Brandon and Whitney: Welcome Home, Cade!

We traveled to Utah to welcome my brother, Cade, home from his mission to Xalapa, Mexico (April 29). We stayed for 6 days and enjoyed spending time with our families!

Chad & Cindy's family

Kyle & Katherine

Grandma & Grandpa Thompson

Our cousin, Ryan & Cade

This is right after Papa slipped her a big piece of gum!

Cade seriously has the best laugh and I missed it!

"The" Hug, part 2

I have to explain "the" hug. I had to prep Cade so he understood what mom seriously expected. You see, my mom has lost over 125 pounds while Cade has been gone - she looks so awesome! She was motivated by the idea that if Cade was doing hard things, then so could she. She had big hopes for "the" hug when they saw each other after being apart for two years. I sent him this email to help him understand the seriousness of this matter.

Cade,

Mom wants a hug of a lifetime when you get home. No pressure or anything. Just do what comes naturally, or follow these instructions:

1. Apparently, you're supposed to pick her up off the ground briefly when you hug her and spin her around (and running is not a requirement, but if you run to her, you will get extra bonus points). This is a true story! I could not make this stuff up.

2. It needs to be the longest hug you've ever given someone - at least 30 seconds to a minute if you can stand it.

3. Refer to this RIDICULOUS you tube video of a mission hugging his mom (which mom has watch 100 times) if you have any questions. Here's the summary - in case you'd rather not watch it - the mom is late getting to the airport (sound familiar?), so he starts hugging everyone else, then when his mom finally comes, he runs to her and they embrace for literally 6+ minutes. It is crazy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YJ4XaGtIrI

You are welcome. My condolences. Good luck.

Whitney

p.s. I have no requirements for the hug you give me. I cannot speak for Brandon, however. :)

Then just a couple weeks before he got home, my mom decided to have a practice hug with Uncle Jonathan who is about Cade's same size. And although, my mom has a rockin' new body, the hug was awkward and a bit of struggle and not what my mom had envisioned. Sadly, she called the whole thing off.

At the airport, mom got there plenty early to get the best spot - only one problem, the lame workers never told us that we were in the wrong place and that they'd be coming out of a different door. We hustled over to the right area with hundreds of other family members welcoming home their missionaries (35+ missionaries on Cade's flight) and the crowds were crazy! Cade had to navigate through lots of people to finally get to mom. Then those same awesome workers interrupted the hug and encouraged us all to go outside. It was not ideal, but there were some great hugs nonetheless!

He tried to shake my hand at first and he did that to quite a few others. It was funny to watch him greet everyone - so missionary-esque and apparently in Mexico they hug on the opposite side that we do, so it took him a minute to figure that out. He never had a companion who spoke fluent English, so he was truly immersed in the language. The result of that is the most thick Mexican accent, we kept calling him Nacho Libre (plus the missionary accent on top of that)!

Cade is the cutest! He is like an upgraded version of my little brother and ready to conquer life! He already started at BYU (just got accepted as a transfer student) and he is so positive, genuine and sincere! He has the best laugh and everyone wants to be around Cade!

While we were in Utah, we attended to the Payson Temple open house with the Parker family, Chad turned 30 and Cindy threw him a surprise party, we played games with Kyle & Katherine, stayed up way too late every night chatting with Cader, BBQ with Chris & Kacie, visited grandparents (Gma Parker isn't in any of the pictures, but we saw her too!), played in the treehouse, and Rachel even got to fly to Omaha for the weekend with Nancy & Val (another blog post)!!

Funny story - Cade was giving mom a hard time while they were driving around about how he is surprised that she doesn't get a ticket everyday. Mom is a notoriously fast driver, but never gets pulled over. Not even 5 minutes after Cade said those words, mom got pulled over and was given a ticket. Ha ha! Sorry, mom! But it was too funny not to record.

Also, Cade gave away most of his luggage and the one piece of luggage he did bring home was mostly empty. He had given away practically everything except some souvenirs he had brought home for the family. I am serious. He only had the clothes on his back, a bunch of ugly ties (must be a missionary thing I will never understand), and some sweet items that some members had given him. He gave away all his clothes to one of his ward members who was about to go on a mission and to his companion.

The last thing I have to remember about the trip is my crush for Cade. She came home from her mission about two months ago and her family lives in our ward in Mesa. She is beautiful, and gave the most amazing Homecoming talk. I secretly wanted to set up her with Cade, but wasn't sure how I would be able to do that. I heard from someone that she wanted some babysitting jobs here and there while she was looking for a more permanent job. I jumped at the opportunity to have her over and get to know her better. She was legit - so outstanding and beautiful inside and out - such a catch! She wasn't sure of her summer/fall plans yet, but I was still scheming/joking in my mind about how I could swing a set up for her and Cade at some future date. Then about a week later, her mom posted something on Facebook about how her daughter needed a ride to Utah, and we just happened to be going to Utah the very next day! I quickly offered for her to come with us, but it was such short notice that I didn't think anything would come of it except that maybe she'd have us take some of her stuff up for her (at this point, I was still scheming - thinking she could pick up the bags at my parent's house while Cade was home - ya da ya da), BUT the story gets even better and she totally rode up with us!!! I was so excited, I could hardly stand it. She is absolutely lovely and motivated and spiritual, the whole package! Well, I tried to play it cool and we totally talked up Cade on the drive. The kids put on a pretty good show too. :) Nothing has come of this yet, but we've got some things in the works. I have no expectations that anything will come of this whole thing (although, wouldn't it be an incredible story?!), but if nothing else - it was so fun to pretend and joke and scheme and entertain the whole idea. And we got to know an awesome 21 year old girl who is seriously making the world a better place!! Oh man, when she texted me asking me how it was with my brother being home, it took me probably an hour or more to figure out the perfect thing to write back to her - I had to think of something creative to say, then I had to collect input from at least five people before sending it. It's a dang good thing I didn't have to stress about texting, Facebook, instagram, etc. when I was in the dating scene - it would have totally exhausted me and taken up so much time!