Ultimate Utah Adventure - Day 2

I woke up to homemade pancakes courtesy of Jaida.  So super yum and a great way to start the day!!

When I woke up in the morning, I found Jaida was making sure her kids were beautiful.  To get them to sit still while she did their hair, they were allowed to play on the iPad.  All of the kids looked ADORABLE!

Ivy:

Jasper:

Sydney:

and ME!  Jaida did this super cute S braid and then just twisted my hair around her finger and it curled (and stayed that way all day!!)  I've tried multiple times since, and cannot get my hair to curl like she managed!

While Jaida got ready, I watched the kids.  Sydney played with Henry.  He was smiling the first time she did it, but when I recorded a video, I got 0 smiles:

While we waited for Jeff to come home from work with Sushi, I went to the park with Jaida, Ryan and their kids.  The kids played on the play place:

And we walked around a bit (so cute with the hand holding!)

And I got a ton of pics of Jaida and Henry:

When we got home, all of the nieces and nephews cuddled on the couch with me to watch some TV (this was the BEST THING EVER!!)  Sorry, the video isn't great, but I didn't want to get up and ruin cuddles.

Jeff finally got home with a TON of sushi.  There was everything from dragon rolls to eel to raw sushi to vegetable sushi.

Jeff and I were already die-hard sushi fans, but this was Jaida, Ryan and Rachel's first time experiencing the AWESOMENESS that is sushi.  I don't know how I  didn't get a picture of Rachel's first bite of sushi, but here's Jaida and Ryan:

Rachel and Jaida were on the fence, but Ryan really seemed to like it.

The aftermath:

Jaida and Ryan were cleaning up to leave, and had folded up pillow cases.  I saw one an put Henry in.  I thought it was halrious, but everyone else just looked at me confusedly and asked "why is he in a pillow case?"

Jeff and Rachel will probably need to wash that pillow case because this happened shortly there after:

After we drove the Hancock family to the airport and said our sad fairwells  I tricked Jeff, Rachel and Forrest into going to In-N-Out.  It was pretty delish:

After dinner we went to walmart so Forrest could pick out a birthday present with the money Grandpa Brown (poopa) sent him.  He picked Motorcycles and Jeff and Forrest had a blast racing them:

Rachel made us brownies (yum!) and we watched a couple of episodes of Supernatural before I got so sleepy I had to go to bed.

The next day, Jeff dropped me off at the airport and I spent the next 11 hours traveling home (thru 2 time zones) and then doing laundry before falling asleep.  My view from the plane ride:

As a parting gift, Jeff gave me his old Burp (8URP) license plate, which I added to my collection (the other one is my original PA plate before crossing over to the dark side  (OH)).

Over all it was an AMAZING trip.  It was SO good to see my siblings and their families.  I sometimes forget how lucky I am to come from such a great family!

Ultimate Utah Adventure - Day 1

For the past month or so, we've been planning Sushifest 2013 at Jeff's house in Utah.  It all started with an innocent facebook post by Jeff:

We coordinated schedules and Jeff, Rachel, Jaida, Ryan, myself and tons of nieces and nephews were able to meet up in from August 25-August 27 for Sushifest!  

On saturday I slept in as late as possible before working 9 hours then traveling for the next 11 hours.  I was able to sleep 2 hours on the plane, and was functional (if not energetic) on our first day together.  

Jeff met me at the airport and we went to Denny's for breakfast and to kill an hour before Jaida's flight came in.  It was sooooo yummy!

Rachel and Forrest drove up to the airport and we wrangled all of the kids into cars and drove down to temple square.  On our ride down we saw the new site of my first college, LDS Business College (It's behind the BYU SLCenter)

Ivy was tuckered out,

But Sydney, Jaida, and Henry and were wide awake and ready to play!

We parked at the mall across from temple square, which had SO many fun fountains to play in:

I tried to drink from one of the fountains, which was super fun until Jeff tried to push me in!

When we finally arrived at Temple Square it was picture time.  First up was the Brown siblings:

*please note that kids had to be cropped out of most pictures:

Next up was Jeff and his family:

Then Jaida and her family:

Such cute families, right?!  We continued walking around and the kids found another fountain to play with:

And windows to look in:

We then went to the LDS Visitors Center to change diapers and enjoy the AC.

There is a beautiful Christus Statue.  The kids were able to be surprisingly reverent for a little bit.

But the kids could not be contained and released their pent up energy from being revrent by running down the ramp at full speed.  I forgot how little ones seem to run everywhere!

I was getting pretty tuckered out (I had only slept 2 hours), so we came home, and I took a quick 2 hour nap while Jaida and the kids went to the park.  When I woke up, Rachel gave us the fixin's for sandwiches and just relaxed for a bit while the kids played together.  The boys had fun playing with cars together:

Jaida was singing and feeding Henry, and it was SO beautiful, I couldn't help but record it:

Rachel made DELISH  Spaghetti and meatsauce and salad for dinner.  I was SO hungry that I forgot to take pics :(  Everyone devoured it!  Super good.

Being a mean person, I made sure the kids were all worked up before going to bed by throwing a dance party!

After the kids went to bed it was technology time!!

More to follow on Day 2!