Quick trip to Utah...and then some.

We'll start with the "and then some" part. 

I ordered these teeny tiny books. How stinking cute are they?!! My boys think they are the coolest.

And this is silly, but Devin is such a builder.
He's always building the coolest things with these wood blocks and with our Legos.

The cutest part is that he names everything he builds.
I love his creativity.

On to our quick Utah trip. 

And it was literally a 1 day trip...

Matt was offered a different job in Pleasant Grove/American Fork area. 

We were pretty interested in this other job, but wanted to meet the doctors with the group.
They flew us to Utah, very last minute. We flew out Friday, had dinner at my sisters house in
Riverton (she's like the best cook in the world!!!!). Saturday we lucked out and were able to go
to my nephew's baptism, since we were staying with them. I had another nephew that was
baptized that same day, but it was too far to go to. After that we went back to Jenny's and scarfed some lunch and headed to meet the docs. We drove to PG and met Dr. Allen and Dr. Young at their office.
Their wives came along too, it was nice to meet them all. They showed us the office, which is really nice and quite large. We were very impressed. Then Matt went off with Dr. Young to tour the AF hospital and I went out with his wife to a boutique and cupcake shop! :)

Then we ran back up to Riverton (thanks to Ella for watching James all afternoon!!!!).
Spent a little time there and then shot back down to Orem where we met the docs at
The Chef's Table for dinner. It was very nice! And after that they took us up the road
and we went to the popular Waffle Love place to have a delicious waffle for dessert.

Then rushed back up to Jenny's hung out with them for a while and then hit the sack!
The next morning we flew out at 6am. It was literally the fastest trip of my life!

James was a trooper, and since we left so early and everything, he just stayed on our
time zone, which made it much easier on us.

Cute little Averie is only a few months older than James. I'm so excited to move back

and be in the "baby club" with my sisters for the first time! :)

A few pics we snapped at Jenny's after the baptism. 

Mom, Jenny, Mandy and Me.

Averie (cut off), Lexi and photobombed by Mitch. 

My nieces and nephews are funny doods.

And THANKFULLY, we left our boys with my sweet friend for 2 days.

They had a blast!!! She sent me some funny pics of them while we were gone.

In the end, while we were very torn (about the two job offers).

And after MUCH thought and prayer, we decided to take the job in PG.

We're sad things didn't work out with Payson, but we are feeling really good about our 

decision to go with PG.

We are really excited to move back to Utah and start a new phase of our lives back in our home state.

Thanks for everyone we saw for a minute (literally!) and especially

to Jenny and Brandon for their fine hospitality!!!

And Lexi, for letting us stay in her room. :)

Feb-March 2014

As usual, February and March were cold and pretty miserable. 

Cleveland is rough this time of year.

Here are a bunch of random photos from those months.

 James had a little surgical procedure done in Feb.

Maybe this is too much info, but he had an undescended testicle when he was born.

They fixed that and moved it to the right place! It went very smooth and fairly quickly.

In and out in one day. He was pretty miserable the rest of the day, but otherwise bounced back 

very quickly. Thankfully!

 Hssa event at the Science Museum...always fun.

 The first warmish day. Luke and his friends thought it'd be a good idea to walk through a huge mud puddle. His rain boots got stuck, literally sucked in. A much older kid, thankfully, fished them out for me. As you can see Luke was pretty muddy. What you can't see is that his whole backside is also

covered in mud...and of course I walked to pick him up that day. Boys... :) 

 We discovered our new favorite thing to do at night, is sit by the fire

in our basement...why did we not do this sooner?!! 

 Open gym to get the wiggles out!

We put Luke in this indoor soccer class...thing. It's not really a league, but

they teach them soccer skills and they play against each other, etc. It was a good 

winter activity.

This is his Polish buddy, Alek. They're the best of friends. 

They're also in the same Kindergarten class.

 And just for fun...these are many of the names of the kids in Lukes grade...can you believe some of these names?!!

At the end of March, Luke's grade had their little play of The Little Red Hen.

It was short and sweet. Luke had a small part.

Sadly, only maybe 1-2 weeks later, his music teacher, Ms. Smoker, who was the one 

who put the whole production together, died in her sleep. It was quite tragic. She was young, 

and had two very young children. Luke was really sad. It was a sad time at the school. 

It wasn't a terrible two months....but boy are we glad it's spring time now! :)

9 Months

James is growing so quickly, I can hardly keep up!

He hit 9 months (about a month ago!).

He's such a ham. He is SO happy and such an easy baby.

He is starting to cruise around, pulling himself up and 

he's surprisingly steady on his feet.

He's a fast crawler. And is discovering the stairs.

We just love this little cutie to pieces!

Orlando, Florida Trip

Wahooooo!!! 

For our last big trip during residency (seriously, Matt's LAST vacation) we went all out

and went to Florida. You could say it was a graduation trip.

IT ROCKED!

First of all, I want to say a HUGE thank you to Matt's parents (who are serving in China) 

for letting us use their Marriott timeshare. The trip wouldn't have happened with it.

We loaded up and took a VERRRRY long road trip. First day we had to drive 10 hours, which ended up being more like 15. West Virginia is all windy roads, through the "mountains." Luke barfed twice. 

Then we discovered our AC was out in our car. We spent over 2 hours trying to find a stinking walmart, to add some freon. Found it. And no such luck. So, we suffered the heat for the whole trip.

We stayed in Waltersboro, SC the first night. Matt did a priceline thing the day before and because of spring break almost everything was booked from DC to Daytona Beach. So, we all snuggled and stayed in a tiny microtel "hotel" with one queen sized bed. :) 

This is where we were meeting up with Dave and Meg. They had to call about 20 hotels to finally find something that night. The next morning we met up at church. 

 The rest of Sunday we spent driving 5-6 more hours to Orlando.

It was toasty!

 The first Florida welcome center gave out the most delicious free orange juice and grapefruit juice.

 Later that night we finally got to the resort.

Meg and Dave were staying at a different resort, a couple of mins up the road.

 Our resort was pretty awesome.
It was very kid and family friendly. We spent a lot of time there. 

They had two pools, a big slide, splash pad, and pirate ship in another pool with slides and sprinklers.

Also, some kiddie pools and hot tubs.

There were also fields for disc golf, soccer, volleyball, etc. A playground, mini golf, fire pits, bbq grills, ping pong, foosball, etc. It was so nice!

 It was such a cute resort, that felt almost like disney or something, like it's own little town.

 Monday and Tuesday we spent by the pool at our resort and then at Dave and Megs.

Monday was also Matt's birthday! Sadly, he got some kind of stomach bug 

and spent the day sick.

Tues night we met up with cousin Dan for dinner. It was really fun!

 Day 2 at the other resort. It was also really nice! Very ritzi. 

We played in their pools and the guys let us do some sunbathing...ahhh.

It was such pretty resort!

In the afternoon that day Sarah flew in! Matt went to get her, while I took James to nap at our place.

Dave and Meg watched Luke and Dev. While with them she sent me these photos!

Wednesday was DISNEY!!

We went to Magic Kingdom, for one day. Which was enough. :)

It was incredibly crowded (spring break). The weather was perfect though, not too hot or too cold.

We were SO excited.

 Poor Meg got the same bug Matt had, at some point and spent the 2nd half of the day really sick.

 Dave and Meg took the 3 little guys back home after dinner.

They were so kind to let the rest of us stay. 

We went on a ton more rides. It was so fun, because McKelle and Luke were tall enough 

(and brave enough) for all the big rides.

 And YES I am a nerd wearing a poncho!

It was cold after it got dark and I didn't want to freeze!!!

 We were literally going from about 6am-midnight. It was fun but sooo exhausting!

Dave and Scottie were in the spotlight for this funny Monsters comedy show.

And this is totally random...but we were walking through the park and I noticed a bunch of people taking photos at the sky. So I looked up and there was this funky rainbow circling the sun. It was freaky!

Disney...we will be back...but not for spring break. :)

 Almost every night we hung out at our place till late and just let the kids fall asleep on the pull out bed.

Each night they were beat!

 Our resort also had a bunch of activities throughout the day. 

We played a bunch of games and each time the kids earned sand dollars.

At the end they redeemed them for prizes.

 Thursday night Sarah kindly offered to watch the rugrats while we went on a double date.

We ate dinner at a steakhouse and then went to Downtown Disney.

 That dragon is made of Legos!

 More pool time. And photobomb Dave.

 James was such a happy camper.

Friday we drove about an hour away to Legoland!

It was fun. Not as exciting or "magical" as Disney, but still fun.

The boys loved it.

 McKelle is hilarious. She was such a daredevil the whole trip. Luke on the other had is very cautious. They were on the front row of this rickety roller coaster.

 If you can't tell everything is made of Legos! It was pretty cool.

 They have this cool mini city that is so awesome.

 Star struck meeting Emmett from The Lego Movie.

 Saturday was sadly, our last day. We did not want to leave!!!!

We wished we would have flown, to give us 2 extra days in Florida. We seriously LOVED it!

So we soaked up the last day, working out at the gym, swimming in the pool, mini golf, bbq'ing, and sunbathing. While I was laying out, Meg comes over "Mary!! This trip cannot be complete without a poolside colada!!!" Boy was she right!!! :)

Around dinner time we packed up and hit the road. 

We drove 8 hours and got to our (dumpy) hotel at 2 am. 

Somehow the Easter bunny found us!!!

 And then we drove home the rest of the day and got home around 6pm. Boy were our bums sore.

Thanks for coming Meg, Dave, McKella, Scottie and Sarah!!!