9 months

Wow! I have a couple of wiggly, rolly, standing, crawling away from me children and it was sooo hard to get these pictures! Whew, we did it.

Erica is still petite, but she is feisty. She is officially crawling and pulling to a stand and spends most of her day running away from Brooke who is always trying to tackle her and take her toys.

Brooke is crazy! She waves and tries to say hi. She has gained weight and eats everything. She wants to move and crawl and stand up on everything! Babyproofing doesn't even begin to cover what we have had to do around here.

Our days (in between big kid stuff) have been filled with waking up at 9 and going to bed about 9. In between they have 4 bottles, 3 solid meals, and 2ish naps. It has been a lot of fun around here, and I'm having a hard time thinking that we will be having a birthday party in 3 short months!

Home Again

The ride home was a lot less eventful asnd a lot less fun. And involved a lot of dvds and screaming and "are we there yet?" 

But we made it! 

We took the exact same route home. Same hotel and everything. And we finally got to Pops in Oklahoma. It's a long story, but if you're ever trying to use Siri to find Pops--don't trust her! Soda Pops in Moore is also a nice place :)

 Heath and Royce--it's not confirmed...but I imagine that's the world's largest soda pop bottle??!

So happy to be able to crawl! She got in there all by herself

No, Mom, we are not driving. Just changing diapers :)

And now we're home. And there's laundry and grocery shopping and callings and playdates and work and real life to deal with. So, was Ryan right? Am I glad we drove instead of flying?  I prefer not to answer that question...:)

Branson Magic

So are you keeping track of this? Las Vegas to St. Louis to Nauvoo to St. Louis to Branson! The whole purpose of this trip was to get together with my whole family. Why Branson? Because it's within driving distance of the majority of people. But it ended up being so fun!

So what does all that driving mean? Mileage! And we hit a mileage milestone on the way to Branson:

We've put about 80,000 of those on ourselves. It's been a great car. I thought we would need a car top carrier to bring all our stuff on this trip, but somehow we managed to fit 2 pack n plays, 2 umbrella strollers, 3 suitcases, 1 briefcase, 1 cooler, 1 food bag, 2 toy bags, and about 6 diaper bags all inbetween 4 car seats :)

Ryan was totally excited to embrace the Branson culture. Here he is at Wal-Mart at 11pm--there is absolutely no milk and he overhears some locals debating about whether or not they can use buttermilk.

He managed to find someone to find 2 gallons in the back

It turned out that Branson was the perfect place to party for 8 adults and 11 kids.

There was:

A Hall of Mirrors:

Go Karts:

Mini Golf:

Silver Dollar City with a cave and funnel cake:

The Dixie Stampede:

And hanging around the house:

Jeneric brought an xbox. sweet

 And a cotton candy machine!

Not pictured:
The bounce house, swimming, tennis, Mormon bridge, mafia, categories, delicious dinners, family pictures (hopefully coming soon), Rachel and Josie sharing a bed, Drake plowing over his baby cousins, Legos legos and more legos, ice cream in the middle of a storm, throwing up illness, Davis trying to block the door so we can't leave, Adam falling down the stairs on the baby gate, trying to get all of us onto the silver dollar city tram, Kevin throwing giant horseshoes at the Dixie Stampede, Emma working as my baby changing and feeding slave, moving furniture, cramming Drake into the laundry room, the pink rocks, etc. etc.

It was so nice to be with my family. My parents have been married for 40 years with 3 kids happily married and 11 healthy grandchildren. We not only love each other, but we like each other too. If that's not a miracle, then I don't know what is! :)