It got to the point that we missed Stephen and Claudia so much that we drove 14 hours to Nevada to get them back! We were only a little jealous that they got to spend the summer being wild and free while we were mostly cooped up indoors with the whole global pandemic thing going on.
We were pretty paranoid about travelling during Covid. We all wore masks and washed our hands like crazy on our infrequent pit stops and had plenty of hand sanitizer and sanitizing wipes. I was also nervous about the long road trip with a 2 month old baby, but Isaac was an absolute champ that slept for pretty much the whole time. The kids were great too- we downloaded a bunch of movies onto the iPad, and they were quite content to stare at the screen all day. We broke up the drive by staying in a motel after 10 hours of driving the first day. We picked a motel in a small town thinking it would be the less crowded and that we wouldn't have to go inside hallways and elevators and whatnot to get to our room. It worked out great.
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| Annie looking out over the farm from Elizabeth's attic |
Being at Elizabeth's house is just so much fun. The cousin pack ran wild between jumping on the trampoline, playing on the play set, trashing the playroom, and doing "just dance" videos on the TV. Stephen and Kade had a lot of awesome projects we got to see, like the garden that is bigger than my whole backyard and the pond they dug out. Unfortunately the pond was dried up by the time we got there. Kade is planning on putting a zipline over the pond which is going to be awesome one day.
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| We Arizonans are very comfortable with bodies of water that don't actually have water. Plus the dried mud sheets were oh so very fun. |
We made it out to the farm to gawk at the machinery
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Kade took the kids for rides in this monster of a tractor. It was LOUD
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Elliot started chasing after the big tractor when the other kids were taking their turn. He was getting too close and was seemingly oblivious to the huge scraper thing (pictured here) that was heading towards him. Kade blasted the horn at him right as I ran up and grabbed his shoulder to yank him away. I thought he was ignoring us and was mad, but it turns out he couldn't hear our screams for him to come back over the tractor. Me grabbing him and the super loud horn got him really scared, and he was embarrassed about getting into trouble, so he went into "I can't process my emotions" mode and took off running away from everyone and crying. I had to chase him down while he worked it out of his system. We're working on it. I've learned that trying to get Elliot to be rational when he is in the heat of the moment is a counter productive task. It is better to just distract him and let him calm down and then talk about it later.
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Here's the party crew at the waterfall
Don't let the candles mislead you- Bree was turning 9
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I'm ashamed to say that I was unable to pull back Elizabeth's "sissy" bow. I started doing nightly push ups after I got back.
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| We love driving around Kade's toys |
They get toads that come out at night all over their yard. One managed to get into the house. Like any good brother, Stephen chased Elizabeth around trying to get her to smooch it.
Kade, Stephen, and Aaron went on a loooong hike up the mountain. Aaron took this great picture of Kade scouting for game.
Evenings were spent with Claudia and Elizabeth telling me how Isaac is too easy to be a real baby and watching Alone or whatever sportsing/fighting thing that Kade put on the TV. It is always a good time in Paradise!
