Visiting

Last week, Bub and I headed down to Utah for a week. It was so wonderful to visit everyone and Bub had such a great time with all the attention everyone paid to him. There was even a day of snow, although I have the feeling Bub is more comfortable with the rain of the northwest!

Craziest thing I saw in the 'Tah

It wasn't the fact that my sister finally got to meet my boy.
It wasn't the fact that Soder's extended family finally got to meet the boy.
It wasn't the fact that we survived the Blizzard to end all Blizzards in the 'tah.
It WAS the fact that my mother got an early Christmas present from my dad.
It was a beautiful Ipad.
It was to give her the chance to read more books online (she is a big reader anyways.).
It was also a great toy for her to play games on.
It is a little unfair.
It seems like that graceful piece of technology has found a new, loving home.
It also seems like she at least appreciates it. It seems my number is on speed dial to act as her tech support.
It is nice to be needed by my parents 800 miles away. This blog post will be a test to see how much she uses her ipad.
It will be interesting to see if she says something about it tomorrow on our daily phone call.

The images I love....

Out of the tons of pictures we have taken here are some of my favorites so far, simply spending time with my parents at our house in Sunset. My dad love to walk around with baby and show him stuff around the house.


Baby is eating up all the attention and all the love and kisses from everyone. It is only half over so I am sure we will have many more sweet moments to blog about.

The reason for the visit...

SNOW!

We came down to Utah and, of course, what happened? It starts snowing. It is great for now that we have a great day to relax and wait out the snow, but not so great when I am planning on driving all along the Wasatch Front to visit people. It is refreshing because we haven't seen snow in over 2 years and Baby has never seen snow. I have missed how beautiful it is after a nice snow storm. It is nice to be here to experience it. And who knows, maybe we will go out and make Baby his first snowman!

Baby's Blessing

On Saturday, we had Baby blessed. He was really wide eyed as he watched the Priest read the blessing. Baby was so amazed by all the gold icons on the doors of the alter and was excited when the Priest allowed him to touch the icons. And of course, the thing that made me happiest was dressing my boys up. I think my new drug of choice is putting ties on my baby.

It's a Utah Thing

On Saturday, my fellow Utahn-native and I decided to hit the only craft/holiday gift show in the Puget Sound area. We trekked all the way to Tacoma for this event. It was crazy to see all the eager women lining up to get a glimpse of what filled the Tacoma Dome. After parking and walking over to the dome, we excitedly waited for the doors to open.
Some of you may not know that Utah is not only a Mecca for Mormons, but also for everything crafty. I don't think there is a house along the Wasatch front that doesn't have something tole-painted adorning some wall. And while tole painting isn't our thing anymore, we both enjoy cute little decorations to put on our mantles. After paying a whopping $11.50 (which in the 'Tah, I have never paid over $5 to get into a craft show.), we were let loose to look around at the hundreds and hundreds of booths. I was quite disappointed when most of the booths were full of chinsy things. I think we only found a handful of booths that really had Utah quality crafts. Puget Sound has a lot of winning aspects but the craft field ain't one of them. Oh well, I better stock up on holiday decorations when I head back to the homeland in a few weeks.

MLS Finals Game

The Teams at the begining of the game.

My Favorite player, David Beckham!

We haven't done very many things since we have moved here. (being on alternative schedules makes having a date night next to impossible.) As a total impulse buy, we decided to go and watch Real Salt Lake (our home team) vs. the LA Galaxy (the team with my favorite player, David Beckham) play for the MLS finals game (along with 40,000 other soccer fans.). Trav made the joke that we had to move to Seattle in order to watch Real Salt Lake play, which seemed to be the truth. On Sunday, we got to outside the stadium an hour before the game was suppose to start.

It got so cold during the game that we coverd completely up!

We almost missed the kickoff because parking and traffic was a joke! I was just thankful that we got there to watch the players take the field. The game itself was so exciting. It went into overtime and two sets of penalty kicks to determine a winner. Congrats to Real Salt Lake! It was a good game and they seemed to want it more in the second quarter. (LA Galaxy ran out of steam during the second half of the game.) I think I was most impressed by David Beckham. He was definitely a real sportsman. Whenever someone got hurt he would go over and help them up (regardless of the team they were on). But the most impressive thing of the night was after Real had won, they were awarding the trophy. David Beckham in white waiting for Real Salt Lake to be awarded the MLS Cup

Most of the Galaxy team had started to walk off the field, like the losing team usually does. To my complete surprise, David Beckham went over and watched Real Salt Lake get their cup. He was the only player to do this, and it was very respectful. Most of the Galaxy stopped and watched the award ceremony from about 3/4th of the way toward the locker room. (but they only seemed to watch because their team captain went over to watch the awards) I think sports needs more class acts like David Beckham. Way to go to both teams!

Ashlee's and Marque's Wedding.

The Kiss

The First Dance

Father of the Bride Dance

Before we left Utah, one last family obligation, to attend Travis' cousin, Ashlee's wedding. It was a perfect Utah afternoon when they got married. I love weddings (as I am sure most women do) She looked gorgeous and it was just full of love. I wish Ashlee and Marque all the best and I hope they always will remember the love that was present on their special day! :)

Craft Lake City

This weekend, Trav and I went down to Craft Lake City to see the 'essentric' side of crafts. There were a lot of great things to see and a lot of cute designs. (I would have bought something but I thoguht I could make a lot of it myself.) We had a few minutes to just relax and listen to some crazy alternative band that consisted of 2 violins, a bassist, drums, and a lady in a very see-through white dress that played the guitar.