January Trip to Virginia

January was full of stress for me as my house was being painted. One of the worst months of my life, but it's over now and I love the results. I will get to posting some pics of that later.

The second to last weekend of the month Orion and I had the opportunity to fly to Virginia to attend the baptism and baby blessing of my nieces.

My brother, Jared, and sister-in-law, Mychael-Ann, and kids, Gwen, Noah, Ryan and Grace, live in Gordonsville and my brother works at the hospital in Charlottesville. Here's a picture of their cute house.

My sister, Becky, and her family flew out with us. She works for Jet Blue so we were able to use buddy passes. Thank you so much, Becky.

This was Orion's first experience on a plane and he was soooo excited. He was especially excited because on Jet Blue you have personal televisions and you can have unlimited snacks and drinks. Orion kept reminding me of the fact that he could have as many snacks as he wanted. We left on a Friday night taking the red eye to NY. I do not enjoy flying very much and sleeping while sitting up has never been a talent of mine. Needless to say we didn't get much sleep on the way there. From NY we flew to Richmond, VA and drove to my brother's house from there. We had time to change and then head off to the church. Let's just say that I was an emotional basket case. Going on no sleep and, lucky me, I was on my cycle was a recipe for many tears. Not silent, one little glistening tear, tears. Throat aching, tears flowing, make-up running, tears.

I was just so moved by how proud I am of my baby brother and how wonderful his wife is and how they are doing such an amazing job of raising their children. I am getting teary just thinking about it.

Parents and beautiful daughters in white. How special that baby sister, Grace, was able to be blessed on the same day as older sister, Gwen's, baptism.

Gwen is so grown up and such an articulate little girl. She totally cracks me up. I really enjoyed spending time and playing with her. She's so fun.

I hadn't met baby Grace before this day. That was so great. I really wanted to steal her for my own.

The original plan was for us to just be there for one day. We were supposed to fly back on Sunday. When my sister checked the flights on Sunday it was looking pretty close as far as the number of people on standby. I started thinking that maybe I could stay a little longer. My parents were there as well and were planning on flying back later in the week. I decided to stay until they went home. Thanks to my wonderful husband and amazing friends I was able to do that. I thought that I would have a chance to get out and see some sights in the area, but that was not to be. Orion ended up getting sick Sunday night with a fever and a cough.

He seemed mostly fine when he was with his cousins, he loves them so much that they had a medicinal effect.

When they were gone he would just slump. Here he is in his sleeping mask from Jet Blue.

It also started raining and snowing, or winter mixing as it is called there, which made for snow days for their kids and hazardous driving. So we mostly just hung out and chatted and Mychael-Ann was great about letting Orion expose her kids to whatever he had. With the bad weather continuing we decided to fly back to Utah a day early. It was short and even though I didn't get to see any sights I am so happy that I was able to go.

My parents took care of me and let me sleep a lot. Mychael-Ann kept Orion at her house a lot and so it was truly just a break for me. After the painting month I so needed it.

I did try to take Ryan back with me. He fit, but decided to stay with his family.

Kenneth really stepped up in the "taking care of the kids at home" department. Dylan was sick with the same thing that Orion had. Kenneth took off work to take care of him and then took him to work with him and came home early to get the kids to their dentist appt. It was good for me to know that I didn't have anything to worry about with Kenneth flying solo.