Summer in Utah

We had a great time in Utah this summer! There were a lot of different parts to the trip. Jackson, Abbie and I flew out on alone and I was pretty nervous about flying out by myself with them. I had flown alone with them just on the quick flight from Utah to Arizona but the whole cross country flight with the layover was intimidating! Honestly the flights couldn't have gone much better. The first flight was from Hartford to Denver and the kids didn't fuss or fight the whole time. The layover in Denver was a little tricky especially since the flight was delayed an hour but we made it through that last hour flight and were excited to see grandma waiting at the airport. We spent our first day with them at the Jennings at their house.

This was at about 6 am ... Ty snuck this pic after dropping us off.

Jackson loved his tag reader and Abbie loved a special treat - Fruit Loops :)

From there the kids and I headed to Provo and spent a few days with the Lewises. We had a lot of fun at museums, BYU, splash pads, pools, horseback riding, good food, seeing Michael and Annika too.

Finally trying the famous Swig with Annika

Jackson loved time with Will-E-am.

Jackson sitting in his Daddy's favorite spot from BYU Days - the perch

Cousin Love

Drying off after fun in the splash pad

From there we went to Salt Lake City and stayed at Papa and Nana's house for a couple nights and my mom dad and Steven flew up from Phoenix to be there. From there we went to Park city for a Christensen family reunion. We had fun on the Alpine slides playing at the hotel the dinosaur Heber creeper ride and fun game nights. . Tyler finally arrived in Utah for the last day of the Park city reunion we also took family pictures up there and had a really fun night playing soccer and a beautiful park.

Jackson loved this spiderweb climber

He was so patient and waited 20 minutes to ride this airplane

Riding the Dinosaur Train

The kids were so excited when Daddy came back!

The boys went golfing one morning

First time Alpine Sliders - both of them!

The new family photo - soon to be outdated with both Paige and I prego here...

Our last official family photo of 4

Nice Kick Abbie!

Collage of our last night in Park City

The last part of the trip was a week with the Jennings at their house.  With them we did lots of playing with Tony, playing with cousins, more swimming, splash pads, museums, and lots of costa vida. We spent the Fourth of July Day with them and had a lot of fun :)

Boys lovin the Mario Golf - even Jackson got in on the action

Family day trip down to Provo

Avery, Reese and Jackson loved pushing uncle trav in the pool!

Grill Masters

Loving their time with Tony and Grandma

A Visit to the Cooks new home, with the Nixons too

Fourth of July!

The final night was 4th of July we went up to Salt Lake and got together with the Christensens one more time at the country club for fireworks.

Abbie was a serious ice cream eater

Stuffed after the buffet!

Waiting for fireworks

The final day was a really special one in which all of the Jennings siblings spouses and grandkids are able to go visit with grandpa Harline for the last time. While we were visiting we found out the previous week that he had cancer and probably didn't have much time left to live. He is such an amazing man and it was a great final visit.

June in CT

After Grammy left we had a couple weeks in CT before we flew to Utah. Jackson was in a "fun in the sun" camp at his preschool three days a week for those two weeks. He had fun wearing his swimsuit to school, making crafts and playing in the sprinklers and with all their water toys.

We started to get ready for baby sister's arrival by updating the basement. Sounds weird, but we had to change things down there to get room for Abbie to take over the extra bedroom upstairs and make room for her in the nursery. The most exciting thing for the kids was having a tv in the basement now. Tyler upgraded our tv upstairs so our old (still really nice) tv was sent in the basement and we got an awesome new couch off craigslist to fill the space.

Before...

Gotta love Craigslist

 

 After

Big Girl Abbie with her new nikes and camelback!

Abbie was quite the strawberry picker!

These kids sure do love their daddy

Abbie and her buddy, Mariah

Jackson and his buddy, Levi.

Jackson loved doing swimming lessons again!

He is such a great swimmer!

Oh that face...

Silliest

These two are besties.

A chili's gift card resulted in a few dinners there this summer and the kids' new favorite restaurant

Dinosaur Museum on free admission day, glad we didn't have to pay - it was pretty lame.

Jackson got a summer buzz haircut!

Grammy comes to Connecticut

A couple weeks after Jackson finished school and after a low-key Memorial Day weekend, my mom came to spend some time with us in Connecticut. 

We didn't go anywhere too exciting but had a chill few days together. We showed her our favorite new farm, Westmoor and Abbie showed her the baby piggies that weren't so little anymore! We went to one of our favorite parks, Simsbury Rotary, and had a picnic lunch there. Saturday we had committed to help out with a service project our ward had teamed up with the city on. I guess when you are the exec. secretary and primary president of the ward - you kind of have to go to these things ;) But Grammy ended up helping with the kids and they played at a playground most of the time. We went shopping and got Abbie her new pair of Saltwater sandals for the summer and Jackson a new pair of Nikes.

On Monday we took off on an adventure and headed to Bridgeport, CT to the Beardsley Zoo. It's an hour drive down near the shore - close to NYC. The kids had a great morning checking out all the animals but probably the "highlight" or the memory that will live on the longest was when Abbie got "sprayed" by the tiger. It's not a huge zoo but they do have a few large animals - one of which is a Tiger. It happened to be one of the last animals we saw, and when we walked up to the exhibit it was pacing back and forth. Well apparently it was getting ready to mark its territory because it then started to pee and apparently tigers can pee pretty far away and it was basically like a hose of pee spraying from the cage. Most of the crowd was standing near the left side of the cage, that's where Jackson and Grammy were - but Abbie was still in the stroller so I had her more to the right side in order for her to see better. Well she saw a little too well when the tiger sprayed right at us! I immediately backed up with the stroller but not quick enough as the she got a little wet on her legs, feet and at the bottom of the stroller. It was really gross, really weird but something Abbie has not forgotten :)

trying to be the statue

picnic at the shore

Jackson's monkey friend

before the spray...

Abbie eating guacamole aka spinach/kale dip

Playing during the service project

At the farm

Counting the chickens

On Saturday we were helping out with a large service project our ward was involved in

Grammy brought pain books that Abbie had fun doing for weeks after.

Can you read me a story Grammy?

We made it to the shore (both kids wearing their new shoes)!

Jackson's Last week of Preschool

The end of May brought the end of preschool for Jackson. He had a great year with Mrs. Espinoza and his small class. His small 3s class had an end of the year celebration that he spent lots of time learning songs to perform for families. Tyler was even able to come see the performance which made Jackson extra excited :) He started the year knowing most of his letters, no numbers and could write the letter A. Now he knows 100% of his letters, learning upper and lowercase, can recognize all his numbers, count to at least 30 on his own and can write most letters without help.

His best friends were Nate, Blake, Levi and Audrey - luckily all of them but Blake will be in his class next year too. His favorite things to do at school were playing with toys and playing on the playground least favorite - the arts and crafts. But his teacher was proud of him that he always tried everything she asked him to do without complaining, he completed all his projects. He was also always a really good example about cleaning up and helping others. His teacher tried to always focus on their positive behaviors of the day and so I would never hear anything negative about Jackson throughout the year. But he did inform me he never went to the thinking chair (aka timeout chair) the whole year.

Singing his Lion and Lamb song

His assigned color - Gray, we had to make gray seem really exciting for him to be happy about it!

First day of school, last day of school - I think he grew just a bit!

Mothers' Day

I had a great mothers' day this year! It started with my kids ever so gently waking me up at the side of my bed whispering "happy mothers day." They had helped Tyler make breakfast for me and led me downstairs. Tyler didn't have to go to his early meetings so that was a present by itself :)

At church the Young Men & Youth took over the Primary & Nursery so the leaders could go to Sunday School and Relief Society for a change. It was supposed to make a stress-free mothers day but as primary president it stressed me out quite a bit haha! Well especially at first, walking in and hearing that about 5 youth were gone that were supposed to teach classes and the nursery was total chaos (including my own crying Abbie) but after the first 20 minutes or so I think we got it all put together and it was fun to go to Sunday School where Tyler just happened to be teaching that day and RS.

Tyler made my favorite Greek food for dinner and the kids and he made milkshakes for dessert! Jackson had made me some presents at preschool that he was excited to give to me and my present from Tyler was a new Petunia Pickle-bottom Diaper Bag. I had hinted a bit since my old one's zipper was broken and just getting a little grimy after 4 plus years!

My milkshake makers!

 The main event I guess you could say was the following weekend when I went on a girls trip to NYC - or as my kids liked to call it, "A Mama's Trip." I went with Alarie, Emily and Jeanette and it was a mothers' day present for us all. Tyler actually organized it and we were able to use a free night hotel he had earned from work traveling :) We drove down Friday afternoon and stayed at the Marriott Marquis Hotel right in Times Square Friday night. It was a trip all about food and relaxing :) We had dinner at a Bobby Flay place Friday night then went to Matilda on Broadway that night!

The view from our room

Fancy Fried Chicken :)

The girls at the play

 The next morning we ate at Norma's Cafe and spent probably 30 minutes trying to figure out what we wanted to order, it all looked so good. We were trying to figure out what to share and kept going back and forth and ended up getting things we wanted. Probably the best thing was Emily's fruity french toast but I was pretty fond of my savory choice too :)

Heuvos Rancheros

While it had been raining all of Friday, we had woken up to beautiful weather on Saturday so straight from breakfast we walked through Central Park and made our way to the Met.

My tiny friends and my huge tummy at the Met

Afternoon in Central park

We had a picnic in the park for a late lunch and then headed over to my favorite cookie place at Levain Bakery. Tyler's only request for the trip was that I brought him home a chocolate cookie from here, so he was anxious to see the picture I sent him.

We ended the day doing a little shopping and trying BabyCakes Bakery and then got stuck in really bad traffic trying to leave the city. As soon as we got on the freeway we were fine, but as the navigator for the whole weekend, I felt bad for being slightly responsible. 

All in all it was a quick but great weekend, Tyler and the kids had fun at home hanging out with the other motherless families :) I think it also gave him a new appreciation of what I do each day :)

Home again

After an amazing cruise, our time away came to an end when we got to Puerto Rico. Our flight didn't actually leave until the late afternoon so we had all day to hang out. We chilled on the boat for a few hours and then stored our luggage at a hotel and wandered around Old San Juan for a bit. We had been to Puerto Rico together back in November, 2010 when we went with 8 month old Jackson. We finally did a little shopping and got presents for the kids, the highlight being a cute dress for Abbie. We attempted to eat at our favorite sandwich place, St. Germain - but sadly they were only serving a Sunday Brunch so we decided not to go. We ended up at another favorite of Tyler's that he tried on a work trip - the Parrot Club. The Plantain Nachos were amazing, originally recommended by Jamie & Nick.

Windy afternoon at El Morro

Then we got to the airport and at that point was super anxious to just get home and see my babies. But they really had so much fun with Grandma and Grandpa. It was great to see pictures throughout the week of our kids having so much fun with Grandma! And Grandpa got to Connecticut on Friday which just doubled the fun for them over the weekend.

Showing off his new Superman Shirt!

Abbie flirting with Grandpa before Stake Conference

This boy is obsessed with his Grandpa

These two love each other

Three Generations of Jennings men :)

While it was overwhelming to think about leaving my kids for a week, it all ended up being such a great experience. Tyler and I had such a great week and I know the kids had so much fun bonding with their grandparents. Thanks so much to Vicki and Terry for coming out and making it all possible :)