Party before the big move

With our move to Winnemucca being postponed by a month and having moved out on time we were in a state of limbo and thanks to the Watts (again) were not left homeless.  We sure our grateful for our family.  After partying it up for a while with them Isla and I went to Yakima to soak up a little sister-cousin-niece-nephew time, because our opportunity to have such a nice long visit is usually quite rare.  Seriously when do you just have a few weeks with no obligations?  With the blessing of Southwest's affordable airfare we lucked out and hoped the plane to Seattle and shuttle to Yakima while Jared was about to leave for Winnemucca to start work.  Emily, Ryan, and girls were in SLC, so we got to fly with Emily and the girls to Seattle.  Boy, am I glad we road together.  It was a long, long, very long day, but actually not as bad as I thought it would be.  Luckily Sage just got deliriously "happy" while still staying very obedient and with all the long traveling and layovers that she wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it could be.  Of course after eight ours of travel and more wait time in the airport you loosen your boundaries a bit and let the kid roll around of the floor if it makes her happy.  Oh well.  She's healthy still.  Isla and Mila also did well, they mostly just got pretty cuddly when they were tired of traveling, so that wasn't bad either.  My favorite part was when both of them fell asleep after eating and with a whole row to ourselves, I had one girl sleeping on the seat to the left and the other to the right while Emily read stories to Sage in their row.  It was pretty adorable.  Frankly, I was largely impressed with all three girls ability' to cope.

Anyhow, Yakima was so much fun to be all together.  I loved that I could actually walk (albiet long walk) to Emily's house from Sara's.  I felt totally spoiled to have three of the four sisters together for so long.  And yes, at times it did make me wish a bit that we all lived closer.  Skype, gmail chat, and cell phones sure do shorten the distance between each member of my family thought, thankfully.  We enjoyed cooking, a really fun Indian night, girls night out, painting, earring making, baby clothes shopping, basketball games, FHE's, Ryan's birthday, baby photo shoot, baby shower, and a lot of day-to-day enjoyable time together with all the sweet children.  Sometimes it really did end up more referring, feeding and playing with the kiddos than the actual activity we had planned to do, but I sure didn't mind a bit.   Here's a few shots from some of the time we had together.

Isla's Photo Shoot by Birch

I really love these shots of her, they just capture her eyes and inquisitiveness so perfectly

The kids all did a great job taking care of her.  My favorite was in the morning while I made their lunches or breakfast they would dance to music to entertain her or try to teach her to crawl.  It was really adorable.  Unfortunately, I don't have pictures of her with each of them, but her are two with Alex and Chloe.  

She was smitten with Alex and Chloe was smitten with her.  If Chloe wasn't taking a bath with her, she was watching her get a bath.  

I love painting and was so so excited when Sara asked me to do one for her.  It reminded me how much I would love to do some for our home.  If only we had a Micheal's or Joann's to get some canvas.  

Oh well.

Sara also taught Isla a new trick.  That she now, can't get enough of especially when I try to change her diaper.  Thanks Sara.

One last shot with the three of us before we flew home.

While we were away Jared had a last few days with his family.  They made the most of it by breaking out the nerf guns from Christmas, geared up with a variety of protection equipment and in fun Watts' style had an all out "battle" around the house.

Looks like no one was left out.