Birthday Shenanigans in the Mitten

As son as Val, Bill and the gang left we had 2 days to pack and do a little cleaning before heading home. HOME. Wonderful, beautiful, green Michigan filled with tons of family and friends that we miss so dearly. We celebrated Chad's birthday on Saturday along with Jared as well. It' become an amazing tradition that we are all determined to keep alive. In addition to celebrating together matching shirts have also snuck their way in as well. I love it. LOVE it.

I also love that we were able to celebrate not only with my parents, Taylor, Jared (duh), Chad's parents, Nikki, Matt and the gang, Tracy, Lincoln and their whole crew as well. It was so fun to be able to celebrate with so much of our family! Happy Birthday Chad!!! Especially since I was passed out for a while (ok, it was longer than a while) due to some drugas for my whole SI joint issue. Glad to have some birthday support otherwise it wouldn't have been quite so fun with just me!

It was so nice to see everyone, everyone! I slept on the couch (are you sensing a theme) while my mom and the boys made the birthday cake, everyone brought yummy salads and sides while we ate fried chicken. We hung out all afternoon and it was awesome. I couldn't be more thankful for my wonderful family, immediate and extended, they are the absolute best around. And while it is technically "Chared's" birthday, I can't wait to see how we celebrate it all next year :)

In addition to the birthday festivities there was a ridiculous amount of Mexican food consumed, just enough sugar cookies eaten and not enough frozen custard, lol. We were able to stop in at our old ward briefly to basically just say "hi" and harass our old primary class, I stopped by my old work, Chad fit in a little climbing, we managed a double date with Jared and helped pick out a new tv for the parents, and just generally did a lot of hanging out with a lot of the people that we dearly love and miss.  Somehow we were out there for so long but it all went by in a flash.

 

 

(Chad took an actual group photo, and I think some overall better ones in general, imagine that. So as soon as I'm not feeling lazy I'll get some real photos up here to add the amazing amount of selfies that I took all week :) )

Spoiled Rotten

Chad and I spent the last couple days being completely spoiled.

The plane ride junked up my back, surprise surprise, so Debbie took care of me. Love being around Mommas :) There were back rubs, foot rubs, massagers, and tylenol PM, all courtesy of Debbie. She helped my poor back make it through the first day. There's nothing better than having a mom around when you aren't feeling well.

Then we celebrated Chad's birthday. The big 2-6. Not only did we get to spend all day with Nikki, Matt, the babies and his mom, but my parents and brother came down along with our 2 best friends from Michigan.

My parents and Taylor were rockstars and brought us down a ton of mexican food from our very favorite restaurant. They took the whole gang of us out to lunch to celebrate Chad and Jared's birthday! Aside from birthday presents my dad slipped us some "gas money" right before they left.

Will and Jared drove down at 4am just to spend Chad's birthday with him. It's Jared's birthday the day after Chad's and they always celebrate their birthdays together, we were happy we got to keep the tradition alive!

Oh I did I mention that Nikki and Matt flew us out to spend a week with them? We only get to have this awesome vacation because of them. I guess they like us or something.

We've also been getting snuggles galore from the kids who barely let us out of their sight, and we are loving every single minute of it!

Best Week Ever

We made it! We've survived a red eye flight, celebrated birthdays, baked cakes, thrown out backs, devoured chimichangas, ate half a jar of salsa, played games, and spent the whole last day with part of mine and Chad's family and our two very best friends. And we've only been here 2 days. Can't wait for the rest of the week!

Jared's here!

I hope everyone else had a great long weekend! We picked Jared up at the airport Sunday night. Yup, we drove into Vegas for the 4th weekend in a row. We will not be going to Vegas this weekend! We spent Sunday night in Vegas, we walked around and people watched, and saw the Siren show at Treasure Island. It was fabulous. I remember seeing this show when I was little and it was this great pirate battle, it is now a bunch of strippers dancing on a boat. I thought it was pretty funny. Chad was less then impressed. We were packed like sardines on the sidewalk to watch the show. It was crazy trying to make our way out of there.

"Gross" - Chad

We finally made it home at 2:30am and crashed! Monday we were up and ready to go again. Chad and Jared got up early and I finally dragged my sleepy butt out bed so we could head out to Zion's. Chad and I had been wanting to hike through the Narrows and it was finally warm enough to do it!

Sadly we did not realize how extremely packed it would be because of Memorial Day. The parking situation was crazy. We drove around for a half hour before we finally found something. Once we got into the park it was busy, but not as crazy as the parking lots made it seem. We took the shuttle all the way up to the Narrows and set out in the river. We spent the whole afternoon/evening hiking there. It was great fun! Most of the water wasn't too deep but there were a few parts that came up to our waist. It was freezing cold, especially out of the sun, but the views were awesome and we are glad that we finally were able to go on that hike.