Our visit to Utah

Once again, I find myself behind in my blogging. April was a busy and fun month for us. We went off to Utah to visit family during spring break the first week of April. It was a wonderful trip, once we got there! Here is a quick recap:

Thursday before we leave: 

we are busily packing and getting everything ready for us to be gone for a week in Utah

we find out that Oreo has 2 parasites and requires prescription medication

we also realize that we have to return an over-sized chair to Overstock.com so we won't be charged for it

we go to print a shipping label and the printer won't work

we go to print it out at a friend's house, which finally works, thank goodness

we rush off to get Oreo and meet Justin after work to drop the dog off at the kennel before they close at 6:30 pm

Justin goes straight to the kennel

I go get the prescription for the dog

we meet up at the kennel and they tell us that Oreo is contagious and they will not take him

It is 6:45 pm and we don't have a kennel for the dog

Justin rushes off to get the over-sized chair to UPS before 7:00 pm when it closes

Oreo gets sick in the car on the way home

I get home and madly start making phone calls to any and all animal hospitals in the area

no one is willing to take Oreo

we finally find a 24 hour emergency animal hospital down in Tacoma that is willing to board Oreo

Justin takes Blue our beta to a neighbor to fish sit and then takes Oreo to the kennel at 10:30 pm

I try to finish the packing and getting the house in order

we go to bed too late, very tired

Friday:

we wake up bright and early to get loaded and get the kids up to go to the airport

(picture of kids ready and excited to get there)

we get there in good time and get ourselves through the long security line

no one was stopped for the pat down, which I was very grateful for

we get to our gate 15 minutes before it is time to board, and we are feeling really great about how well the morning had gone so far

the airline people at the desk inform us that they overbooked the flight and do not have room for our family on the airplane

we were shocked and very frustrated

since families always have priority in boarding airplanes we did not realize that the early online check in would jeopardize our tickets entirely

they offered a $300 voucher to anyone who would delay their own flight but no one came forward

the only option they gave us was to fly Saturday night, their next available flight

thankfully Justin thought to ask them to check the flights out of Portland

they found one that left Friday at 5:30

we picked up our suitcases and car seats and went back to the parking garage a week earlier than we thought we would

we loaded up again and drove 3 hours south to Portland

(picture of kids on the second road trip of the day, still in the state of Washington, and not quite as excited to be back in the van)

we then parked again, went through security again and finally got on an airplane

(Katelyn is excited again. This is the first airplane ride for Katelyn and Dylan.)

we got to Grandma and Grandpa's house at 8:30 pm

it was a long, exhausting day, but at least we made it on Friday!

The rest of our trip to Utah is highlighted in a video I made in the next post to summarize our activities but in one sentence, here are the highlights:

We watched General Conference, played frisbee on the golf course, enjoyed the snow, played games, played in the snow, played tag, cooked yummy food, went to tour the Conference Center and Visitor's Center at the Salt Lake Temple, did a scavenger hunt, soaked up some vitamin D in the sunshine, went to BYU, saw the Carl Bloch art exhibit, Justin met up with MBAs on campus, played with cousins, went to see "Tale of Two Cities" the musical (amazing!!), took family pictures, had a push up competition, shopped and just had a good time together.

We managed to squeeze in a little bit of time to meet up with our good friend Sheri and her boys. They're getting so big!!

Back to the Portland Airport, next leg of the trip: 3 more hours driving back up to Seattle. Why didn't we ask the airline to pay for a rental car for us? Oh well!

What a fun trip!

Smith Family Reunion 2011

Here is a great video recap I made of our trip to Utah during Spring Break. We had so much fun! Pull up a chair and enjoy!!

Smith Family Reunion 2011

Picture Catch Up!

February Pictures

Blue and Gold banquet

Dylan's funny face when he tries something new, or when he is just being funny

Cute boy!

and here is my handsome hubby and beautiful little girls

Most of our other February pictures were during the big baptism week (see previous post with video).

March Pictures

Lindsey's Birthday

Happy, happy birthday to our sweet 6 year old!!

We got a new puppy! His name is Oreo and his is an English Springer Spaniel. He's very sweet and he was house trained in 5 days! We weren't going to get a puppy this soon (very long story) but things fell into place and we're glad that we have him! He is very soft and loves people. He won't do anything when we get him up in the morning until we have given him some love. He loves his belly to be rubbed!

Happy kids the morning after we brought him home. Did I mention that we got home with him at 10:30 pm? And that we had to stop by Walmart on the way home to get a few essentials? Yes, it was unexpected.

Justin's trip to Orlando, FL for 4 days, 5 days after we brought Oreo home. Good thing that boy was house trained! I enjoyed his company late at night.

Silly kids

Justin's birthday

Happy birthday honey!

 

My birthday. The big 3-0

Happy Birthday to Us - date to the Broadway Showstoppers

Fun in the snow:

More videos to come.....

Technical Difficulties

I apologize for the lack of posts. There are several things that I need to post, including Lindsey's birthday and our new puppy! But unfortunately our computer has died. I think we might need to go buy a new one. So for now, I will just keep gathering pictures on my camera. I will update the blogs as soon as I can!

Brandon's Baptism

Here is as video recap of the wonderful week we had surrounding Brandon's Baptism.

Brandon's Baptism

Happy Birthday to my Boys and Hospital Visits

I am in denial that this boy of mine has just turned 8 years old. It's not possible! We celebrated last Wednesday.

Happy Birthday to our Brandon Boy!

He is just full of life and laughter. He is the best big brother, loves school, friends, sports, reading and just being silly.

trying out his new soccer goals

And I think I am also in denial about this little guy being one year old now! It's been a crazy year, but we wouldn't change any of it. We absolutely love our little Mr. Dylan! We celebrated on Thursday, his birthday.

Happy Birthday to our little Dylan!

He is so happy and easy going. He brings so much joy to our family!

Here is tired Dylan, ready to celebrate his birthday.

He loved tearing the wrapping paper

Even though Dylan isn't eating too much in the way of solids, we decided that he still needed to have a piece of birthday cake. He touched it,

and squished it,

and made a pretty good mess, but never tasted it. Oh well! It was yummy!

 And on Friday of that week, we did Brandon's one and only friend birthday party. (Can you believe we did a birthday party 3 days in a row?)

He loved it! It lasted for exactly 60 minutes, which was just right with 6 other boys in the house!

We played lots of fun silly games,

and did relay races, (please notice our beautiful new couch and lamps in the living room....more to come on that when we find some pillows....)

and had yummy cupcakes with ice cream.

The friend birthday party was a success!

To end this post about January happenings, I must mention the amount of time we have spent in various hospitals lately. The week before birthday week, we had two visits to the emergency room. 

Visit #1: Dylan

On Monday, Dylan had been sick for 5 days and his doctor was concerned about dehydration and his breathing. So off to Seattle Children's ER we went. Thankfully Justin was able to meet us at the train station and take the other kids home so that they didn't have to hang out there with Dylan and I until 11:00 pm. We made it home just before midnight. I don't have a picture of that visit. We weren't planning on the ER that night!

Visit #2: Lindsey

On Thursday of that week Lindsey was trying to be helpful and super glue a broken magnet back together. Well, somehow the glue ended up on her finger and then on her eye. It was completely glued shut! Poor girl! After making a few phone calls, we ended up going to the ER at Mary Bridge Children's hospital in Tacoma. Luckily they were able to get her eye back open and her eye had not been scratched from the glue. Still, a pretty scary experience for little miss Lindsey. Here's a picture of her right after they got her eye open again.

Visit #3: Dylan

The next day (Friday) we got up first thing in the morning to take Dylan to the third hospital of the week - Swedish Medial Center in Seattle. Thankfully this was a planned appointment with his cardiologist and urologist. But I still couldn't believe that I was in a third hospital for the week! His heart looks good, and we set up a time for his surgery with the urologist.

Then we had birthday week, the one with three birthday parties three days in a row.

Then we are on this week. 

Visit #4 - Dylan

And we're back at the hospital again. This time for Dylan's surgery. For more pics and details, please visit his blog: A New Perspective

So for the start of a new year, it's been a busy and a little crazy few weeks. I hope that this doesn't reflect how the rest of our year is going to be! But as starts go, this is a whole lot better than our start last year! :)