Nieces

This weekend was a very important one.  We welcomed a new little niece into the family on Thursday and another turned one on Saturday.  It was very important that Shane and I find a way to make the time to travel to Utah, but we also found it very difficult as Shane works Friday nights and we both work all day Saturdays.  We managed to take care of our Saturday shifts and we hit the road at 12:30 am on Saturday morning, heading straight for Provo to see Chelsea, Sterling and their beautiful new girl, Lucy.  (You can see her on their blog, she's sure a beauty and was such a calm baby.)  But anyway, I'll get back to that.  We arrived in town at 5 am and had nowhere to sleep so we stopped off at Wal-Mart to kill time and of course purchase the New Moon DVD.  After about twenty minutes we were restless and did not want to visit the hospital until after 8 am so that the new parents could enjoy their time with their daughter.  We decided to sleep in the Wal-Mart parking lot for an hour and a half and then contacted Chelsea and visited for about another hour and a half.  We loved Lucy and were so excited that Chelsea even interrupted feeding her so that Aunt and Uncle could take advantage of holding her.  It was so fantastic to watch Chelsea and Sterling light up while talking about her and watch them interact with her.  They are going to be such great parents.  While we were there, Chelsea and Lucy got the okay to go home and so we left them to prepare for their discharge but were so grateful that they let us barge into their hospital room so early in the morning.  After leaving Provo, we headed to Stephanie's house to celebrate Abby's first birthday.  It was such a blast to spend time with my entire family.  The four siblings have always been so close and it's been nice to see that continue as spouses and children were added along the way.  It was no easy feat getting us all together at the same time but the payoff was enormous.  We played outside (and even got a little sun burnt, yeah for the incoming spring!), ate cake, took hundreds of pictures, went to dinner, and played cards in a hotel room.  Then we all said our goodbyes and went our separate ways.  Stephanie let us crash on her floor so that we didn't have to attempt the long drive back home and we hit the road again Sunday morning.  The trip was so short but we had such a wonderful time.  We love being aunts and uncles to the cute little kiddos and can't wait until we are the parents of our own so that the family can come visit us for births and birthday parties too.