing the games and throwing water balloons at each other.  One of the funniest things was watching Jason play with 9 kids at the same time.  He started by playing with our three year old niece and one of Elizabeth and Tom's nieces.  Within ten minutes all the kids were chasing Jason around the yard, hitting him with play sword and axes and hanging on him.  We all laughed so hard, because they were pretty funny and almost toppled Jason over a couple of times.  Elizabeth and Tom really have very sweet nieces and nephews. 
  The next day was Taliya's blessing.  She looked so beautiful.  Elizabeth made her dress and it was so pretty.  There were three blessings in her ward that day, which we had to laugh at because we could not think of three blessings in our ward for all of last year.  There are a lot of kids in her ward.  Unfortunately we had to leave after the blessing because we had the long drive home, but it was great to see them and share in their special day. 

 Isn't Taliya so cute.  And doesn't she look gorgeous. 

 I finally got her to go to sleep during the party.  She is so sweet.  Don't tell my other nieces and nephews, but she might be my favorite.

Jason pretending to put Conner in the next door neighbors yard.  Conner seems super scared, huh.  There were other pictures of him with the kids but I did not want to put pictures on our blog of kids that are not related to us without their parents permission.

The foolish man made his sewer line out of ...

pipes that can be broken (Catchy huh.  I am thinking it should replace the foolish man built his house upon the sand).  This week we found out that we have a twelve foot crack in our sewer pipes.  This has allowed water to seep out of the pipe, that has eroded the soil beneath the pipes causing them to sag, which has made our sewer line not work very well anymore.  So tomorrow the plumbers are coming to our house to dig up our front yard to replace that pipe.  The wonderful thing is that insurance or home warranties do not cover anything like that so we have to pay for the whole thing and it is not cheap.  So unfortunately we have to postpone going through another adoption agency presently.  We are still going through LDS Family Services, but other agencies are considerably more expensive and we don't think that it is prudent to go through another agency right now.  It is still something we are considering but after we pay for the sewer line.  So although that is a negative, there are a lot of positives to think about even though we have a broken sewer.
1.  At least it did not back up when we had a bunch of people here like it did one year.  It did break on a holiday weekend, but I just think it likes to break when it is the biggest pain in the butt.
2.  It is expensive, but at least we have the means to pay for it.  It is not what we were planning on doing with our money, but it could be so much worse.
3.  It is not in the street.  It does go under the sidewalk which is not the best, but it would have cost us a lot more to dig up the street.  My dad also pointed out it was good it was not under the house because they would have had to dig up our basement.  So that is a huge positive.
4.  There is a 50 year warranty on the work that is being done, so we don't have to worry about fixing that part again. 
5.  They are fixing it quickly so it is not like we have to live for months with a broken sewer.  Also we will still be able to use the sewer and water while they are working on it.
So I guess once it is done people can come over and use our new sewer line.  Haha, who would invite people over to do that.  Well I am glad that it will be fixed and that we will not have to worry about it for awhile (knock on wood).