jared and brielle: Stacey's Homecoming!

Back at the beginning of March, my sister Stacey returned home from her mission in Virginia! Since jared and kyle couldn't take that much time off, Carissa and I decided to drive over to colorado together. We met in Utah, and the plan was to stay at GG's house, but carissa's boys had come down with a NASTY cough, and we decided it would be best to continue on and get a hotel room. After meeting up and getting dinner we went over to GG's house to switch carissa's stuff over into the minivan. holy cow that was a sight to behold, with our kids running around crazy while we tried to get her carseats and belongings into the car. At one point I found brooklynn and brant chugging my completely full dr. pepper.... oops. but no worries, we got everything in, and the kids buckled up and continued on another 2 hours to Little America. where we stayed the night in a creepy looking hotel.

(you can't see jackson, but he is behind brant!)

The kids did great in the car, and were so happy to be riding together. we pulled into the hotel just before 9. the room we stayed in had one big room, and then another little bedroom, carissa took the little bedroom with her boys and i took the big room with my 3 kids. to say our night was awful was a bit of an understatement. i think it must have been 4:30am or 5 when i texted carissa asking her if she was awake. we decided since neither of us were sleeping, we might as well be driving. we were up and on the road by 6:30. we had some rain and snow mix for a little while but things cleared up soon after. the kids again did great in the car and it was nice to chat with carissa.

soon it was time to stop for some lunch. we were in wyoming, and stopped at a wendy's. here is where things got a little crazy. we had 5 kids with us..... a 5 year old, a 3 year old, two 2 year olds and a 7 month old, who needed to nurse. we decided to take everyone into the bathroom, then ordered some food. carissa sat inside with the 4 older kids while i nursed jackson in the car. that doesn't sound too awful now does it? HA, WRONG! have you ever tried to get 4 little kids lunch at the same time? OH EM GEE! it was complete mass chaos. i am sure we looked like some kind of freak show. after getting parker and brooklynn set up with lunch i went out to nurse jackson.

i texted carissa saying i was done and she tried to get lunch cleaned up and all 4 kids back out to the van. i cant even remembered what happened next, but for some reason kyler had a full fledged temper-tantrum. kicking-screaming-crying-bloody-murder-all-hell-brake-loose temper tantrum. i looked up to see carissa trying to get all 4 kids back to the car, dragging a kicking, screaming kyler behind her. did i mention the wind was blowing at LEAST 50 MPH. it was quite the site watching her try to pick him up and throw him into the car to try to buckle him up as he continued to scream and kick ans i scrambled to buckle everyone else in. finally everyone was back in their seats and i began to back the van up.... we parked at the end of the row next to the sidewalk and every time i tried to back up i kept running over the freaking curb! as if our lunch break wasn't comical enough, i couldn't even back us up out of the spot to hightail our very embarrassed heads out of there! we had a pretty good laugh about the whole thing later, but my goodness, it was traumatic. so PHEW, back on the road again, and the good news is kyler lived to see another day, LOL. we were SO happy when we finally made it to grandma's house, all alive and all in one piece. that will definitely be a trip i will never, ever forget. I can't wait for 10 years from now when we say, hey remember that time we decided to drive to colorado? good times.

stacey was scheduled to fly in tuesday late afternoon. we spent most the morning making signs to take with us to the airport.

i made sure to facetime jared when she came walking down the terminal! it was SO exciting, i think we all shed a few tears when we finally saw her again!

we spent the rest of the week playing, playing, playing. it was so fun and so exhausting.