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?

And we're off..

Cousin Martha (& boys) were coming from Ohio to Utah, to visit family. I thought that required another cousin gathering. Emails were sent. A date, time and place were decided on for another ISON CHICK CHAT (thanks Rachel and Todd!). We (Mom, Aunt Jana, Arielle and I) planned on going and decided to drive down to Utah together.

Jason would be working all day Saturday, so I (again) planned some things for my kids to do while I was gone... hoping that it might distract from boredom and quarreling... hoping.

If you're children are fighting and you're out-of-town and can't hear it... are they really fighting??? :) You know, the forest and the falling tree theory.

I wrote out a brief schedule of meal ideas and events, including packages to be opened after certain tasks were completed.

I employed Taylee to act as Art/Craft Teacher, for the time I was gone.

Late, the night before I headed out-of-town, I taught her a few new techniques and gave suggestions of things to do; raised salt paintings, crazy circles, countdown to the first day of school, tin can decorating, etc. She accepted the position and practiced for a few minutes before going to bed.

Very early the next morning, Jason dropped me off at my mom's house, ready and excited for a girly-weekend adventure....