The Mega Elliss Gathering

Jordan's brother Jared from Hawaii was in town before he went to Iraq with the Army- and his other brother Josh was also in town before he moved from Las Vegas to Dallas to start his lucrative dentist career- and thus it became the MEGA ELLISS WEEK! First it started in Salt Lake at the house of Jordan's other brother, Justin then the party moved down to New Harmony at Jordan's parents house. The only sibling that was unable to make it was Jocelyn, who was missed every day.
The Story of Two Best Friends
On the first day, the "wives" (AnnaJune, Sephannie and myself) went to Sam's soccer game while the "men" went to play paintball. This is Sephannie's (Josh's wife) little girl, Felicity who is 6 weeks younger than Lily. I had great hopes of them becoming friends right away, but instead they decidedly ignored each other.


They refused to even LOOK at each other!

Then to start things on the wrong foot, Lily chose to steal Felicity's toy when she was distracted by Soccer Star Sam making a goal.

Then to make matters worse, she then pulled Felicity's beautiful golden hair when they were back at Uncle Justin's house!
Having enough of this abuse, Felicity retaliated by showing Lily who was really boss.

We had to jump in before it became an all out brawl
Then, being the diplomatic army commander that he is, Uncle Jared sat these two girls down and explained that if they were united, they could force their cousin Johnny (who is 6 days older than Lily) to play dolls with them this coming Christmas.


After Uncle Jared talked sense to them, they were inseparable.





It wouldn't be a typical Elliss family gathering without these four things:

A competitive board game (either Ticket to Ride or Settlers)

Nap Time!!!!
Cooking lessons with Jared. This time he taught us how to make Sweet Potato Donuts. Holy cow, these beat crispy creme, or any other donut by miles! Saying that Jared is a good cook is an extreme understatement. He has honestly cooked the best food I've ever tasted. The hard part is, he never uses a recipe so the only way to get the recipe from him is to write it down as he cooks, which is what Seph was doing this time. I still have dreams about his gravy, roast beef and spring rolls.

And of course: Computer games. I'd say at least 50% of the boy's awake time was spent playing computer games. I thought I had gotten a picture of it, only to discover I hadn't. However, no blog about a MEGA ELLISS GATHERING would be complete without mentioning all the brothers camped out in the basement playing computer games!

Judsen the NazareneI shouldn't even be writing about this, in case someone from enemy camp is reading this blog, so if you promise not to tell anyone from the Uof U, we'll continue...

Judsen is our sports superstar, and the future secret weapon of the BYU football team. As you probably guessed from the title, most of his strength is in his hair- however since we do not want Uof U to find out about him until it's too late, we were forced to cut his hair. The plan is to let him grow it out on his mission (since it's for BYU football, he will have special permission). And then when he returns he will join the BYU football force and, BAM, those evil Utes won't know what hit them! But a 2 (almost 3) year old doesn't understand why his hair must be cut, and thus why it took 2 grown ups to hold him down while AnnaJune, the family barber trimmed down his hair.
Discovering grass for the first time!


Lily loves her cousins!

Judsen and Hannah thought it was high time Lily learned to wrestle.Sam, a photography protege, decided to take a picture of all the girls that were at the gathering

Judsen, who is learning young how to be a lady's man decided to jump in too:
Happy 2 year anniversary to Jordan and me!!! Thanks to Joe and Jill, we were able to celebrate with an evening in St. George baby free. A tradition that started on our honeymoon is to get exotic cheeses (long and somewhat boring story of how this came about). This years picks were: Smoked Cheddar (not exotic but delicious!), Spanish Manchego cheese, Da Vinci Gouda, Apple Walnut cheddar, and a cheese from Holland whose name I can't remember. They were all yummy but the smoked cheddar and Spanish cheese were our favs.