Lucas's Blessing

Baby Lucas
Me, Lucas, & Jared

Our Family

4 Generations of Mangelsons

Great Grandpa Golden, Grandpa Jerry, Jared, and Lucas

On Saturday Jared gave Lucas his blessing. It was an emotional thing for our family because Lucas is our first baby that Jared has blessed. He did such a great job, I think most of us were crying at the end. After the blessing we had a big potluck luncheon. We got to visit with our families and just enjoy each other. It was a perfect way to spend a Saturday. We are so truly blessed to have such supportive families and we are so happy to have little Lucas in our family.

HAPPY EASTER

We had a great Easter this past weekend. My sisters, Mary and Tabitha came to visit. We did all the typical Easter things, decorated eggs, had an egg hunt, ate egg salad sandwiches, watched movies, and went to church. It was so much fun.

MaKady was really proud of this egg.
Mary, MaKady, Trinity & Paige

More beautiful eggs.

Lucas just liked hanging out and watching what his sisters were doing.

After the egg hunt. They had a blast.

2 Months

My baby is 2 months old. The time has just flown by. He is growing so much and learning new things everyday. I know he is going to be spoiled but I don't care. We all love him so much. He is constantly being held. The girls just love to cuddle with him and let him lay by them during the bedtime story. I took him in for his 2 month appointment yesterday. Here are his stats:

Height: 23 1/2 inches

Weight: 11 lbs. 2 oz.

He is a very happy baby. He loves to be around people. He likes noise. When he is alone in a room he starts to fuss a little bit. He loves to sleep. He only wakes up once a night, usually around 5:00 am when I am getting up to get ready for the day and he is starting to be so smiley. We just love this little man.

Road Trip and a Wedding... Part 2

On Saturday morning we got up early to go help set up the wedding. We had to set up for the wedding and the reception so it took most of the morning. After we set up for the wedding I went over to Kole's moms house to finish the cake. Then it was time to get ready for the wedding so I hurried back to our hotel to get my family ready. We were supposed to be in our places at 2:15, because the wedding started at 3:00 but it ended up being more like 2:45. The ceremony was held at a place just outside of Kanab called Angels Canyon.

This is Angels Canyon. It's a big flat spot with grass underneath a giant rock. There is also a natural spring that runs along the base of the rock that the kids kept trying to play in. It was pretty windy that day, but the rock blocked out most of the wind and the temperature was perfect.

Tabi & Kole

My dad walking Tabi down the isle.

Me and my neice Aulene (her brother Elmo is sitting on the chair)

My beautiful sister Mary. She did all of the flowers, the bouquet, bouteniers. etc. She is so talented.

The Family

MaKady & Paige

The Bawden Grandkids (it's hard to get this many little kids to smile at the same time)

The reception was held in Kanab at Perry's Lodge Barn. It's this old barn behind a motel. It's really cool inside because the walls are covered in pictures of old movie stars that have stayed at Perry's Lodge. For the centerpieces she had real butterflies.

Inside of the barn

The wedding cake. I had a lot of fun making this thing, and I was pretty happy with how it turned out. The bride and groom loved it.

They had agreed on feeding the cake nicely to each other, but in the end they went crazy. That cake totally went up Tabi's nose.

Tossing the bouquet

Brittany & Paige

The first dance

Daddy / Daughter dance

MaKady & Jared

The wedding was beautiful. I'm almost sad that it's all over with, but we have a great new addition to our family. Congratulations Tabi & Kole, we love you!!!

Road Trip and a Wedding ... Part 1

On Friday we packed up our kids and our car and headed down the old Hwy 89 towards Kanab. We decided to take our time and make a couple of stops on the way down so that the kids could see some interesting things in our state. Our first stop was the Freemont Indian State Park in Sevier County.
There is a visitor center and a musuem. We went in and watched a 16 minute movie and then we went through the museum. They have a new childrens section in the museum where they can play in a hut that is made to look like an authentic Freemont Indian Hut, they also have a spot with microscopes so the kids can look at rocks and a little library section. After we went through the museum we hiked on 1 of the 16 trails to see the Petroglyphs, pictographs and pictoglyphs. I'm not sure what this is below, but the trail was full of them.

Our next stop was at Big Rock Candy Mountain in Marysvale. I tried to find some of the history of why it's called that and here is what I found out:

Oh the buzzin’ of the bees

In the cigarette trees

Near the soda water fountain

At the lemonade springs

Where the bluebird sings

On the big rock candy mountain

Shortly after the release of the song in 1928, some local residents, as a joke, placed a sign at the base of a colorful mountain in Utah naming it “Big Rock Candy Mountain.” They also placed a sign next to a nearby spring proclaiming it 'Lemonade Springs.' These names stuck, and the mythical Big Rock Candy Mountain of the song became perhaps one of the most recognized geologic sites in west-central Utah.

The mountain itself is beautiful. It looks so different than the rest of the mountains around it.

We met up with my parents, grandma, and my sister Tori while we where there and we went for a little hike. Notice the baby carrier. My sister in-law Jen gave it to us and I love it. It works great.

Me & Lucas, Dad & Paige, Grandma Elaine, MaKady, Tori, Mom(Jared was taking the picture)

Our last stop before we got to Kanab was this little house located in Circleville Utah. This house was the childhood home of Butch Cassidy.

After our last stop we headed on down to Kanab. We pulled into town around 4:30 and we all checked into our hotel rooms. They we met up with Tabi and Kole for dinner at Escobars (a small mexican restaurant with awesome food.)

After dinner my dad and Jared took the girls swimming, while Tabi and I went over to Kole's moms house so I could start working on the cake. Friday night I was able to get the whole cake baked and the rice crispies formed. I got back to the hotel room around 10:30 p.m. It was a long, but very fun and eventful day.

To Be Continued............................................................

Good Eating

In my last post I mentioned that we ate at a new resaurant in St. George. Our friends the VanDerHeydens' have a new restaurant. It's a Wing-Stop. It's the only one in Utah and let me just tell you that the food and service is awesome!!! We got the family meal with 4 different kinds of boneless wings, it also came with potato salad, french fries (they are the best I've ever had), and veggies (celery and carrot sticks). There are so many different flavors of chicken to choose from that by ordering it this way we got to taste 4 of them. My personal favorites are the teriyaki and the garlic parmesan.

So if your ever in St. George stop on by and have some yummy chicken. The address is:

2376 Red Cliffs Drive, in St. George, it's in the Pineview Plaza close to the Stadium 10 theatre.

Stop in and have some of the best chicken ever, and say hi to our friends!!!!!

You can also check the website here.

Little Trip

We took a little trip to St. George this past weekend. The weather was perfect, warm but not hot. It's my favorite time of year in St. George and it's the time of year that I miss living there the most. We got to wear our short sleve shirts and capris. The best part of the whole trip was going to the Vernon Worthen Park in the middle of town and taking a nap on a blanket while the girls played on the playground. We did a little bit of shopping, and we ate at our friends new restaurant (I'll post on this later). We also took a few pictures. I can't wait until our next trip.

Bridal Pictures

We got to come down to ST. George this weekend so I could take some bridal pictures of my beautiful sister and her fiance. They are getting married next weekend and we are so excited for them. What a cute couple. If you want to see more pictures click here.

Smothered...

Smothered with mothers.... I guess it was bound to happen in a house full of girls, but our new little additional is the recipient of many loves, hugs, cuddles, holds, etc. He is going to be a spoiled boy. Everyone wants to hold him constantly, especially Paige. She pouts when we tell her that she can't hold him, and when we aren't looking she will pick him up and hold him. I caught her one day carrying him up the stairs. It's a little unnerving.

Both of the girls are such great helpers. MaKady is getting really fast at making a bottle and she is willing to change any diaper. Paige doesn't like the diaper department, but she will hold him and keep him entertained when I am trying to get other things done.

Thank goodness for these girls. They are fabulous helpers/mothers. I'm not sure how I would manage without all their good help.

Piano Recital

My talented MaKady had her first piano recital on Saturday night. She has only been taking piano lessons for about 6 weeks, but she did great. MaKady is a lot like me, she loves to try new things but looses interest really fast. She has taken ballet, violin, hip/hop dance, softball, and now piano. Maybe this will be the one thing she truly loves because she is catching on so fast. We will see.

Cousins

We are so lucky to have great family. We went over to Ephraim on Friday for our nephews birthday party and the girls had a great time playing with their cousins. They also had so much fun blowing bubbles with Aunt Janilee in her kitchen!!

Lucas and cousin Adam are so funny. These boys are going to be great friends.

Schedule, What Schedule???

I guess it was wishful thinking or something, but before I had Lucas I kept thinking of all the things I was going to get done at home once I was on Maternity leave. What was I thinking? I have been so used to just having the girls. They can pretty much take care of themselves, entertain themselves, feed themselves, etc. Well, now that we have our sweet baby Lucas things just don't work out as planned. Before I could get everyone up, dressed, fed, house cleaned, etc before 7:15 in the morning when we had to be out the door. Now I'm lucky if that is all done by 10:oo am. Then by the time I get all of that done, I am so exhausted I can't do anything else but hold my baby and watch a movie. Maybe one of these days I will get back on schedule, but for right now, there is no schedule!! And that's okay.