The One with all the Babies

Nope, still no announcements here.  This post is about our no-longer-recent trip to Arizona for Eden's baby blessing Labor Day weekend.  Justin is awesome and drove the whole way!  We were smart and cut it in half by staying at Don and Wendi's in Las Vegas Friday night.  This was great because 12 straight hours in a car is a long time and also because we found these-

Hulk Hands!!

We made it to Yuma early Saturday afternoon and Mom, Dad, Wendy, Timmy and Wyatt pulled in a few hours later.  It wasn't long before this happened-

Mom is such a good grandma!  Timmy looooved playing "pat-a-cake" and "speckled frogs on a log."

Such concentration!  Oh and look in the background.  When did Dad switch napping chairs?

Sunday morning we all got ready for church where Steve would bless Eden.  Justin let me tie his tie.  I did such a good job!!

Or maybe not.  He retied it.

After church Mom and I had a photoshoot with both new babies, Eden and Wyatt, on the blankets I crocheted for them.

Wyatt first.

What a cutie!

Eden is just over two weeks older than Wyatt and she started out bigger.  She made him look so tiny!

So sweet!

This is Edie's "I'm hungry!" face.  Bwahahaha!! Don't ask how I got such an amazing shot of it.  I'm just that good :)

 

Tons of pictures of me holding babies.  I don't know why Eden looks so scared, I'm great with babies :)

I took this one myself because her little face looked so sweet.  She was only a month old and holding her own head up to look all over the place.  Too cute!!

I learned on this trip that Timmy has an interesting security blanket- Wendy's hair.  He likes to twist his fingers in it and that helps him go to sleep.  What a good mommy!  I've already told Justin my hair will be cut short if our kids pull it.  Have to prepare him now, he likes my hair as long as it can be.

Oh no- a crying, unhappy baby!

I'm on it!

See!  I said I was good :)

Heather and Steve made some delicious fajitas to feed all the family after church.  Steve's friend Johnny brought some of his kids over as well.  All the kids had a blast playing in the den until...

That's right!  I had to lay down the law.  Lesson learned- do not have a pillow fight with Cindy and Justin's pillows!  We like them fluffy and in their pillowcases still thank you very much.  I love that Anistyn had my back.

I am also a good aunt to the older nieces/nephews.  Proof.

We've been debating whether to use these next pictures as Christmas cards this year.

Look what we've got!!

Aren't babies wonderful?

What do you mean she's not ours and we can't take her?!!

As I'm writing this I honestly just freaked out a little thinking we could really look like the middle picture within the next year.  Yay!!!  And aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!

We passed this billboard on our way back home through LV.  Bwahahahahahahahaha!!!  Awesome!!

The One with Thing 16

What are your 5 greatest accomplishments?

This one is kind of hard.  I’ve done a lot of things in my life (well, to some extent.  I'm only 28!) but I wouldn’t necessarily call all of them “accomplishments.”

1. Convincing (aka telling) Justin to propose to me.  In case you don’t know and in spite of the fact that we are ridiculously good together, I actually gave Justin an ultimatum that if he didn’t at least show a sign of proposing soon I was moving on.  Little did I know that the ultimatum was unnecessary because he’d had a ring for a month and was just waiting for the right time to give it to me.  We really do work hard on our marriage and I’m proud of the strong foundation we’ve built.
2. My education- graduating at the top of my class from high school, finishing college in 4 years without losing my scholarship and hopefully earning a PhD soon!
3. Changing my own oil and what it represents to me.  I am a big proponent of being self-sufficient and car maintenance is part of that.  And I have to admit, I love the looks I get from men when they hear I can do stuff like that on my own.  I think people used to be a lot more independent and capable though.  We still can be!
4. Standing up for myself and others.  I used to be incredibly shy when I was little.  I cried a lot in elementary school and I just wished nobody would notice me at all.  I’ve tried to become more assertive and confident.  When I say things like “I was class president in high school” or “I want to be a volleyball official again” those are big things for me.
5. Ok, I can't think of anything else.  If you can, put it in the comments :)

The One at SciX

Justin and I just got back from a week long conference in Kansas City, MO.  Last year it was called FACSS but they changed the name to SciX, short for Scientific Exchange.  Last year FACSS was also our first conference to present at and Justin came away with the Innovation Award.  Still proud of him for that :)  Since the conference was farther away this year I was the only one from my group to go and only two other members of Justin's group went.  This was probably the best/funnest conference I've been to.  I have to say again how much I love being able to "work" with Justin.

Since the conference was in Kansas City, we had barbeque.  A couple of times.  My layover in Denver was extended so I had a nice talk with a KC resident who recommended some excellent restaurants.  Unfortunately that delay meant I didn't get to the hotel until after 1 am.  And I had to get up and volunteer (this is how students get free registration) for the plenary talk at 8 am!  Ouch.  Back to the topic- this tasty dish was dinner at Gates our first night.  I seriously love pulled pork!

We had to walk over a mile to the restaurant and on the way back Justin asked if this sign meant "no hula-hooping across the street."

We also went to Arthur Bryant's.  A little more expensive but Oh. My. Gosh!

On the afternoon of the second day Justin, Jon and I walked a few blocks over to the WWI museum, the only museum in the country dedicated solely to WWI.  I learned a lot, honestly didn't really know why the Great War started.  It was unique, pretty, emotional, informative.

There are two Assyrian sphinxes (meaning they have wings) on the patio named Memory and Future.  These guys are HUGE!

There is also a gigantic obelisk on the patio.

I mean gigantic.

This building houses pieces of a painting that multiple French painters started at the beginning of the war with important political/military figures.  It started out like 40 feet tall and hundreds of feet long.  The weird thing is it was forgotten in storage until a rich couple bought it and donated it to the museum.  Then another artist was hired to "decorate" this building and he cut the painting apart!  There are literally faces of people in the painting cut out and hung on the wall.

This is the view from an observation deck on the top of the obelisk.

That tall building on the right is the Sheraton where we stayed.  That round thing on top is actually a restaurant that rotates 360 degrees every hour.  Pretty cool.

The building in the bottom left is a train station.  We actually watched a looong train come in. It made Justin happy.

Kansas City.

This was neat.  They had an early edition of Darwin's Origin of Species.  I don't really agree but as a scientist this was pretty cool.

Justin and the torpedo.

Despite all the pictures, most of the week we were attending talks and giving our own presentations.  I love seeing our names on signs :)

On one of our walks back to the hotel I saw this weird, tube cloud.  It was super long.  Never seen anything like it before.

And this random castle.  This is right outside of downtown and made me miss England.  I have to look up what this building is.

One bad thing about KC, when walking around downtown you would randomly be assaulted by strong scents emanating from these:

Pew!

Oh yeah, funny thing we had separate beds.  They were only doubles so we really did sleep in our own beds.  Weird but kinda nice :)