Fun Birthday and Reunion Week!

This week was crazy busy and super fun. The first part of the week I needed to get everything ready for our trip to Utah. It was crazy getting all the laundry, packing, and playing in since this was the first week of summer vacation. Tuesday night some of my friends in my ward took me and my good friend Cheryl to Claim Jumper to celebrate our birthdays. Cheryl's was Wednesday and mine on Friday. It was so much fun. I was so grateful to all who came and for the thoughtful gifts. I sure felt loved and very full by the end of the night.

Wednesday morning we left for Utah for Doug's family reunion. We went to St. George for the night and then on up to Salt Lake to stay at Doug's brother's house. The kids had a total BLAST! All the families stayed in the backyard in tents. I was able to sleep in the house with Riley. We bought one of those blow up water slides and all the kids loved playing on that. The weather was warm but not too hot and had a nice breeze. SO much better than I thought it would be. The boys didn't get much sleep because they wanted to keep up with their older cousins.

Friday was the big reunion day and we went to Sugar House park to be with Doug's aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. There were tons of people there, most I've never met before. We took a big group picture and a family picture with Doug's immediate family. All his brothers and sisters were able to come so it will be a complete picture of the family. It was fun to visit and hear what everybody is up to. That night we had a bbq and fire in the backyard. Everybody sang happy birthday to me which was really nice. It was nice to receive calls and text messages throughout the weekend from my friends and family. Thanks guys!

A huge highlight of the trip was that both of my boys learned to ride a bike without training wheels! We haven't taken the time to teach Jake yet and he learned in about 2 minutes. He's a pro now! Ryan is still a tad shaky but can do it. He just gets a little nervous. I was so excited for them.

We left Saturday night after dessert and fireworks. The kids were not happy to leave because they wanted to play more cops and robbers, but Doug needed to get back to work Monday. We got to St. George about 12:30 a.m. Utah time. Riley cried and would not go to sleep until about 4:00 a.m. I was losing my mind because I was sooooooo exhausted. I did not know what to do to get her to stop crying and go to sleep. She finally did and then about 4:30 a.m. Jacob woke up with the flu and threw up about every 1/2 hour after that. It was probably one of the worst nights of my life. Long and very tiring. Anyway, the drive into California today was filled with catching vomit in a bag for Jacob and trying to get some sort of nap. The nap didn't really happen but we were pretty successful with Jacob. Poor guy. He finally stopped getting sick around 2:00 this afternoon and could actually eat a little bit of dinner and hold it in. Let's hope the rest of us don't get the same thing this week. I'm done with throw up for a long time.

Anyway, it was a great week. It was fun watching the kids play with their cousins and build relationships with them. I'll put the pictures up tomorrow so you can see all the fun we had. We're soooooo glad to be home tonight and that all was well at our home, except it's blazing hot right now. YUCK!