An Unusual Birthday Celebration

I seriously can't believe it's been 15 years since this guy arrived on the planet, making us parents for the first time.  Wow!  It's been an amazing adventure and a rich, rich blessing so far!  We truly LOVE our Chase!

Fifteen years old!

I didn't realize, back on that glorious May morning in 2001, that this would be a rather inconvenient time of year to have a birthday.  Ha!  The last weeks of the school year rival the Christmas season for their busy-ness.  And this year is no exception for us.  In fact, April was such a busy time, that for the first 3 weeks of the month I kept thinking that this or that would have to wait until we got through competitions, birthdays, the Constitution Bee, etc.  It was a bit crazy!  And we had barely gotten through all of that when we got the unexpected news that my sweet, 94-year-old Grandma Smith had passed away on April 22.  Consequently, we added plans for a trip out to Utah for her funeral on the 30th.  This trip would also coincide with a meeting that Nate had to attend in Utah with the Utah Bar as part of his application for a license to practice law there.  The craziness of family life just doesn't let up!

And in the middle of all of this I knew that we had another special birthday coming up.  As it happened, our plans made it so that we would be traveling from Utah back to Colorado on Chase's 15th birthday.  Not a great way to spend a birthday!  So, Nate and I did our very best to make the celebration special, even if it had to be a bit unusual this year!

Because the birthday events were interwoven with our trip to Utah for the funeral, this post will include pictures from the whole trip, including a fun party for Chase that we held while we were there.  So, even though it was an unexpected way to commemorate the birth of our firstborn, the whole weekend was really a great experience.

We left our home at about 6pm on Friday evening, April 29th.  This was not our ideal travel time, but Nate had a full day of work to do and we had a full day of school.  But in a way, it made the travels a little easier because we never had to stop for dinner, and we only had to stop once for gas and a potty break.  The kids slept for a good portion of the trip.  So we actually made it there by 1:30am.  Not a bad trip!  But we definitely felt the pain by late the next day!

We were able to sleep in a little on Saturday, thankfully, because the funeral events were quite lengthy.  We made it to Salt Lake City by 11:30am for the viewing.  Although this was kind of a sad occasion, this was one of my favorite parts of the trip.  There were siblings and in-laws and aunts and uncles and cousins and second cousins and cousins once or twice removed everywhere I turned.  Many of those people I haven't seen (except on Facebook) for more than 20 years!  It was very touching to see how many family members showed up to honor my sweet grandma (Notice that I can never refer to my grandma without using the adjectives "sweet" or "beautiful."  She was both...all the time!).  I had so many wonderful little conversations in that room as we waited to say goodbye to my beautiful grandma.

This picture was taken the last time I saw my sweet grandma.last August.  We were in Utah for my parents' 50th wedding anniversary.  Isn't she lovely?

The funeral itself was very nice.  Despite the fact that my grandma was very old by the time of her passing, and almost all of her contemporaries had preceded her in death, and she had been homebound for several years, the chapel was filled.  She really was a kind, humble, sweet, thoughtful, cheerful woman and she will be remembered very fondly.

At the Salt Lake City Cemetery near my grandparents' gravesites.  It was a little chilly, but not too bad.

After the funeral we went to the Salt Lake City Cemetery for the gravesite dedication.  This was another really wonderful part of the trip.  Before we went to the cemetery, we drove up in the Avenues to show the kiddos where their Merrill great-grandparents had once lived.  They were so amazed at how steep those streets were.  Ha!  The cemetery itself is an amazing place.  After the service, we stayed there for a while and took the kids around to see the graves of many of their ancestors, including Grandpa Merrill (Nate's dad), and several former prophets of the church.  It's such a rich location for learning about family history (on both sides of the family), church history, and Utah history.  Amazing!

This was followed by a family luncheon at my grandma's ward building.  This was great for more visiting and for thanking the many people who had come.  We ate only a little bit there, because Nate had been telling us for months that we needed to try a little pizza place in Utah called Village Baker.  We ended up there for dinner before heading back to Bountiful to sleeeeeeeeeeep at last.  It was such a great day!

On the Sabbath Day, we stayed in Bountiful for church and dinner with Nana, and a little bit of rest.  We had a little bit of an adventure when Chase's scriptures went missing in the church after he and Avery helped to clean up the sacrament.  But, knowing how important those scriptures are to Chase, we were persistent until we finally found them in the clerk's office, of all places!  Afterwards, we spent the evening going for rides in Daddy's fancy convertible Mercedes with the top down.  It was still a little cold, and pretty windy, but FUN!  Nate and I ended all the way up in SLC to deliver a Mother's Day gift to my mom and to say hello to the Julian girls.

Oh, man!  Daddy let him ride in the FRONT seat????  Shotgun!

Taking the Littles out for a drive by the Bountiful Temple.  Trey pretended to drive from his seat, and Courtney tried to keep her hair from whipping her in the face.  

On the hood.

Heading out for my first ride with the top down!

Peace out!  It's party time, chumps!

Then came Monday.  Although we were out of town, we still had weekday obligations to manage.  Nate had to work remotely, as usual.  And, since we usually have school on Mondays, the rest of us decided to do an educational field trip.  We had a great visit to the Family History Museum and Temple Square and the Church History Museum.  We only wished we had time to see more!

Trey and Avery checking out Family Search at the Family History Library.

Chase and Courtney scanning the family tree on Family Search at the Family History Library.

We spent only an hour here, but we learned some valuable information and even printed out a family name for the boys to take to the temple for baptism!

My cuties taking a close look at the Christus at the Visitor's Center at Temple Square.

And here they are taking a selfie with the Christus.  Ha!

And here is how the selfie turned out.  Look who popped in for a photobomb!  LOL!

A nice person offered to take a picture of us all together near the temple.  We were all still wearing our nametags from the Family History Library.  The only thing missing here is Daddy!  Too bad he couldn't join us! 

I forgot to mention that just before we left for our field trip we got some really exciting news!  We got a phone call from Jeff Hymas, the founder of the Constitution Bee in which we participated in April.  As it turns out, Chase won first place among all the 13-14 year-old kids who participated.  What?!?!?  There were almost 750 participants in this event, and Chase missed only one of the possible points on the exam.  That means a $1000 scholarship for him, which is an amazing blessing!  Way to go, Chase!

But, that's not the only exciting news!  We also found out that Avery took first place in his age group, too!  He only missed one of the possible points to accomplish this amazing feat.  His scholarship will be worth $500!  SO awesome!

But wait...there's more!  This lovely gal also participated in the Constitution Bee, and she also did amazingly well!  She only missed 3 possible points on the test (two of which were just misspelled words).  She took 4th place among her age group, which wasn't quite enough for a prize, but was still fantastic!  We are so impressed with our Courtney!

And here's the crew all together.  Even Trey was around during our study sessions of the Constitution, so we didn't leave him out!  We were excited when we arrived at Temple Square and found this monument with quotations about the US Constitution by Joseph Smith and others right in the shadow of the temple.  What a perfect place to take pictures of our winners!

Touching the temple, as suggested by President Monson.  We always try to do this when we visit the temple with our children.

My four little chicklets touching the outside walls of the Salt Lake Temple, where we got married!

This is the very best picture EVER!  My work and my glory...right there.

Afterwards, we finally got ready for our Very Exciting Birthday Party for Chase's Fifteenth Birthday!  Oh, man, it was SO much fun!  We invited a few friends and the cousins from Nate's side of the family (since we saw the other side on the previous Saturday).  We also invited Hanna and her family because it was May 2nd, which is actually HER birthday!  When I learned that they didn't have big plans for her day, I wanted to include them in our party, so we could celebrate both birthdays at once.  We tried to keep it simple by having it catered by Cafe Rio (GREAT decision, by the way!).  And I pulled together a few simple games to keep everyone entertained.  Pictures and videos below will tell the story!

This is such a simple game, but it is so entertaining!  We had two mixing bowls and a bunch of cotton balls.  The person playing the game is blindfolded (notice I used the Thomas blindfold from Trey's birthday party...ha!) and tries to use a big spoon to transfer as many cotton balls from one mixing bowl to the other.  It sounds really easy, but the trick is that the cotton balls are so light that the person can hardly tell whether his or her spoon actually has anything in it.  And it's also hard to keep track of where you are putting your spoon with the blindfold on.  It's more difficult than it appears!  I didn't get pictures of everyone who played, but I'm adding the ones I do have.  So fun!

Isaac!

Evan!

Tabitha!

And Chase!  Haha!  We played a trick on Chase as the birthday boy: after blindfolding him, we emptied the first bowl of cotton balls.  So we all got to giggle while he used the spoon to move...nothing!  Everyone got a kick out of that!

Chase was a good sport about this little practical joke.  He said that he felt like there weren't any cotton balls, but he didn't think we'd really do that to him.  Ha!  Oh yes, we would! 

Trey!

Caleb!

Sydney!  She was our winner, by far!  She managed to get over 50 cotton balls in just the right place.  Nice job, Sydney!

Avery!

Elephant bowling!  This was hilarious and lots of fun!  This game consists of setting up plastic bottles in two rows.  Then we put a tennis ball inside a thigh high set of panty hose and pulled the opening of the hosiery over the participant's head.  Then he or she had to swing his head back and forth trying to knock down as many bottles as possible in a one minute period.  It's pretty hard to do.  This picture shows Trey giving it a go, with the panty hose pulled all the way down over his head.  Most people didn't want to pull it down that far.  Haha!

Courtney!

This one is Chase!  I don't have pictures of anyone else doing this, although most of the kids tried it.  Isaac Hodapp was the clear winner on this one, knocking down all the bottles in less than a minute!  He had an amazing technique that no one else could duplicate!  But I think they all had fun anyway!

Our final game was a water balloon toss!  This one is always a hit, and fun to watch!

Splash!

The Julian girls were the winners of the water balloon toss!  Super fun!

Time for birthday cake!

Since we were away from home, Chase got to choose a store-made cake for this event.  I am going to make him a real, homemade cake tomorrow on Mother's Day so that we can share it.  But this cinnamon bundt cake from Walmart did the trick for the purposes of our party.  Here he is blowing out the candles after we sang to him and to Hanna! 

I decided that Chase and Hanna should be served their cake and ice cream by these two cute girls, so the birthday kids wouldn't even have to lift a finger...literally!  Courtney and Sydney sat behind them on the bench and acted as their hands and arms to feed them.  It was hilarious fun to watch.  The kids all thought it was so funny!  I'm not sure if the birthday kids felt the same way, though.  Ha!  Chase had to tell his "hands" to slow down at one point so that he could chew.  LOL!

And now for some funny videos of the event.  I wish I had more!

I hope Chase had as much fun as I did at his birthday party!  I thoroughly enjoyed spending the evening with people we rarely get to see, especially as a way to celebrate our awesome son!

But wait--there's more!  The fun wasn't over yet.  Tuesday was Chase's actual birthday, and the plan was to open a few presents and then wait for Daddy to get done with his meeting, and then hit the road back to Colorado.  The only thing that Chase had requested for his birthday was some way to learn more about songwriting or piano composition.  But we didn't really know the best way to do that, especially considering that he is currently in the middle of other coursework that is already taking up much of his time.  However, Nate the Great figured out a really fun way to grant this birthday wish in an introductory way, at least.  And it could only work because we were in Utah that day....

Surprise!  Nate arranged for us to have a lunch meeting with one of Chase's favorite songwriters, Mike Hicks!  This was such a cool experience, because Nate and Mike go way back as good friends from high school.  Apparently they would have epic root beer guzzling events at the Brick Oven back in the day, so they thought this would be a great place to meet up.  Chase and Avery joined in on the root beer chugging, and then we had a nice meal with Chase asking questions about music and songwriting and Mike offering advice and encouragement to our young musician.  Thanks, Dad, for an awesome birthday present!

After all of that, Nate finally finished his meeting with the Utah Bar (the result of which is that he will be admitted in June--hooray!), and we piled in the car and drove back to Colorado.  We didn't arrive until shortly before midnight, and we had a full and busy day the next day, but I was really pleased with how well the trip had gone overall.  It was unusual, but it was also a great birthday for a great guy!  Happy 15th birthday to Chase!