April 2013 recap

In April, Stephen had a birthday. Seth loved helping me make the cake. Now that we have a 2 year old who gets really excited about birthdays and holidays we get to open presents first thing in the morning! :) Unfortunately I only have a too-big-to-upload video of that.

Then we took an exciting trip to Utah for Aunt Marissa's wedding/our annual "summer" trip to visit my family! The wedding festivities started out with a girls' night out to dinner at Kneader's and back to my brother's house for some reminiscing about the bride.

We dug up Marissa's purple boa and hot pink high heels from high school and forced her to wear them for the evening :)

Having Marissa read her predicted future from her 7th grade "Me Book" was the best part.

The wedding day was fun and beautiful. I can't believe that I have a married sister!! Luckily Stephen and I just happened to be in town last 4th of July when Marissa hesitantly invited Adam over for lunch. Soon afterwards they were officially dating and we couldn't have been more excited :).  Their sealing at the Salt Lake Temple was attended by MANY family and friends which made it that much more of a joyous occasion. The reception in the evening was beautiful and delicious. Despite a grumpy toddler in tow, we had fun watching the happiness on Marissa and Adam's faces, visiting with extended family, pigging out on cheesecake, listening to Adam play guitar and sing to his beautiful bride, and dancing with our nephews. We ended the evening with a surprisingly quick clean up and even had time to hang out with my parents in their kitchen while slicing and freezing the leftover strawberries.

Aunt Krista was a lifesaver. Seth cried for a while when we were in the sealing and she saved him by walking outside with the stroller for forever. For a while Seth would recall this incident with sadness, but luckily he has since forgotten about the crying part and only remembers going to the temple with Aunt Krista :)

My cute boys

How cute are these cousins and their adorable bow ties?

Seth has a sharp memory and even 3 months later is reminding us of the fun he had on his visit to "Grandma Grandpa Grandpa" in Utah:

Riding the "white train" (Trax) with Grandpa. Grandpa and Seth rode to the stop nearest the mall where I picked them up. Then we took Seth inside to play on the indoor playground and ride the carousel.

Seth absolutely loved playing with Grandma and Grandpa's marble set. My parents have kept a lot of our childhood toys in great condition. It's so fun to see Seth play with things that I played with as a child.

Krista let Seth "play" her guitar a few times.

When we visited Katie and Brady, Katie also let Seth "play" her guitar! The visit was full of hands-on fun as we got to hold and play with Darwin, the gecko. Seth still talks about the "dinosaur" at Katie and Brady's house. :)

Before my grandparents left town, we took Seth over to swim at their hotel which he thought was pretty awesome and we got to hang out with Aunt Lauren too! Even though we only had a few days of seeing them, Seth will often ask about Great-Grandpa and Great-Grandma and thinks elderly people at the store are Great-Grandpa and Great-Grandma :)

I didn't take a picture, but one of the highlights of the trip was seeing Great Uncle Paul play trucks on the ground with Seth at Grandma Kitchen's house :) He loved to go over there and thinks Grandma K has the best trucks.

Another photo op I missed was visiting Lauren at Chick-fil-a. It is our little family's favorite fast food restaurant and it was a fun little outing.

Of course we spent lots of time with our cousins, including a morning horse ride at their house and swimming at the local rec center (swimming TWICE in April in Utah?)

On an afternoon following the wedding, Stephen and I had a little date at the outdoor City Creek mall in SLC. The buildings and creek were gorgeous and the time alone was even better. While out, we picked up a few bottles of specialty root beer and had a blind taste test with my family that evening. The next day we went out and bought some more in search of the perfect specialty soda. If only Texas had the selection that Utah does!!

For the record, Henry Weinhard's root beer won this round. Only my dad and Stephen liked the nasty Virgil's root beer. It made sense when we discovered "black licorice" on the list of ingredients.

One of our last little adventures on the trip was hiking up Ensign Peak with my parents. Seth refers to this excursion as when he got to "climb a mountain" and still talks about it all the time.