Catching up

I have neglected the blog.

Here are some updates.

Here is a picture of Abby standing outside the fort of all forts. She and Briton slept in it two nights in a row. (And they did, in fact, sleep.) It was light-tight, cozy and full of animals, pillows and blankets.

After 3 days, I needed my living room back, but it was fun to see them have so much fun with it!

Winter?

Like the rest of the country, winter hid from us from us for quite a while. The last week has been cold and snowy, but we certainly took advantage of some nice warm-ish days to get some fresh air. Here was a day we took advantage of a free zoo day (can't wait to use our zoo pass this summer - thanks mom and dad).

Utah - South

After the cabin, we drove south to warmth to spend the remainder of our time with the Wessmans. The kids loved playing with grandma, grandpa, Lara and Natalie.

Lara cut Briton's hair (and mine too!). It was very needed and quite the feat being that he does not let me touch his hair!

We got to go to the community pool and had a great time swimming, sliding and playing.

After a few days of fun play, we traveled to Las Vegas. We spent the afternoon there together. The next morning we flew back home.

Utah - North

We spent 2 weeks in Utah during January.

It feels so good to be home with all our family. I miss them and we consider ourselves very blessed to be able to travel home to see them regularly.

I got to spend my birthday there. My birthday indulgence was the lunch buffet at the Garden Cafe in the Grand America. It is so good. Mike and I used to eat there every year for our anniversary. We highly recommend it (and the price is extremely reasonable)!

We were excited to plan our trip around this:

It was so great to be able to attend Isaac's baptism. We love him and appreciate that he is such a good cousin to our kiddos.

We were able to visit great-grandparents and really enjoyed being with them.

My parents took the kids to the aquarium. The new otters along with the penguins, sharks and other old-timers were great.

We visited Hope's grave.

We got to go to the cabin! My parents, Kaley, Cory and Deja were also there and we had a great time - swinging, watching movies, sledding and eating!

We went to the Church History Museum with Bekah, Lance and Carter. It was so fun to watch the kids play and have fun together.

This may sound silly, but one of the best things about the trip was that I made a list of restaurants I wanted to go to and we hit them all. It may sound silly, but it made me happy:

• Red Iguana
• Cafe Rio
• Sweet Tomatoes (perhaps the only restaurant that we have eaten at every time we've traveled back to Utah)
• In 'n' Out
• The Garden @ the Grand America
• Papa Murphy's Pizza

The Ford Museum

During Christmas break, we went to the Ford Museum. Here are a few random pictures (yes, Abby and Briton are dressed as a hot dog) of the kiddos. We have a pass (thanks, Dave and Kaye)! If any of you come to Michigan this year, we will take you there. It is very cool and we hear the Greenfield Village is even better. (Our pass gets us in there also.)