Family Break

We separated from the Hays for a day to visit family in Utah. We crashed at my Aunt Wendi's house in Orem for a relaxing day of showers, swimming, BBQ, catching up with cousins and games. My brother Max drove over from BYU after he got off work. He brought a new game that he wanted to play test. He's thinking of making it into a capstone project. I have all the stuff to make myself a version of it and I totally want to- it was really fun!

Playing Wu Xing Skeleton

 One random thing is that Annie was terrified of Sonny. Sonny is the Woolf's tiny, elderly dog. Sonny barked a little bit when we first walked in. Annie freaked out. He didn't bark after that, but Annie kept crying whenever she saw him. It was the first time I'm aware of that she was able to remember that she is scared of something after the the initial trauma is over. She stopped crying whenever she saw Sonny by the time we left, but she watched him like a hawk and got really tense whenever he got close.

The kids were pleased to upgrade from sticks and rocks to actual toys for a day

The next morning was the 4th of July. We were able to persuade some of my old roommates to come meet us in a park in Salt Lake. Jenny, Laura, and Kristy could make it. It turned out that Laura was going tubing with Emily and Spencer (Emily is a good friend that I grew up with) later that day, so they stopped by too. We had lovely chats as we ate our classy peanut butter nutella tortilla wraps for lunch. I haven't seen Jenny for 5 years, but it felt just like old times (except she baked cookies that we ate instead us feeding her haha). I didn't want to leave, but we had a 7 hour drive to Montana ahead of us.

This picture of Jenny's boyfriend is the only photo documentation of this gathering

We headed north, nourished by renewed friendships and this bag of refried beans from Aunt Wendi.
My kids freaking love refried beans.