O What a Surprise!

The weekend before Halloween was Owen's baby blessing (Brett and Stephanie's new little one). Ryan's Grandma and Grandpa came into town on Saturday, and surprised Brett and Stephanie. Owen's middle name is Edwin -- Grandpa Long's first name, so they made the effort to come even though Grandpa Long does not like to travel much.

Owen showing off his new Sun Devils hat from Grandpa Long

Ryan got to pick them up from the airport. They spent some time visiting a friend in Salt Lake and then came to our house for a little bit. Then we met Brett's family at a restaurant. We had told Brett ahead of time that we wanted to go out to eat -- that Scott and Cheryl were sorry that they wouldn't be here until Sunday for the blessing, and that they wanted to treat us to dinner anyway. Plus we wanted to celebrate the success of our Choose Today concert from a few nights before. All of these were true statements :)

We got to the restaurant first. We were able to have the hostess seat just Grandma-ma and Grandpa Long, while our family waited in the front for Brett and Stephanie's family to arrive. We just pretended that we were still waiting for our table to be ready. When they arrived, the surprise almost got spoiled: Joshua walked right up to Brett and said that we weren't 6 anymore. He meant that we were 8 with our surprise guests, but luckily for the surprise, Brett erroneously thought that Joshua was trying to hint a pregnancy announcement. Then when I told the hostess that our party was ready to be seated, it was not the main hostess we had worked with earlier, and so she loudly said, "Oh, the party of 12?" But luckily she walked us back right away before Brett and Stephanie could figure out why her math was off by 2 people.

Brett and Stephanie were surprised! I think Stephanie even got teary-eyed that Grandma-ma and Grandpa made the effort to come. We all had a fun night at dinner!

Grandma-ma, Grandpa Long, Brett, and Noah

Hyrum, Stephanie, Joshua, and Ryan

Nathan and Benjamin

Elizabeth loved the ice cream cone

Nathan loves to invent -- even with utensils, ketchup bottles, and sweetener packets at the restaurant!

Scott and Cheryl arrived in town late Saturday night. It was so wonderful to see 4 generations together, and that they could participate in the special blessing! After church, we had a nice evening of visiting together, kids playing nicely for the most part, and a yummy deli tray dinner (those never get old)!