Pioneers and patriots festival

Today I spent the entire day at our church's 2nd annual pioneers and patriots stake festival. I always enjoy the Spanish speaking branch for their music and dancing. We have mariachi music at a moment's notice and they're really talented and bring a lot of spirit. They're wonderful. This is what I worked on with Cindy--it took much more time to put it up than to take it down. Of course if I didn't wear high healed shoes to climb the ladder to hang the rope and bandannas, it might have made the process go more quickly. We hung more than 250 pieces of artwork from children in several wards to display. Cindy came up with the decor, I just helped her put it all up.

The most fun part of the day for me was when the Wilkinson quintuplets arrived and I stayed with them for the rest of the evening and helped a little bit with the babies. They are getting so big and developing into the cutest, most adorable personalities. I simply adore these little angels. Rachelle is so awesome. I don't know how she does it. Her little sister just finished her freshman year at BYU and came to help out in July and August.

Here is Ryder. Check out those eyes. He is starting to express himself vocally and lets out these squawks and is so energetic. With his olive skin tone, he usually gets the front seat of the stroller.

Here is Kassidy. She was a little bit squirmy tonight and was the first to bail from the stroller. She his big hair and big eyes. She was really good after getting some TLC from her mom, and a little freedom from the pack and leg room.

After her mom got her from the stroller, I was crossing my fingers that another baby would get fussy so I could get her or him out to hold and Kaydence did the trick. It was a teeny little cry, but it's all I needed. I held her a bit and she sat on my lap for a while and was really good until she saw her mom and started crying. So Rachelle and I traded babies and everyone was happy again. She turned too quickly when I snapped this picture, so I didn't get a good shot. She's a beautiful baby.

Rustin is the most easily recognizable Wilkinson quint. His rust-colored hair matches his name perfectly. He is a ball of fire and always has rosy cheeks. He has so much expressiveness and intensity to his jolly moods. I love how he kind of reminds me of Christopher at that age. I'm going to take Rachelle a baby picture of Christopher that I came across that looks like Rustin.

Kyndall's smile is so sweet and contagious. She is precious and smiles from the inside out. She is a very easy going baby and is the lightest weight, so Lindsey always likes holding and caring for her since she's really manageable.

Another highlight of my day was getting some one-on-one time with a couple who work in the family history center and they helped me see how easy it is to get to the new genealogy site and I'm very excited about pursuing that. I'm tired and it was a long day. None of my family went, but stayed home to do other things together. The event was very sparsely attended for a stake event. For those of you not familiar with the term "stake," it's a group of about eight LDS congregations known as wards. A certain number of wards (like 6 to 10) makes up one stake.