A Week up North

It was as if the stars aligned for a few days in Utah last month. In our trip to the colder lands up north Annabelle and I were able to see some of our old friends from BYU (unfortunately we missed some), two of my old roommates, some McKean as well as Thorstensen extended family, my family from Colorado came out AND the cherry on top of it all: my new nephew Jeremiah!My older brother Adam and his wife Trudy had their first baby and he is a cutie! Annabelle and I drove up at the beginning of the week so that we could get a head start on all the cooing over the baby and were joined by Mike and my family by the end of the week for the baby blessing.

One of my great friends from Wymount let me crash at her house and made me feel right at home with her 3 boys and soon to be med school student husband. Perhaps she was just relieved to have a little more estrogen in the house :) It was a blast, thank you Sara and Chris!

Annabelle enjoyed playing with those 3 boys as well as hitting up our Utah favorites. Namely: scrapbooking in the basement of Wymount with Nichole, eating at J-Dawgs (good idea Rachel), Cafe Rio, chatting with friends, lunch at the MOA cafe, dress shopping at the Gateway (so so fun Becky), one visit to an urgent care facility (yes, another ear infection), Macy's - the grocery store for you non-Utah residents, and dinner at Adam and Trudy's. 

Unfortunately I have gotten out of the habit of taking any pictures as Mike has become the resident photographer in our house the last couple of months. Just take a look at my last post, 90% Mike's pictures. Even one of the ones of Mike was taken with the self timer by Mike!! But thankfully Mike was in town with us for about 48 hours and managed to take about 400 pictures, mostly of Jeremiah.A few people asked me how driving the 10+ hours by myself with Annabelle was. Let me tell you, I have got the best travel companion ever! She is content with just listening to music or talking my ear off for hours on end. She only needed to go to the bathroom once or twice each way. She will wait to have lunch at a McDonalds WITH a playplace for an extra hour or two or three if need be. She is fine with whatever snacks are within arm reach AND she never complained about my driving! I realize now how much having a new baby will adjust our ease of traveling . . . until then I could drive ANYWHERE with this girl.