Our Trip to Utah

Well Ben's family had a family reunion this past weekend so we decided to go and be a part of it. We weren't sure if we would actually be able to make it or not because traveling and camping with a newborn is definitely a new thing to us but Lily proved to be quite a cooperative baby. So since we don't make it down to Utah very often we decided to stop and see my side of the family as well. So first we headed down to Provo to see my sister Lizzie and her two kids. This is a picture of my nephew Benjamin wearing my nursing cover. He was chasing Ben around the house and let his "cape" fly since he was trying to be a superhero. Dang I love kids. While we were at her apartment two girls came over to clean the carpets and Benjamin was pointing at each of us and telling us what our names were. I'm evil and I wanted to confuse him a little bit so I asked him, "Benjamin, what are their names?" as I pointed at the cleaners. He replied, "I don't know, do you know?" So I told him I didn't know and then he whispered, "OH, they're the yuck yucks." It was good to see the Wilckens. Then we made our way north and saw the rest of my family and ended up staying at the Whales.
We left for Heber City on Saturday morning. One of the things I loved most about the camp is that the animals are so used to people being there that they're not afraid to get close to a bunch of people with cameras. I did learn one thing about the deer though- they love to poop. That's right, poop. I got this shot of the deer right after he did his business. It seems like every deer I saw that day just had to grace us with its beauty. :)

One of the fun events of the day was going to the lake. This was a church owned property so of course there were dressing standards but it seemed like they took it to the extreme. We had to wear long pants and closed toed shoes. I thought that was a little weird but I just went with it and Ben and I went out paddleboating on this pretty pond/lake. Later on Ben told me that the reason we weren't allowed to go swimming in the water was because there were leeches in there. Um... gross. I'm glad I didn't know that at the time. Oh and thanks, husband, for letting me keep my hand in the water while we were paddling. :)

Before we got out into the paddle boats we were told that there were a bunch of ducks in the lake and so of course I told Ben that I wanted to see them because ducks are always adorable. Little did I know that they were mostly ducklings! I was so excited. After paddling around for a while (and getting EXHAUSTED I should add..... those paddleboats are a lot of work....) Ben and I decided to pick up his youngest cousin and we paddled her around and had quite a lot of fun running over buoys and playing bumper boats with some oh so lucky relatives. I have to say that I have been quite impressed with how fit Ben and I proved to be in those boats because we had some people paddling for their lives.

One of the big parts of Saturday was the huge family portrait. I don't have a picture of the entire family (because it was taken by a professional photographer) but I do have this picture of Lily. Our family's color was yellow. I personally thought that Lily was adorable, thanks to Chrissy for the bow!

Well later that afternoon it started to get a little stormy in the mountains and I was starting to get a little nervous about having rough weather with Lily. So instead of staying at the campsite overnight Ben and I decided to head back down to Alpine to the Whale's home. Let me tell you traveling with an infant is nothing easy. I had to pack pretty much our entire apartment into our Camry. This is Lily sleeping on her changing pad. Luckily babies aren't very picky about where they sleep, or at least Lily isn't.

So then we made the trip home and Ben had some fun time with Lily last night while I unpacked the important stuff. At one point Ben was reading an animal book to Lily and was telling her all about monkies and he got her to giggle for the first time! Sooooo cute!

Well we had a great weekend but we're glad to be home and get back to a normal life. It was nice to see family and get out of Rexburg. Hopefully we can do this more often.