The day after my 20 week ultrasound appointment, our family loaded up in the car (including Bandit!)  and made the annual trek to Utah. Since we hadn’t been to Utah at all this year and we won’t be going back for Christmas, we turned it into an almost three-week stint. Jake drove us out to Utah, flew back to California for the majority of our stay to make sure things weren’t melting down at the firm and to complete some flooring projects I asked to be done before the new baby gets here, and then flew back to Utah the weekend of Sarah’s wedding to drive us back home.

This was the first time since the girls were about 9 months old that we made the journey during the day instead of driving through the night while the girls slept. I’ll give credit where credit is due– Samantha and Amelia far exceeded my expectations. We left during naptime and they slept the entire four hours to Vegas, at which point the two hours to St. George was the worst of our trip. Between the girls and myself, we had to make about 10 stops in that two hours just to use the restroom!

We had planned on stopping over in St. George for the night, but after eating dinner and letting the girls run around for a bit, we decided to grit our teeth and make it the rest of the four hours. After fair amount of screaming protests to get out of the car, the girls conked out and slept most of the way to Grandma’s, where we all collapsed in our beds at about 1 a.m.

When the girls woke, they didn’t waste any time exploring all the “new” stuffed animals, toys and books at Grammy and Grandpa’s. We spent a good portion of every day playing in Grammy’s backyard, which was relaxing for me since I could supervise them from the comfort of the deck. It was great not having to load up to go to the park every day– I just opened the door and let them loose in the backyard.

Playing with the hose and pretending they were “piggies” in the bath was a favorite activity most days.

Hooray for 29-year-old playsets! I had fun as a kid on this thing and I’m glad the girls can now enjoy it too.

Bandit lost about ten pounds on this trip just running around the backyard, barking at all the people biking on the back trail.

Amelia loved making sand pies.

Jake hung out with us for one day before flying to Boise to meet up with his brother and take a boys road trip to Oregon for the weekend before flying home to California. We sure missed him!

Before Jake left, we visited the horses.

It’s not really the country, but it sure felt like it compared to what the girls are used to.

Wide open spaces!

My parents had some friends staying with them while we were there who had a Basset Hound-Lab mix named Tesla. He and Corgi-Lab mix, Bandit, made fast friends and were constant border patrol companions around the backyard.

Samantha enjoyed some trial runs on her flower girl hair-do for the wedding. The girls’ hair used to stay curled into ringlets without much effort, but the past summer, it’s gone more wavy instead, so I did some experimenting.

Samantha creates a nap time mat for her stuffed animals.

More backyard fun with Grammy.

One of the girls’ favorite books right now is We’re Going on a Bear Hunt. All the rocks and trees in the backyard provided them the perfect landscape to hide and pretend to be bears.

Helping Grammy pick tomatoes from the garden. The tomatoes did not make it inside without getting eaten most of the time!

Lots of love,