Vacation

Ah... sweet escape. I'm in Baltimore for the weekend for the blessing of my new nephew, Cael. My flight Thursday night was delayed by 2 hours, but it didn't bother me much, for reading a book with no one to distract me till 1:00 in the morning is a heavenly way to pass the time.

I went to Washington D.C. with my dad, sister, Lani, brother Chris (newly returned from his mission in Hong Kong) and my unofficial future sister in law Lauree. We toured the capital building and saw such wonders as a statue of Brigham Young in the Hall of Statues, the House of Representatives and the Statue of Freedom (see below) Then we wandered around the WWII and Lincoln Memorials. At the WWII we took our picture in front of the Hawaii pillar at the WWII memorial becuase that's where our next family trip will be and found ourselves also in front of the D.C. pillar, where were were at the moment! What a coincidence!

Today, Dad, Chris, Lauree and I did an early session at the Washington D.C. temple, which was really nice becuase even with the Chicago temple only being a little less than an hour away, it can still be hard to get there. We met Ryan, Adrienne, Lani and Mom at the Inner Harbour area of Baltimore for a delicious lunch and little touristy-ness. I got some fun treats for the kids which will doubtless be featured in a future blog entry. We came back to the hotel for a little downtime, where I finished of the book I was reading and then made my Dad take me to the bookstore to buy a couple more for the trip home.

It has been very nice to get away from my usual responsibilities and hang out with my family. Especially to see Chris for the first time in two years. I knew I was having too much fun when I got a call from Jason today and he had that tone in his voice that made me say "uh oh." My poor little boy fell off his bike and scraped up his face. J let me talk to Evan while he put Neosporin on his owies and I felt so bad that I wasn't there to hold my poor scraped up boy.

From the looks of the second picture though, Daddy knows how to fix sad scraped boys. Cookies, apparently, are almost as effective medicine as Mommy's kisses. Its good to know he's in good hands!