Road Trip 2009 pt. 2

Little was super excited to see her cousins in SLC. We drove down and stopped at "[Maggum]'s house." We stayed there for several days, and during that time, we occasionally saw Little, but only in the form of a giggling blur flying past in pursuit of various cousins. She especially LOVED Ambrodesiac, Wire-Delish, Yahn-Bahn-Appetit, X-babykool, Kelvinatorious, Maggnum, Pinkleberrilicious and Winkleberritissorious. Ok, so pretty much she just loved everybody. Mommy and Daddy are pretty sure that Little has never been happier or had more fun than the week she spent there--and that's saying a LOT.

Daddy spent a lot of time taking care of the kids--and by that we mean being crushed repeatedly by Yahn-Bahn-Et and X-bayesian at foosball. Mommy, Daddy, Christofferson and AD spent many nights up way, way too late watching Flight of the Conchords on YouTube. Littler spent most of her time following around the bigger cousins and generally failing to keep up but nevertheless having lots of fun mimicking them.

Ambrosiac took lots of pictures with our camera, pictures which we have now stolen and use as our own. Pretty much every picture in this post that is an intimate head-shot of a cute kid is hers, plus some others. She did a fantastic job.

X-bah-baby:

We went cherry picking at one of the cousins' friend's house. Winkleberrified:

The Amtographer:

Little cherrypicking:

Yahn-Bahnneroo:

Back home, Maggumator, Little, and Pinkleberrissima played X-babastic's guitar together. Mommy and Daddy loved how Little felt so comfortable with the cousins even though she only gets to see them once a year and is often shy.

Ok, so here's a sequence that we just couldn't trim down to fewer pictures. Kelvinatidine is reading Maggnumnation and Little a story. Little and Maggnificent have just about the most expressive mugs possible, and they love each other. It's dang sweet.

Later, the bigger kids and Daddy played "Peterball" on the trampoline. Here, X-bababay executes a sweet attack on Yahn-Bahnbastic, but gets convincingly stuffed. Ambidextrose got a rocking capture:

Peterball himself prepares to annihilate X-baylien:

Wire-Deestruck came back from a summer camp and Daddy was way excited. She was a little more excited by her drink but Daddy didn't notice:

Little gets a push from X-babbed:

Littler had plenty of fun too. She loved Winklebusterblister a lot. And when we all played kickball together, she ran around trying to kick the ball very determinedly and seriously:

We all went to go look for July 4th fireworks but the streets were all clogged. So we drove into a random neighborhood near the fireworks and watched from the street. Later we found an empty house and watched from their derelict lawn. It wasn't the best view but it felt exciting.

One day, Christofferson and AD wanted to go to the temple and left their kids in the care of Mommy and Daddy. Daddy said, "you can count on us" or something like that. About an hour before they were due home, AD called Daddy and made sure everything was alright. Daddy assured her that everything was perfectly in order. She asked specifically if Winkleberioso had stayed inside the gate, because apparently she sometimes is tempted to leave the yard. Daddy confidently assured her that Winklebell was safe and sound and that she couldn't possible avoid his eagle surveilance.

At that moment, Winkleboss was wandering up the street in nothing but a full diaper. She crossed a residential road and a couple saw her and called the cops. Daddy found her screaming and had the pleasure of trying to convince the cop [who was, after all, just about as friendly as cops ever get] that she belonged with him and that he wasn't a horrible, good-for-nothing lazy irresponsible babysitter. He succeed with the former, perhaps not the latter.

Overall we had a blast with the CAD cousins and their parents. But we also visited Daddy's parents at their current laborschloss [the Family History Library in SLC], which was great fun. And we had a particularly rockfull night at Daddy's brother Venn's house with two more cousins, Ketrifect and Marigrossa, who were supremely awesome hostesses.

Next up: sand creek hike; Daddy, Christofferson, Vonn's adventures in southern Utah's finest.