Ison Cousin Chick Chat

This is the house.

This is the house that housed the chat... the chat that was planned by the Ison Chicks.

Thank you Godfrey's for being wonderfully, gracious hosts and for letting us take over your house for the weekend.
This is the car.
This is the car, that carried us to the house... the house that housed the chat... the chat that was planned by the Ison Chicks.

This is the room.

This is the room where the Ison Chick's chatted... and visited and talked and laughed and cried... and ate chocolate and played games and stayed up WAAAY too late!

Ok, so my idea was to do a "House that Jack Built" type opening. It got confusing and repetitive and so that's all I got. :)

Saturday evening when we arrived, the Godfrey's and Martha were just getting back from Bear Lake and Boy Scout camping trips (Todd is a scout master). We sat down together and enjoyed a lasagna and garlic bread dinner.

At some point, Martha realized she had forgotten her skirt for church, in Bountiful. A trip to the mall was decided.

We spent several hours looking and wandering the mall. Martha found a skirt that suited her and then we spent the remaining time in "Forever XXI" and "Ti pan"... until they turned the lights out on us.

Tiffany, I thought of you when we went to Ti pan. Emma, we found mustache earrings for you. :)

When we returned home, we chatted some... but felt guilty each time we did. Did we really have to wait until the official Ison Chick Chat started? Impossible!!! We were grateful for the 1:00PM church time the next day... even so, I was a little droopy. :)

After church, we got ready for dinner.Personal pita pizzas were on the menu for the evening. YUM!We chose our individual ingredients and made our personal pizzas to our own liking. Mine had a bit of almost everything. I was excited to taste the fresh tomatoes, mozzarella cheese, basil, feta and alfredo sauce. Others arrived and we sat down for dinner together. After dinner, we broke out the junk food.

I think Aunt Lora Dawn was asking, "Do we have enough chocolate?!"Uhhhh, I think so. We toasted to all of you who wanted to come, but couldn't be there. We missed you, but made sure we ate your share of junk food. We started our chat by playing a candybar game. The bowl was passed around and candybars were chosen. We revealed what question would be asked according to what type of candybar you chose.

Almond Joy= What brings you joy/happiness?

PayDay= What would you do with $200?

Crunch= Tell us about an accident or car wreck you've been in.

Butterfinger= Tell us about your most embarrassing moment or something funny that has happened to you.

Hershey kisses= Tell us about the qualities that attracted you to your husband or something you love about him. If unmarried, tell about what kind of qualities you are looking for in a husband. What's on your LIST?!Some got brave and told about their embarrassing moments... risking it all. After the candybar game, we restocked our goodies and broke out the get-to-know you type questions. This helped to continue the conversation and share things we might not think of without a prompt. We laughed... we cried... we shared a range of emotions in between.

At some point, we shared what we admired/loved/liked about each person in the room. It was nice to hear and share about one another. We have an awesome family... love them so much!

It was so much fun to have Abbey there. It had been WAY too long since we last saw her. It was good to hear about her mission, her latest happenings at the Y and really just get re-acquainted overall.

I know she possibly felt some awkwardness about not really knowing us, but was glad to hear that we had come "highly recommended" by her sister Emma. She also admitted to me that she had a "back-up plan" with her roommate who dropped her off.... "If it gets weird, text me and I'll come get you". :)

Notice the clock on the wall... yeah, that's the right time... 3AM!Before saying good-bye for the night, we tried to take a group picture. After several attempts with setting the timer, these are the best I got.Alisha-Arielle-Abbey-Martha-Megan-Rachel-Shegay

LoraDawn-Jocile-Jana

I'm so glad we made the drive to Utah. It was fun to see Martha... and to hang out with all of you awesome Ison Chicks!

Until next time... what's our next excuse to get together and gab?

Tiffany, I think we need to plan a house warming or reception of some sort. What do you think?

Ison Chicks Know How to Par-tay!

With Tawnya coming into town from Arizona, it just seemed like a good excuse to get together and party again. We rounded up as many Ison Chicks as we could to have dinner, gab and eat.

We tried to recruit locals and outta-towners alike.

All in all, we had about 13+ Ison Chicks come to party.... Megan (& girls), Tiffany, Tawnya (& kids), Amber (& Sterling), Candice (& Levi), Karen, Amber Munt, Lisa McKinley (& girls), Melanie (& Lydia), Aunt Jana, Chanel, Aunt LoraDawn & Me.

That was risky. Did I miss anyone?

We almost got Emma & Abbey to come, but our day and timing didn't quite work out for their schedules. Bummer.

We had soup and rolls for dinner...an ok rice soup made by me and a DE.LIC.IOUS soup made by Candice... a cheesy potato chicken chowder to be exact.

As we started to snack on the treats we brought to share, Aunt LoraDawn made a shocking discovery...... not nearly enough chocolate was on the snack table! Jana was already too close to stop at any stores, so Tiffany was called in for back-up. As luck would have it, she had just walked into a grocery store to purchase a treat. She came minutes later with a variety of M&M's to share. Whew, chocolate crisis averted!

After dinner and as we continued to snack, we used my "Conversation Starter" question jar. We took turns asking a question and then allowed anyone who wanted to, to share their answer.

Some examples of questions;

-What do you think is the best thing about growing up?

-What is your first memory?

-If you won a lifetime supply of candy, what would you like it to be?

-What is your favorite of the 5 senses?

-What is your favorite holiday?

-What chore do you dislike doing the most?

-If you had to live in a cartoon for one day, which one would it be and why?

-What do you worry about the very most?

-Describe your perfect day.

It was fun to hear everyone's answers and get to know one another a little bit better.

We were happy to have Melanie and Lydia there for the girl's night out.

Sterling and Levi liked being a part of the girly party too.

Most everyone stayed until about midnight.... except for a few of us crazies who were up until around 3am!...I think. It's all a blur now, I can't remember for sure. :)

We missed all who weren't able to attend. But be sure, we gabbed and snacked for you all!