A Visit to Melody and Brandon

It seems almost like a dream now that just over a week ago Ethan, Lydia, and I were in Mesa, Arizona. Ethan just turned three a few months ago, Charlotte and Kate are 2 1/2, and Lydia and Victoria were close to 7 months. Let's just say we had our hands full! We stayed with Melody for a week. It was so nice to be together doing mostly what we do every day, but doing it together. We could sneak in conversations during car rides, TV times, or after bedtime....but the rest of the time was dedicated to playing or helping five needy children. Melody was awesome to feed us yummy food all week and give me extra help when I needed it. We hit a different park every day we were there except Sunday. Brandon took Friday off of work so he could help us go to the splash park and give us extra help with all the kids. And Saturday Melody and I even took Lydia and Victoria and got away during toddler nap time to eat lunch at Kneaders. It was so delicious!

Highlights of the trip for kids included trips to parks, dancing/singing parties to songs on my phone, watching ice cubes melt on the sidewalk, hula hoops, and playing with glow sticks...which turned into an obstacle course in the dark with couch cushions and a slide. Ideas that flopped were bowling with water bottles and trying to use a blanket as a parachute. Both of these activities produced immediate melt downs but still made me laugh.

I'm grateful we were able to visit Melody and Brandon. They were so good to us! We hope we can visit again...and we especially hope Jason can join us next time!

Because we were constantly dealing with full time mothering, these aren't the best pictures in the whole world, but they are real, in the moment pictures that show a peek into the constant busyness of five children 3 and under who hardly stop moving and never want to look at the camera. Ha! :)

Reading books happened A LOT during our trip. The whole pile of library books was read several times.

Lydia was pretty content to just play with toys on the floor a lot of the time. She did get pretty fussy at times though and actually cut her first tooth during our trip.

Our first park and one of the only pictures I got with the three of us together

Victoria started crawling before we arrived so these two didn't stay near each other very often.

Dumping sand on the end of the slide and then sliding through it.....actually kept them busy longer than most activities.

Two cuties sitting by on the sidelines at one of our park visits

Jumping in puddles at the Splash Park

Splash park fun! Ethan really loves going to splash parks!

Charlotte and Ethan

Kate

Brandon and Victoria

A park trip that Brandon was able to join us for.

Charlotte

Ethan

Kate

Glow stick fun! I wish I could have taken better pictures of them playing with these.

Visit to the Gilbert Temple  "Look Mom, we're all holding hands." :)

Who wants to look at the camera when you can look at the temple?

Sisters with our miracle babies

Babies who eat together, stick together.

Yes, this is the best picture we got of us. This was our life! :)

And this was me on the flight home with one baby sleeping on my shoulder and the other one sleeping on my lap. I'm just glad they slept and were calm on the flight home. We were up at 4am for a 6:30am flight. And I prayed we would have an empty seat next to us on the way home and my prayers were answered! So, so grateful!