Utah: Part 1

On June 20th, my beautiful mother flew into Chicago. She spent the night, and then woke up bright and early the next day to help me drive myself and my two little girls to Utah! My mom totally ROCKS!

22 hours later, we arrived in Pleasant Grove where we were immediately met with hugs and hellos from all my awesome siblings! We ate and chatted and then, when most of my brothers and sisters went home, me and Sarah and Tau stayed up super late laughing our heads off about all the silly things we use to do :)

Our late night came back to haunt us when we had to wake up super early the next day to catch my sister, Becca, finishing her half marathon! But no worries, we were given a delicious french toast breakfast for our efforts.

Later that day we celebrated my niece Malia's 3rd birthday! Rachel and Munro set up the backyard with a small swimming pool and buckets full of water balloons for the kids to play with, and Rachel made the yummiest cake EVER! But the best part of the party was when Tau and Munro sacrificed themselves as human targets for the kids to throw water balloons at. (top left) But don't worry, they got back at the kids after all was said and done :)

Oh yeah! And while Rachel and Munro were setting up for the birthday party, me, Sarah, and Tau took all the kids down the street to watch the Strawberry Days Parade! We got tons of candy and a lot of stares for lugging 8 young children around!

The next day was Sunday and me, Rachel, Becca, and Sarah got to sing at church together. Its been a while since we were able to sing together but the performance turned out great (despite the fact that we were all losing our voices!)

Monday the 25th was mostly spent with my sister Sarah. I was helping her to get things together for girls camp and a baby shower she was throwing. It was so fun just to hang out with my little sister again and have adult companionship throughout the course of a regular day :)

On the 26th, my selfless mother volunteered to watch 10 of her 12 grandchildren while HER kids went out to eat at Bajio's. It was really fun to be kid-less for a change and have a chance to hear each other speak. As it turns out, my siblings are very funny and pretty darn political to boot! I never really knew they felt so passionate about our country and it's governing bodies (especially my little brother Jake! He is one smart cookie!)

That night, the power went out in my mom's neighborhood... resulting in an epic game of Truth or Dare! It was pretty spontaneous really. It started out with Becca making Jake call our little sister Liz (who was still in California) and confessing his undying love for her (CREEPY!) She immediately knew we were playing Truth or Dare and retaliated by daring Becca to go upstairs to my sleeping mother, wake the poor woman up, and tell her she had pooped her pants and needed to be wiped... and yes... My 31 year old sister complied!

Sooner or later I ended up having to walk in to the house next door (thankfully it was  my sister's house) and tell my bro-in-law that I was starving and needed him to make me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich! He just looked at me like, "what the heck..." but then he started to chuckle and said, "That's funny! Who put you up to this?!"

Sarah and Rachel eventually followed suit and had to write weird things on their Facebook statuses, such as: "I'm taking the Browns to the Superbowl" (code for I have to go #2) and "I'm so scared..." But poor Tau got the worst of things and had to have his toenails painted and post the picture on Facebook for all the world to see. We tried to get him to walk into my dad's room and randomly start giving my dad a shoulder massage, but he wimped out :) BEST. NIGHT. EVER!

To be continued...