Fantabulous Weekend

We had such a great time this past weekend! Thanks to Ange & Craig for coming to visit us in our wee-little town.

The five of us had a blast taking a warm September trip to Lake Powell on Saturday. Good times!

We kept smiles on our faces all day... despite running out of gas on the way home and having James & Craig syphon gas out of the wave runners! Yuck!

It was a weekend full of laughter and Ange getting her DJ fix in enough to last until Christmas. :)

Thanks Ange & Craig! We had a blast!

ANNOUNCEMENT!!!

It's TRUE! This is not an April Fool's Day (in September) or some cruel joke to our families and friends. James & I found out yesterday that yes... we are expecting our second child! Hooray! Despite the shock-and-awe factor, we are very excited to make David a big brother! And for all of you impatient people, no, we are not finding out the sex this time. I promised James last time that if he let me find out with David, that we would have the gender surprise for the second. So, we'll all just have to wait until the end of May to find out.

Thanks for everyone's continued love & support! And Steve, thank you so much for the flowers! They look beautiful on the table right next to the ones James gave me yesterday! :)

St. Louie Trip

Oh, how nice a vacation is to the body! James, David & I had a great 10 day vacation in the big cities of Salt Lake and St. Louis! It began with a great football weekend in Salt Lake with my family, including our first experience of an unexpectedly intense 8 year-old football game. Craziness! My nephew Dayne is only 8 years old but has been begging his parents to let him play little league football for 2 years. This year, they finally gave in. We got to witness his first "professional" game. I say professional, because that is definitely how the atmosphere felt. I watched each of the SEVEN coaches yell at players and call out plays like they were fighting for the Superbowl. Whew. I felt like saying, "Hello! They're 8!" I asked my brother if it bothered him watching the coaches yell like that and he classically responded, "Nope. It's football." Okay, bro! The game was fun to watch, especially when Dayne ran for a 60(ish) yard touchdown, but I think I'll try to keep my kids off the football field until they are just a tad older. :)

Our next adventure was my family's annual (okay, this is only the second year, but it's quickly becoming a tradition) Fantasy Football Draft. This is my first year participating in the family league, cleverly called the West Christiansen Football League. My, my how intense this gets. I joined each of my 3 brothers, my dad, James & sister-in-law Audrey for a "friendly" draft in Nate's new house. Honestly, it was hilarious. There were a total of 5 laptops out in the living room as each of us eagerly awaited our next picks. I was so excited to have the second pick. Ironically, I think I ended up with the worst team. Rookie!

Now onto St. Louis! We had such a good time. It was a week full of relaxing with each other, spending time with family, good ol' big city shopping and meeting new people. (Hi Gloria!) Not to mention all the time we got to spend at the dentist office. (Thanks again Steve!) The second day we were able to take David to his first St. Louis Cardinals game. We had fun, despite the rather bad loss to the Brewers. Oh well, maybe next year Cards. Jenny, Sam & Will were able to join us in St. Louis from West Virginia on Thursday. What a blast! David was excited to meet his Uncle Sam and spend more time with Aunt Jenny and his cousin Will. Will and David are only 6 months apart and you can tell they are eager to be able to play together really soon. David just isn't quite big enough yet. But it was cute watching Will give David hugs and kisses. We did celebrate Will's 1st Birthday! Hooray! He is such a cute & smiley little boy. Good work Sam & Jen! It sure was a good week to spend some good quality time with James' dad and the rest of the family. We feel very fortunate to be able to visit our families that live so far away. Thanks for your help to get us there Steve!

Our last adventure was the flight home. It started out great. In fact everything was going great until we were about to land in Salt Lake. The pilot announced that there was a storm in Salt Lake prohibiting us from landing. We didn't have enough gas to circle around until the storm cleared, so we had to detour to Provo for a "routine" fuel fill-up. Uh, ok. We landed and Provo and waited for an hour to get the okay to depart again. So, we refastened our seat belts and placed our tray tables in the upright positions, ready to take off. We felt the plane accelerate on the runway then immediately slow again and return to same place we had just been parked for an hour. What now? Apparently our anti-lock break system light came on, making it unsafe to take off on a wet runway. So, we sat for another 2 hours! Ugh! I will say, David did great. He just flirted with the flight attendants and other passengers. They finally gave anyone who was actually staying in Salt Lake the option to get off the plane if they had a ride home. And out my cell phone came. I was not interested in sitting for any longer on a parked plane. Especially since they had no idea how much longer it would be. Thank goodness my brother was able to come down to Provo and pick us up.

So, that was our 10 day vacation... in a nut shell. Sorry we didn't take more pictures. We were enjoying the relaxing aspect of our vacation a bit too much. :)