Some Weekends Are Heavy on the Fun and Light on the Lazing Around

Last night we flew back to Austin from a whirlwind Utah trip. Also, how frustrating is it to have to fly to SLC by way of LOS ANGELES, a city that I am fairly certain is NOT located between Austin and Salt Lake? I am extremely familiar with Southwest snacks and flight procedures after this weekend, is what I’m saying.

Ella took four naps in the air. I only got one because no one offered me a pacifier or a nice swaddle.

My youngest sister, Landen, is graduating from BYU this April in costume design and she was the head of costumes for the main spring show, Persuasion (Landen is an enormous Jane Austen fan, so it was really fun for this to be the show she gets to finish with). My parents kindly offered to fly us out and our entire family attended the Saturday matinee.

One of the things that is particularly lovely about going to Utah for events with my family is that nearly all of Bart’s family is there too, so we get a chance to see most of them. Bart’s dad and stepmom picked us up at the airport and we went to his sister’s house for dinner, where Ella got a lot of attention from her cousins (and I ate a ridiculous amount of Italian Wedding Soup – word to the wise, marry into a family that cooks):

We had a nice evening and morning with Bart’s parents and then lunch at Slab Pizza which was very fun and extremely tasty (Bart opted for his new favorite, J Dawgs – Ella was a big fan of it too, particularly the special sauce. She is her daddy’s daughter) before heading to Persuasion.

The show was terrific; it was MUCH funnier than the movie version and the costumes were, of course, outstanding. Landen had quite the crowd of fans there – we took up nearly two entire rows (I’d guess thirty or forty of us altogether).

And then, up to my grandparents’ house for a fun family dinner, where there was much laughing, good food, and even a rousing game of charades where I got my team to guess the title Things I’ve Been Silent About in just over two minutes, despite no one on my team ever having heard of it. Not bad, friends, not bad. There are few things I love more than a good game of charades.

Ella was a really good baby, continuing to be pleasant even when she was subjected to three different cribs in a single day, but when we arrived back home yesterday afternoon, she sat in the middle of the living room with her basket of toys for nearly two hours, just playing and rolling around, before falling asleep within second of me rocking her before bed. I think she is glad to be back to normal life.

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Other things of note:

The winner of The Girl Who Was On Fire is Ang of Team Forsyth. Send me your mailing address and it will be winging your way in no time!

I wrote a post about my family’s reunions with a giveaway, if you’re interested in winning a Slim-Fast prize pack.