St. George and a Wedding

(By Aubree)

Just so you all know, I posted 3 posts today, so if this one is too long for you to read and you want to skip it, the next 2 are mostly pictures!

This post is a little late, but we wanted to write about it. The first week in March we went down to St. George because Jeff went to a work-related water convention. He had to get a hotel anyway, so Clara and I decided to join him. We were there for 3 nights. On the way down, Clara slept most of the way until just before Cedar City. We had to stop to feed and change her and then she fussed for a little while, but finally slept again. She slept really well that night at the hotel. I think it was the first night that she slept for 7 hours straight, which was surprising for how much she slept during the day.

During the days, while Jeff was gone to the convention, Clara and I went shopping and took walks in the nice weather. It was nice and relaxing.

We didn't dare go out to eat with Clara--you just never know how she's going to act. So we ordered in every night. The first night we had some really good Mexican food, the second night we had some pretty good Chinese, and the last night we had hamburgers, fries, onion rings, and shakes.

The last full day we were there we decided to get Clara's pictures taken at Kiddie Kandids that was across the street from our hotel. Boy, was that an experience! We had made an appointment, and I had timed it just right. She had just woken up and I fed her so she was happy and smiling. But we got there, and waited and waited and waited. It was more than 1 hour and 15 minutes later when they took us back. By this time, Clara was hungry, tired, and fussy. Although Clara was unhappy, I thought we got some pretty good pictures. But I'm sure we could have got some great ones if we had been able to get in when we were supposed to. When it was time to choose the photo package, the girl rushed us and was acting all sorts of impatient. In retrospect, I would have totally redone some of the pictures we chose! Nevertheless, it's nice to now have some good-quality pictures of her.

That night we also went over to Jeff's old mission president's (President Larkin) house to visit with him and his cute wife. They are always so nice to visit with, and she has such good decorating skills. I love to look around to get ideas to decorate my own house.

We left St. George on Friday morning, and on the way we picked up Katelyn, Jeff's niece. We made it to Farmington, did some laundry, relaxed, and stretched our legs for a couple of hours, then it was off to Smithfield. Once again Clara did really well until the very end. So in one day we went from the very south of Utah to the very north. We spent the night at Jeff's parents because his brother's wedding was on Saturday morning and we thought it would be easier to get ready there. Clara had a really bad night, and I was beyond exhausted, so Jeff took her and put her to sleep (he even had to drive around with her for a while). I have the best husband. Altogether though, I think we each got about 5 hours of sleep.

On Saturday I got her ready and she was wearing her pretty new dress and guess what happened? Do you remember her blessing day? Yep, she blew out AGAIN, only this one was way worse. It was almost as if she weren't even wearing a diaper. Luckily I had brought another dress. My sister Amy sat with Clara in the waiting room during the sealing and I was nervous about her being a little pill, but she was so good for her!! Thanks Amy! The sealing was beautiful.

Jacob and Amy at Clara's blessing. (We don't have any pictures from the wedding because we forgot our camera for this whole event-filled week!)

One thing that's funny is Jeff's brother Jacob married a beautiful girl named Amy, and Jeff's other brother Ben also has a wife named Amy, and I have a sister named Amy, so we have to use all sorts of code names when talking about our many sisters named Amy!