Trip

Here's a little recap of our trip so far:

Plane ride. Leg one: misery. Layover: breaking up the family so one of us can take a baby and run to nearly-missed flight plotting some sort of delay while the other gathers up the rest of the children and gear and hopes to catch up; one split lip, and scavenging children begging food off of unsuspecting passengers waiting at the gate (flight ended up being delayed, of course). I wasn't quite fast enough to catch up with Ashton as he bee-lined to some man with a banana and started begging for some "nana." The man broke off a little piece to give to him at which point Ashton starts yelling at him and pointing to the larger remaining piece. About a minute later I caught up to him as some woman was giving him potato chips. Seriously. Because that poor little belly is just wasting away?

Leg two: thank heavens for the ipod touch, Benadryl, a few open seats, and convincing people they really didn't want to sit by us.
























Of course with all the announcements the naps didn't last as long as I would have liked, but it was still a first for napping on the plane!







Family reunions: so much fun! We went to Kangaroo Zoo (full of bounce houses and mini-golf)



































(Getting a little too close sometimes!)














Rented the infamous karaoke machine (lucky for you I'll spare you the videos. :)
















(Isn't that little Cash stinking cute? I don't think he ever opened his mouth, but he sure looked cute trying to karaoke to BINGO!)


Had family pictures - seriously the woman didn't really even want to bother with our little family! She tried a few of our boys and was like - "yeah, this age is hard," and stopped. We asked if we could try some family ones again and she was like, "maybe you could come back for a sitting another day." I was sort of like, um yeah, our kids will still not like to hold still tomorrow either, and are you kidding me that we might try to go through this again?? But hopefully we got some good ones. I'm pretty sure none of the kids were smiling, I think if we manage all looking in the same direction we'll be lucky. My fingers are crossed.

Then family reunions continued with renting out the Eccles ice skating rink in Logan. That was a first for our kids! The babies mostly entertained themselves opening boxes of pizza and running away with two or three pieces at a time, but everyone also enjoyed taking a spin or two on the ice (seriously - stroller on the ice? Awesome. Can you do that during regular ice skating hours? Even Cash loved it.)























Then we went up to Bear Lake to see a really cute play. We also visited some old friends in Wellsville. Man, the drive up to Bear Lake and the view from our friends amazing house in Wellsville are really to die for. Imagine lots of this, lots of mountains and rolling hills... wow.

















Our kids were pretty much cranky the whole weekend but at least had lots of cousins to share the distraction. I kept wanting to tell everyone it's not normal, it's just because we're on vacation and they're all out of whack, but well - it sort of is normal. :)

Walking to church and attempting a picture after:
















In other thoughts - I've realized that life really does work out for the best sometimes. It's actually a good thing Ryan has kept us poor this long. :) Because we have a small place to keep track of these babies in. There aren't doors leading to the outside everywhere you look with concrete steps leading to rivers of water or yards that drop off out back. There are only two toilets to keep track of rather than six, everything is baby-proofed so I don't have to run the second anyone is out of my sight, I can change a diaper without worrying that someone is falling down a flight of stairs (again), and there are NO stairways! So yes, I'm realizing that it is actually really hard to watch my kids out here and some things are really blessings in disguise!