Home again, home again...

It's nice to be home. We are all adjusting back from a looooooong day of driving on Saturday. We left at 4 am, and rolled in to College Station at 3:30 am. Yeah. It was a long drive. We did lose two hours due to time zones, so it was more like 22 hours on the road, rather than the 24 that it seems. Still a long time.

I just love our family. This trip we visited with Paul's family almost exclusively, but after five years of marriage (and several years of dating before that), they are my family, too. In fact, the trip was my idea. Paul fought me on it for a while. (And can you blame him? We probably logged 60 hours of driving time over the last two and a half weeks.) But I just cannot bear the thought of my girls not knowing our sweet family. Even though they might be too little to notice.

Arizona was hot. But we mostly stayed inside, with the occasional early morning or late afternoon swim. Ella calls Carolyn "Aunt Cee-Cee", She even puts the 'aunt' on the front, which is cute. It became clear early on that 'Carolyn' was too difficult for Ella's unpracticed tongue. It worked out well.

Carolyn swears that she will be the strict aunt, but I just have to laugh, because I don't know how she will ever be anything except "Fun Aunt Carolyn". The first thing she did was paint Ella's toenails hot pink. Ella spent the whole trip showing off her toenails. Ah well, time will tell. But I have my money on "Fun Aunt Carolyn" rather than "Boring and Rule-Abiding Aunt Carolyn".

A little of this and a little of that.

Lots of time in the car. Imagine our surprise when Charlotte was thrilled that Ella climbed up on her lap.

A little sight seeing with Grandma Christensen. How we love visiting her. The comfort of Grandma's house is as good as ever.

A little crawling. The strength is there. The coordination is not.

A lot of visiting. Enjoying the friendship of roommates, family, and friends. Once a room-ie, always a room-ie.

A lot of playing. Still loves balls.

Cousins

Because my and Paul's brothers and sisters have not been so accomodating when it comes to creating cousins for our children to play with, it was really fun to see Ella playing with her second cousins, Jed and Giovanna. Yea for family! We are having a marvelous time here in Utah. The wedding was magnificent. And Sunday we had a lovely family dinner with the Christensen clan. We are looking forward to a fun week visiting with friends and family.

Also of note, Charlotte is beginning to crawl. Mostly backwards, but she did somehow go forward the other day when I wasn't looking. She also got her first tooth. And grabs any food within reach, because she is clearly ready for solids before I am. Ella began using her first preposition: the word "by". As in, "Tee-tee by bush?" Yes. I let her go outside once in her whole life and this is what happens. Ah well, she is telling us when she has to go a lot more often now... in hopes that she will be able to go "by bush".

How did this even happen?

Ella is two. Twenty-five months actually. And I never posted birthday pictures. Or a sweet little list of all the things she does that are cute. Mostly because I'm a bad mom.

In spite of that, she is basically just the most beautiful, wonderful girl. When Laurel came out for Ella's birth, she told Hunter that Ella was "so sweet". And Hunter asked, "How can you even know that?" And I don't know how much you can know about a newborn, I imagine they are all sweet. But sweet is the word that people use most often to describe Ella. Her nursery leaders, her Mother's Day Out teachers, friends who babysit for us. She is truly sweet.

Right now she is upstairs singing to "Beebee Da-ee" (Baby Charlie) because she woke up from her nap and started fussing. So Ella ran up to comfort her. Again, because I'm a bad mom. Or maybe I'm just a really good delegator.

Alright, I just heard her say "Eat, Baby, Eat." I have to go.