Farnsworth Family ~ The Road Goes Ever On and On: I'm still here!!!

Is anyone there?! I know, I know...you may have been asking that about me for the last several months. Where did I go? What have I been doing that seemed so important that it kept me from blogging?

Well, it's just this little thing called life, and there's been a lot of it going on, but hopefully you'll forgive my long absence and we can be friends again.

I honestly can't even remember where I left off - was it the "Frozen" birthday cake? I think that might have been it. That was in June of 2014 - holy cow, it's February 2015! I'm not sure that you or I have time to catch up on everything that's happened between then and now - at least not in one sitting. Don't worry, I wouldn't do that to you!!

In a brief summary I'll just say, we've had best friends and family come home from their missions, we've had a handful of new babies born in our family (cousins and the like), we've had some fun reunions and vacations, and lots of "Hey, this is your first Halloween/Thanksgiving/Christmas back from your mission!" moments with said friends and family.

It's been a good time and hopefully I'll be able to back-up and catch up a little more as time goes on. For now, I'm going to start working backwards and show you some of the more recent things that we've been up to. Sound like a good plan? Ok, let's do this!

So David got home from his 2 year mission in Brasil on Halloween of 2014 and then at the beginning of December he moved in with Grandma Farns in Jerome and started a job with a guy there who owns a flooring business. David got lots of quality time with Grandma and all the cousins that live around town. Towards the middle of January I took a little road trip and drove down to Jerome/Twin Falls to meet up with David and see some of the cousins who were in town from Rexburg.

The first night that I got there we got started on a "juicing party" at Heather's house. Ben and Kim brought their new juicer with them and we had fruit juice flowing like there was no tomorrow. There were tons of little cousins around all making sure that they got there sample of each new juice that Ben cranked out. We had some good combos, as well as some "not so good" combos - as in, beware of what you mix with grapefruit, it might bite back!

Becky, Ben, and Heather, the Juicing Extraordinaires

Please, Sir, I want some more!

A bunch of juice taste-testers.

Grady and David - two buds just lookin' for a good time!

Look at that strapping new cousin!! What a handsome man he is!

(Don't tell anyone, but the babies may or may not be the true reason I went to see the cousins... ;)

"Cheers to good health and strong bones" - a long-standing family toast! :D

We also had a hot game of Harry Potter trivia!

The next morning Heather treated everyone to a big box of "Jim Bobs" bakery delights. She's such a faithful customer that she can tell you the special of the day for each day of the week! I've heard about this bakery in Twin before but had my first experience there on this trip. It's a cute little, hole-in-the-wall bakery and smelled like heaven drenched in maple frosting.

It was only a quick trip so I headed home to Boise later that afternoon. But before the departure, a big crew of us tried out an Indian food restaurant in Twin. It was super delish and I'd go there again any day!

I got home in time to get to make a birthday cake for Mom and Aunt Joni's birthday dinner that we had that night. Mom was nice enough to let me make a surprise cake for them so this time I decided I wanted to try making a raspberry filled chocolate cake. Thanks to Pinterest I was able to find a few different recipes and combine them into a new little creation. It was fun to play around with it (yes, I'm still crazy about making food...)

Ta-da!!

Now we're moving up to even more recent events! So David came home last week and is here for a couple more days before he gets to fly back to Brasil and experience it in a whole new way- as a regular tourist! :)

So while he's been here we've all just been hanging out as a family and still trying to keep up with our usual schedules.

Well Saturday rolled around and Nani, David, and I found ourselves home alone with nothing much to do.

It was only about 4:00 but I was restless so I rounded up the other 2 and we went on a random bowling spree! Kelani thought I was crazy when I suggested that we just get up and go bowling in the middle of the day - and I admit, I'm usually the stick in the mud when it comes to something like that, but it's not too late to change my ways, right?!

So we headed to the bowling alley and had another first with David - actually a couple of them. This was his first time bowling since before his mission and I was floored to see him spit out a couple gutter balls, considering the fact that this guy is good at everything! :)

But we had a good time!!

C'mon, Loafie!