sister visits

I feel like I don't get to see my sisters too much these days. The oldest, Ronda, only lives just over an hour away, yet we don't get many opportunities to get together. The next one, Leesa, moved to New Mexico last year. And the third, Jill, has been in Nebraska for a while now.

In July we all ended up in North Dakota visiting my parents for an incredibly awesome weekend.

But recently I've been lucky to see all my sisters again!

Nebraska:
In September the kids and I flew to Nebraska. I actually didn't get too much sister time then because a few hours after I arrived Jill left for a week to go on a 10 year anniversary cruise. (Lucky!) I got to play single mom of 5 for the week. It was awesome to have that time with my niece and nephews that I rarely get to see. (Extremely exhausting.... but mostly awesome!)

We flew directly into Kearney, on a tiny little plane. Tiny enough that the co-pilot was the one giving the spiel on the seat belts and oxygen masks. Then he was nice enough to let Sam get a good look at all those buttons and gauges.


Sam and Preston had a blast playing and playing and playing and... well, you get the point.

Jill and me.
Do we look like sisters?

I did get a day and a half of sister time before we flew back home to Utah, so that was nice.


New Mexico:
This past Thursday, Ronda and I and all our kids went on a little road trip to New Mexico to visit Leesa and her family. Let me tell you, driving 8 hours goes by really fast when you talk the whole time! And the drive back on Sunday went even faster!! (Jason has no idea how we do the talking-the-whole-time thing.... but we do! And we love it!!)

On Friday we went on a picnic to this little park that has water spouts in the ground. The kids had a blast playing in it. Livia did too until she wiped out and hit the back of her head on the ground. Then she cried and took a nap.



Addison had a little "school time" with the kids. How she got all the little ones to sit still that long is beyond me. Good job Addison... that's a difficult task!

Leesa made a little gingerbread haunted house with all the kids. The kids loved it!! Sam was so obsessed with it, he kept asking about it until they finally got to eat it. Livia just loved having easy access to the candy bowls while sitting by a distracted adult. (I have no idea how much she ate!)

On Saturday Dan was so nice to watch ALL the kids so we could get some real sister time! Right after lunch we went to a vinyl party and all spent more than planned... (they were super cute though!) Then we went to Chili's for an early dinner.
There again... talk, talk, talk!

I love talking with my sisters!!!

So, yeah, it was a fun weekend! And I only threw up once during the car ride.... so not bad!

So thank you to all 3 of my awesome sisters for letting me spend some time with you!!

why the trees you ask?

So if you just looked at the change of picture on top of the blog... and thought, "why the trees?" I'll explain quickly.

The temple picture just didn't work with a Halloween scene.

A few weeks ago we took a family hike to these trees. These trees are the trees that Jason carved while we were dating. He took me to this spot when he proposed. So obviously, they are our trees now. Right?

So, yeah. That's why the trees...

Liv's birthday #2

I know this has taken me way longer than planned, so I'm sorry!! (I finally figured out, thanks to Jason doing it for me, how to get my pictures to the computer! Now I can blog with pictures again!)

Anyway, here are a few pictures from Livia's 2nd birthday. We just had my sister, Ronda and her family down for dinner and then had cake and ice cream.

She loves books more than any librarian I know....
.... ok, I don't really know any librarians. Whatever. You get the point.

Every little girl needs to have a copy of Snow White.... right?
As long as she doesn't think it's ok to live with 7 men. And it doesn't matter how short they are. You just don't do it.
(Snow White, I understand your situation though.)

From Aunt Ronda and Uncle Ron she got a baby Belle and an adorable tu-tu.
The tu-tu picture is way to blurry though. Maybe we'll get a shot of that at another time.


The morning of her birthday we woke her up singing Happy Birthday to her. We let her open a couple of presents then.
She's trying to figure out how to get those amazing bubbles out of that bottle....

Unfortunately it didn't take her long. Now those bubbles are no more.... darn spills.