Road trip in March

The first couple weeks of March, we went on a giant plane trip. The main purpose of the trip was to visit Abi's birth family, but while we were there we also visited some of James's family, and ended the trip by going to Las Vegas for James's business stuff. It was a pretty amazing trip! Here's how it went:

I have aspirations of being a Pinterest Mom. Not. Actually, I have aspirations of not driving everyone else on the plane crazy so I scoured Pinterest for ideas to keep toddlers happy on the plane. I found some fun new things and so I prepped for our trip by making a bead abacus. That's right.

And because I have the coolest husband ever, he helped me craft it. Haha! He was in charge of cutting the slits and tying and burning the ends of the laces. You know, the manly stuff. I designed it and threaded the beads. The womanly stuff.

To thank us for our hard work in creating such entertaining toys, Abi sprayed her "squeezie" (puree food in a foil packet) all over the living room and hallway. Yep... Can you see those splatters all over these two pictures? Good fun!

The day arrived and we got up crazy early to make our flight. We had breakfast at the airport which included Jamba Juice - oh yeah! One problem, Abi has discovered both milk shakes and smoothies so our happiness is basically over. Or at least, I have to share my happiness now. :) She can suck this cold stuff up without stopping until it's gone. It amazes me! She must not have a brain or maybe it's super insulated because it doesn't freeze! I don't get it, but of course I'm kidding. She has a brain. :)

We were so tired already by the time we boarded that we both slept pretty well!

We got to start our trip by visiting with James's brother and his family in St. George. It's early March so still winter but also it's St. George, Utah. It was pretty nice out so we ate outside. Pretty soon we look around and notice someone was missing...

Our nephew decided to eat under his dad's jacket where the breeze wasn't so chilly. What a funny kid! He totally had his whole plate under there. Ha!

We finished our visit at a kid's museum and loved it! Thanks, guys, for the fun day!

The next day we visited Abi's birth parents (and her birth grandfather). We love them so much!! We took lots of pictures for Abi's memory book. I think she will cherish those pictures someday! We spent some time chatting with them at the adoption agency, then went to a restaurant and ate, and finished by playing at a park and going to the library. We wanted to show them how much Abi loves books! We found her favorite one at the time which was "Click, Clack, Moo!" and all took turns reading it to her because of course, as soon as one of us finished reading, she'd hop off their lap and carry the book to the next person to read. I don't know how much better life can get than having four adults doting on one toddler. It was pretty special!

The whole visit left her pretty tuckered out, especially with the time zone change. You can tell she loved her new toy though!

On our way up to Provo, we stopped at a cheese factory that is famous in the history of James's family. Apparently it was a favorite stop when his family did roadtrips. You see, they sell giant cheese curds here called Squeaky Cheese and they are sooo tasty! But when you chew them, they squeak against your teeth and feel funny. So fun!

Squeaky cheese!

Our big event in Provo that weekend was putting on a "Flamingle" for Jenny and Mitch. First, I must apologize for all whose baby showers I have previously hosted. I have learned a lot since having a baby and I have a new favorite way to do showers which isn't really a shower at all. :) When we had Abi, my sweet friend threw me AND James a baby-welcoming party and invited both women and men and it was so absolutely wonderful! Having a baby really is a celebration for the moms AND the dads, and I loved our party! So, we did the same for Jenny and Mitch. We invited couples and kids and it turned out great! So, I'm sorry previous friends, I'll do better at your next ones! Haha!

We gave Jenny's baby a bib and outfit set that was flamingo patterned. Jenny loves flamingos! That's basically an understatement but because of this great love, we had an awesome theme to go with for the party which is why we called it a "Flamingle."

Our gift to Jenny and Mitch's baby girl

Here was the food table. Thanks to so many friends and family for helping set it up!

The food table

And here was the welcoming entrance. Jenny has so many great Flamingo things already so we used her metal bird to hold the leis for people to wear at the party.

The entrance - grab a lei!

This is a picture of my sneaky child that ran around sneaking food under the radar because both her parents were occupied with party details. This is where she learned she loved grapes which freaked me out because I knew no one was constantly monitoring whether she was choking or not but she did fine! God does help us when we're doing the best we can! She also learned the word balloon at this party thanks to all the other kids yelling it the whole night. :)

Sneaky child

This is a Pinterest idea. These palm trees were so cool! They only lasted a little while until the kids ran crazy but still, a favorite of mine.

Palm trees

Here's a close up of the table decor. We had a whole bunch of the pink rubber duck-flamingos and had prepped them by writing numbers on the bottom of each. Then we set them out on all the tables and at the end of the party, we told everyone to grab a duck and we drew numbers as a door prize. They also got to take them home as a party favor. So fun and the kids loved them!

Food table

Another Pinterest idea I found and sent to Dannie. It was just a wall quilt but someone had commented that it would be a cute growth chart so I passed the idea on to Dannie and she totally delivered! It's beautiful and will be so fun for Jenny to use as her daughter grows. It also made great decor.

Growth chart that James's mother made

Here's a picture of James and I still smiling! The party really did go well thanks to all the help we had!!!

Happy hosts!

Here's an idea that was not a Pinterest idea! I had it... I think. Haha! I looked at LOTS of things on Pinterest. But we got brown striped straws and another sister-in-law made the green palm leaves out of paper that we threaded onto the straws to make little palm trees. So fun!

Drink station

Gift table

This is a funny picture to me because this is how the night went - all of James's siblings and their kids just mixed together with everyone watching and caring for whichever kid needed someone at the time. That's what makes family great!

A mix of cousins

We played some fun games that were not gender central and also were not baby-centric. Jenny and Mitch had felt the anxiety of infertility while trying to get pregnant and had many friends at this party who were in their infertility support network, so one of our goals was to not focus too much on the babies and focus more on celebrating Jenny and Mitch. So one game we played was "Guess which toddler." We had Jenny and Mitch's parents give us 10 odd stories or facts about them when they were babies or toddlers and then the guests had to guess which person the story was about. It was a lot of fun! We had them stand up and hold up a pink card if they thought it was Jenny and a green card if they thought it was Mitch. If they got it wrong they sat down and we went with process of elimination until there was a winner. The prize was "Baby-Q" sauce, of course!

Games

Someone gave Jenny these great new earrings - Ha! How fun! It's nice to have something you like that everyone knows because it's easier for people to get you gifts. True story!

Cool new earrings

We asked James's sister-in-law to take pictures while Jenny opened gifts so instead of writing down names for her to write thank you's later, she could just look at the photos with the people and gifts in them together which then became a sort of memory as well. It worked pretty well, except when the person had already left the party and couldn't be in the picture. That was tough to sort out. :)

Gift opening

Over all, it was a great party for which we owe many people much gratitude for their help! It almost flopped because we were WAY behind, but at the last minute some friends from her ward showed up to help. I could swear they were angels!

While we were in the Salt Lake area, we got to see many of James's family which was SO nice!

James's Aunts

We also got to get together with some of my cousins who are in the area at college. I loved getting to see them again and catching up on life! These are great girls that I have such fun memories of. Love you, ladies! (Wish you were there, Rachel! Next time!)

Cousins reunion lunch! Yay!!

We stopped by a cemetery to honor James's grandparents. It was sweet to see him tell Abi about his grandparents.

And we got to see his other grandparents! Abi wanted to touch everything. This age... phew!

Grandma gave her some cookies to occupy her - see how stuffed Abi's cheeks are?

Love this pic!

And this one! Such great people!

When we finished in Utah, we drove to Las Vegas so James could attend his business conference. Abi and I walked the strip each day to find as much family friendly entertainment as could be had. There's not much though there is some and we enjoyed it!

Watching the acrobats

We went to Circus, Circus and watched the acrobats and clowns. This was fun but hard because it's very carnival style which means there are stuffed animal prizes hanging from every available ceiling space and this poor girl LOVES stuffed animals. It was basically torture for her because I wasn't willing to spring for an animal. However, a cute 12ish-year-old girl took pity on Abi and gave her one of her prizes (she had a whole bunch that her dad was carrying for her) and so Abi left happy with a funny blue, black and yellow lizard that she then proceeded to haul all over Las Vegas the whole week as you'll see later...

Loving the people watching or car watching

Love this face!

Circus, Circus

So after a day or two at our hotel, Abi figured out the routine. She noticed when I would get her shoes on, my shoes on, the stroller, the diaper bag, my sunglasses, our waters, etc, that we were getting ready to go and she would run around and gather her stuffed animals and wait at the door. Haha! I usually had to sneak some back from her to leave because I didn't want to chance losing the cherished things on the strip or having them all get filthy in the beginning of the week. We had to ration the happiness.

Ready to go!

And here are some selfies!

MGM lion

Another cool casino to take selfies in front of...

It's the Statue of Liberty! (the small one)

Mandalay Bay Aquarium

This was pretty fun!

Carlos' Restaurant and Bakery

The Flamingo Hotel

I want to make a dress or shirt like this sometime so I took these pics for future projects sake.

Jenny would love this!

And this!

The last day, James got to be with us! Yay!

Cool graffiti art, though I think it's not graffiti.

The Bellagio was my favorite by far! I could sit and watch that silly fountain all day I think.

The Bellagio

Abi was by far the best entertainment at the Bellagio though. When the fountain isn't going, they just play some radio music over the speakers. Abi doesn't passively enjoy music. No way! In fact, we should have brought a cup for coins to put in front of her because she danced away in her funny way and attracted a TON of attention. At one point, no one was even looking at the Bellagio, just at Abi and there was quite a crowd! I was dying laughing because there were even Asian tourists there filming her on their phones. I'm just sure she's on some Asian version of Youtube out there going viral... Funny stuff!

Abi loved the music here!

Ok, the best story from this trip comes from our first 24 hours in the Hotel SLS where we are now famous and on first name basis with many of the security people. Why, you ask??? Well, it starts with the fact that we checked into our hotel at about midnight the night we got there which is 2AM EST so Abi was tired to put it nicely. James was in line waiting to check in and I was waiting with Abi on the side of the ginormous lobby. Abi was screaming and throwing tantrums on the floor, arching her back, pushing her legs against the floor so she's doing this funny upside down crawl or crab walk. And of course there are LOTS of people in the lobby despite the hour because this is Las Vegas after all. So that's how we made our entrance, but it gets better...

This duck...

The next morning, James had a business call he had to take which was proprietary so he couldn't leave the hotel room, but that meant we couldn't stay because Abi was too loud. So I got dressed but left Abi in her adorable onsie pajamas and we went walking around to see what we could see. Well, Abi loves ducks and wouldn't you know that the mascot for this hotel is this GIANT duck?!?!?! How cool is that? The bummer was that the pool was under construction but the patio security guard let us go out on the patio and see the duck, so we hung out there until she got bored and wanted to climb under the construction tape to wander further. That's when we headed inside. We got into the first set of glass doors and I was just going to open the second set when Abi realized we were leaving the duck and she wanted to go back. So, she turned around and darted off before I could react. But the poor, inexperienced toddler has not learned about glass doors yet and smacked full speed into the patio door. She hit it so hard, she was knocked backward off her feet and landed on her back. I couldn't help but laugh because what else do you do when your child did something so silly and is so injured, that you can see the scream coming but can't hear it yet? Oh boy... The patio security guard came running in to tend to us and I picked Abi up just in time to get the scream full in my ear. We headed back out to the patio so the security guard could call in a medical security guy to check her out. Before he even got there, Abi had a GIANT, I mean GIANT goose egg on her forehead - her first one! You can kind of see it in the pictures above... He took our information and gave us an ice pack which of course Abi would not let me put on her forehead because how comfortable is that? He offered us a ride to the hospital via hotel shuttle at any time if we felt it was needed, but I declined. I'm sure he was just covering the hotel's tush but really, this is a typical toddler injury which just happens to be Abi's first and happens to be on security footage, I'm sure. She finally calmed down enough that we could walk back to our room. When we passed the elevator security guard, he asked, "How's she doing?" like he'd heard the whole thing, which, duh. I'm sure he had heard it all on his cute, little ear piece. From then on through the rest of the week, almost every security guard greeted Abi by name and gave her special attention. I can only imagine the party they had in the security room watching and rewatching that tape. I really wanted to go watch it myself because seriously, it was funny the first time. I'm sure the twelfth time was even better...

The famous Hotel SLS Duck - both of them...

Abi was so happy to be back after almost two weeks! She just ran around loving on her toys. :) What a great trip!

Glad to be home!