We made it to Utah!

It was a long day of travel, but we made it to Salt Lake City, Utah for a much needed vacation! We left our house at 3:45 on Thursday, June 19th in a car service, headed to JFK airport. It took us almost 2 hours to get there because of traffic (it's only 34 miles)! It's a good think we allowed plenty of time, since our flight didn't leave until 7:10 PM. Reagan slept in the car on the way to the airport, but it was a relatively short nap for her. We were hoping that she'd be tired enough to fall asleep on the plane.Here's Reagan on her seat before we even left the gate ... she curled up in the blanket to lay down. After we left the gate, we sat on the runway for a while, since we were departing from Delta's International terminal and there were many flights that had to take off before us. We had 3 first class seats, so Reagan and John sat next to each other, and I sat across the aisle with Avery. This turned out to be a disaster ... when Reagan started getting tired, she wanted to sit with me. If we'd been in coach, sitting together, it probably would have worked out a lot better. We did learn a valuable lesson about flying with a 2-year-old: fly during the day and don't expect her to sleep on a plane! Reagan never ended up sleeping. As we were making the initial descent into Salt Lake (still about a 1/2 hour from landing), we told her she had to put her seat belt on and she completely freaked out. She was SOOOOO incredibly exhausted at that point that she screamed as loud as she could! John and I just sunk down into our seats ... it was horrible! Of course, everyone was asleep and I think she woke up the entire plane! For those of you who have traveled with small children, I'm sure you'll understand the stress it can cause ... and for those of you who have cursed screaming children and their parents, try to be understanding next time you fly!

Here's John carrying Reagan into my parent's house. My parents met us at the airport to greet us ... they didn't need to come to the airport since we were renting a car, but they couldn't wait to see us :) Reagan was still awake while we rented the car and got settled. By the time we hit the road to my parent's house, it was 12:30 AM in Salt Lake ... this means it was 2:30 AM for us! Have you ever heard of a 2 year old who could stay awake until 2:30 am??? As soon as the car started moving, she was out ... by this point, Avery was overtired too but instead of falling asleep, she screamed the whole way home. It was a long 20 minute drive with Avery screaming - just shows how tired Reagan was though, since the screaming didn't wake her up.

Isn't this a cute picture of Reagan asleep on John's shoulder?

On Friday, we tried to sleep in and relax. My sisters Benee and Camille brought their kids over and we all had lunch at my parent's house. The kids got into Nana's bin of dress-up clothes ... this is a collection of all our old costumes and dance clothes. It was pretty funny to see these old costumes from our dance performances.

Here's my niece Alyssa in a purple leotard that I helped design for my high school dance company ... isn't it fancy? Reagan is in a blue skirt that she kept tripping over.

Here's my niece Makenna in another costume from my high school dance company. Alyssa chose a fancy black velvet leotard with a red tutu.

Avery and her cousin Samantha had fun watching the girls play dress-ups. Samantha (08-29-07) is just over 9 weeks older than Avery (11-02-07). This was the first time we had met Samantha, which is pretty sad since she's almost 10 months old! They are just about the exact same size, between 19 and 20 pounds. Samantha is Makenna's little sister, both daughters of my younger sister Camille.
Here's Samantha and Avery in the Pack-n-Play. Aren't they adorable together??

After naps on Friday, we went over to my sister Benee's house for some water fun and a BBQ.

Blake was having a birthday party the next day, so they had borrowed this blow-up waterslide/pool for the party and figured we'd try it out. As you can see by the pictures, the kids had a great time!

Here's Camille's husband Brett with Avery , then Avery and me.

As the sun went down and the pool part was in the shade, Reagan started getting pretty cold. The pool was filled up just before we arrived with water from the hose, so it was freezing cold! I couldn't even bare to have my feet in it. In the above pictures, Reagan's lips were blue!

Here's Makenna (with Blake in the background), then my older sister Benee and Avery

Here's my dad Rod and my mom Michelle and Avery

Just before dinner time ... Brett, Rod, Michelle, Samantha, Doug at the grill, Alyssa, Camille and Benee

The kids table: Reagan, Blake, Alyssa and Makenna

So ... I took the above picture of Alyssa, Makenna and Reagan swinging. Then I was watching the screen saver on my parent's computer and I noticed the following picture:

I took this picture one year ago when we were here visiting for our annual Moon Lake trip! I just thought it was pretty funny that the 3 girls were in the exact same spots and I took almost an identical picture without even knowing.

On Saturday, my mom made an incredible pirate ship cake for Blake's birthday party. My mom has always been a very talented cake decorator. She's now made it a tradition to make a cake for each grandchild's birthday. When she was in NJ for Reagan's 2nd birthday, she made her an Elmo cake. One year she made Alyssa a dinosaur and she's done plenty of princess/barbie cakes.

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On Saturday morning, I accompanied my parents to a funeral for my dad's uncle Jack Taylor. Jack was married to my grandmother Betty's sister Frances. I took Avery with me and took this adorable picture of her with her great-grandparents, Betty and Wayne Fawson:

Avery and her great-grandparents

Jack was in WWII in the Navy, so there were 3 people there to do the color-guard. It was pretty cool to see their part of the service.

Here's where they presented the flag to Frances, Jack's wife. Frances has been through more than anyone should have to go through in the last four months. My Grandma Great was her mother who died in February. Then in April, Fran lost her sister Ethel. In May, her 43 year old daughter Karen died suddenly of a very aggressive form of lung cancer. Now it's June and she just lost her husband Jack. I honestly don't know how a person can suffer so much loss, especially in such a short amount of time. She's lost the 4 people closest to her, her mother, her sister, her daughter and her husband, all in 4 months. To top it all off, Fran has cancer and has been undergoing chemo-therapy. She's lost a ton of weight and we have no idea how long she'll be able to fight off the cancer. My heart goes out to her, as well as my grandmother Betty, who also lost her mother, her sister, her niece and her brother-in-law.

My father spoke at the service and so did this 19-year-old boy named Brady. Brady was Jack's grandson. His mom was Karen who died last month of lung cancer. This poor boy just lost his great-grandmother, his mother, and now his grandfather to whom he was extremely close. He's been incredibly strong throughout these major trials and I admire the way he's handled it all.