The Rest of the Fun...

Obviously, the girls and I had a wonderful time in Utah!  You can tell we were busy, since I had no time to blog our activities while we were there.  But we're home now, so let's review:

The Call family has something of a tradition.  Every Sunday evening, they go over and visit Danny's Grandma Call.  A handful of the local Aunts, Uncles, and Cousins do the same.  It's a great opportunity to see everyone, and we always love to visit Grandma!  The girls and I were lucky enough to get to go, and we all had a wonderful time.  The girls particularly loved playing with their cousins...

We continued to spend the weekdays as we had the first week.  The girls got to go to school every morning with Grandma Call, and we would spend the afternoons either relaxing at Grandma Call's, or going swimming with Isabelle at Grandma Candy's.  It was so wonderful!  And, of course, we looked forward to Danny's arrival on Thursday, July 1st.

Thursday was a special day for another reason as well.  It was the 7 month anniversary of when Rachel died, and I was feeling lucky that I was actually in town to go and visit her grave.  Claire and I went and picked out some flowers and went to visit Aunt Rachel.

It was the first time I had the chance to go and talk to Rachel without my whole family around.  I'll admit, it was mostly crying.  I miss Rachel so much!  Especially being home during the summer--it reminded me of last summer when Danny and I lived with my Mom, and we had so much fun hanging out with Rachel.  It was a good opportunity to teach Claire a little more about the Plan of Salvation, and it was really very cathartic to spend some time crying at her grave.  Hopefully the next picture we take there will include her headstone...

Danny finally got to Grandma's house, and it was SOOO nice to have him with us again!  It was quite the fiasco getting him here, though.  He was set to land at 11:58 pm on Thursday night, but delay after delay had him actually getting into Salt Lake at around 2:00 am instead!  We got back to Grandma and Grandpa's around 3:00 and finally got to sleep around 3:40.  It was a short night, when the girls came running in to see Daddy at 7:30 the next morning!  Danny and I were so tired!  We went outside to let the kids play, and saw this:

Grandma up in the tree!  Now we know where Sophie gets her antics from!  :)

Then we got to spend some more time visiting with Uncle Justin and Taija.  Unfortunately, Aunt Toshi was out of town.  But Danny and Justin had a great time catching up.  It's crazy what four years has done to these high school buddies.

This was four years ago, at our wedding.  Justin and Toshi had just been married two weeks:

And this is now:

Bear in mind that both Toshi and I are expecting again!  Toshi is expecting their first son, Luke, in late October.  

We also got to celebrate the Fourth of July in Utah, and those events will be covered in a separate post.  Moving on... :)

We decided to spend our last Sunday in our old ward in Orem.  We had so much fun visiting with friends and going back to where our family began!  After church, we headed over to Mikey and Karie Peterson's to visit. It was so wonderful to see them again!  So wonderful, in fact, that I didn't even stop to take a picture!  Sorry!

Next we headed to dinner at Bishop Carrier's house.  We just love that man!  He made ribs, just for me, and we ate our fill!  The girls were kind of melting down at this point, so we didn't get to visit for long.  But it was just as wonderful visiting with the Carriers...hence no pictures! :)

We spent Monday getting ready to head back home.  In between preparations, we spent time swimming with my family and eating lots and lots of yummy fruit (with fruit dip, of course!).  Then my Mom took Claire and Isabelle to see "Seussical the Musical".  Claire had so much fun!  She kept talking about seeing Cat in the Hat, and something about a bird pooping.  I don't know what kind of things Grandma Candy is exposing these children to!

It was a wonderful three weeks!  It was admittedly hard to come home, though we were missing our home and friends here in California.  We are so blessed to have such wonderful families!