Utah!

Last month Parker, Kate and I made a special trip to Utah for the wedding of my friend's little brother... It sounds weird when I say it like that.  Because she's not just my "friend," she's my friend for life, my BFF.  And her parents are like my parents and her siblings are like my siblings and consequently, Parker and Kate have an extra set of grandparents.  Anyway, so of course we had to go to the wedding.  Unfortunately, Paul wasn't able to get time off of work so it was just me and the kiddos.  Within the first few hours of our trip I had three people tell me how brave I was to fly by myself with two small kids in tow.  We had a pretty easy time though, but it did take some advance planning to make things run smoothly.  For example, we had a late morning flight (Paul was at work), so I chose to park our car in the long term parking lot and take the shuttle to the airport.  I knew that Southwest had an outdoor check-in and baggage drop and so I planned on asking the shuttle driver to drop us off right in front of it.  Also, because we had two suitcases, two car seats, two backpacks and a stroller, I wasn't able to take all of our luggage to the shuttle stop in one trip, and I didn't want to leave the luggage or the kids unattended at the stop while I made a second trip to the car.  So, I parked in a parking spot that was close to where the shuttle exits the parking lot and had the driver stop at our car on the way to the airport to pick up our remaining gear.  The plan was to have Paul either move the car to a residential street near the airport or come with a friend to drive the car home, but wouldn't you know it, he couldn't find his car key. I'll give you one guess as to who hid the key. So, my great idea turned into a rather expensive one, but at least we made it to the airport happy and on time.

We stayed with Aunt Kim for two nights and then with Jenni's in-laws the next two nights (Jenni, Jake, and their darlings were staying there too).  My dad even came down from Idaho to see us!



He watched Parker and Kate during the sealing and was all-around incredibly helpful.  I think the trip would have been stressful if he hadn't been there.  We really had a wonderful time.  The wedding was lovely and it was so nice to be surrounded by loved ones.





It was so cute to see Parker and Scarlett interact with each other.










She was definitely the leader in their twosome.  Parker would follow her around and make sure she knew that he wanted to play with her.  We went to a park one morning and somehow Scarlett slipped away to a different play area without Parker realizing it.  He started wandering around shouting, "I'm looking for my friend Scarlett!"









Lucky for us we got to be there for Jenni's twins' birthday party!  

(Thank goodness there were presents x2 because apparently Parker has not mastered the concept of who gets to open birthday presents.)



They truly are the cutest twins you'll ever meet.  In college Jenni and I used to joke that we were the same person.  Living together sort of morphed us into one big, awesome super-nerd.  And then we got married within months of each other, got pregnant at the same time and had frank breech babies.  I was a little thrown off my axis when she announced that she was having identical twins!  I was secretly scared that the doctor was going to tell me that I too was pregnant with twins when I got pregnant a few months later. Even though they aren't as close in age as Parker and Scarlett, the twins are a little small for their age and Kate is a little big for hers, so all is right in the world. 

A huge thank you to Aunt Jami for the matching pajamas.