Whoa, I meant to post this yesterday but life got in the way. 
So here we go, and happy weekend.
Back in March my cute niece came to visit from Hawaii. 
She and Grace were born within a couple months of each other and they’ve grown up together ever since.
Which means they’re sort of a little bit like best friends, and sometimes a little bit like arguing sisters.  But mostly like best friends 🙂
Unfortunately Grace had to be at school most of the time, so I got to hang with that girl a bunch.

 Which is awesome because I adore her and she’s so fun to talk to…

…and is also a super organized hard worker always happy for a chance to earn a little money on the side.  So I roped her into helping me organize this jumble of family home evening lessons I’ve wanted to organize for years while Grace was at school:

You see, when Max and Elle were babies and we lived in Virginia, one of my friends put together a “Family Home Evening group” where we each made duplicate copies of enough family home evening lessons for everyone in the group.  We’d work so hard on those suckers and then get together and hand out those little envelopes of hard-worked-on lessons, all laminated and compiled with love (most of the time at least…some of the time it was exasperation if it was a lesson that took forever to finish).

Yep, I used to do stuff like that when I had toddlers hanging on my legs…right along with scrapbooking.  Oh those were the days 🙂

Anyway, we got to to work:

Just look at that cute girl making my life so much more organized!

We arranged them all into hanging file folders and had a lot to weed out as well:

I know Grace has more pictures of what those two did together, but I have this one of this score they found at Savers for a dance Ana had coming up:

Isn’t that beautiful!

On her last day we took just the two of them…and also Bo Jangles the dog (on her maiden voyage), to the lake.

These two I think could win the prize for the most enthusiastic boat girls every year at the lake…they are great at water sports…and also brave, so although the water was FREEZING, they hopped on in and skied/surfed all around that lake that chilly day.

I’ll let the pictures tell the rest of the story.

Loved getting to soak up that girl for a few days!

4 Comments

  1. I'm curious what lake you go to the most with living in Gilbert. When I lived in Phoenix we went to Lake Pleasant for the closest lake.
    Jamie Noto

  2. Cousins are the best! I still have the best times with mine, and I love that my kids get to have the same, special relationships with theirs. When I was about 11 or 12, one of my cousins & I were fighting like cats & dogs and for some reason just couldn't get along. My aunt took the 2 of us together and told us that the next closest relationships we have after our siblings are our cousins. That has always stuck with me. BTW, that cousin & I are super close, even now in our 40s. 🙂

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