Sorry things have been a little quiet around these parts. I spent last Thursday through Monday in Arizona visiting my parents, sister, brother-in-law and nieces. Then I came home with a cold, which was happily short lived. It’s kind of weird that all my family lives in Arizona now. It makes it both easier and harder to visit them because yes they’re all in the one place now so I only have to travel once to see everyone, but on the other hand it is not easy to get to Arizona. It’s expensive and you pretty much have to allot an entire day of travel on either end whereas when my parents were in Florida I could easily fly down after work and not waste a vacation day flying. The same goes for many of the places my sister has lived previously such as Boston and Chicago or Pittsburgh where I could just drive. And of course since they’re all there now and there’s the kids the burden is always on me to be the one traveling. I guess they’re worth it though. I mean look at these cuties.

Though this one looks all sweet and innocent she apparently saved up her terrible twos until she turned 4. There were a lot of temper tantrums being thrown while I was there and I gather this isn’t an anomaly at the moment. The one good thing about it is that it meant I didn’t have to play Barbies with her non-stop the entire time I was there as she had lost all her Barbie privileges.

Friday while her mommy was working and her daddy stayed home with the baby, Katelyn, her grandma, and Aunt Danielle took a trip to the Children’s Museum. The section where you can pretend to drive the emergency vehicles was still her favorite.

We also spent a lot of time swimming in their pool since it’s the desert and hot out. Though it’s so hot out that even with the pool water being 88 degrees the water felt chilly because it was almost 20 degrees cooler than the air. I don’t have any pictures of pool time, but I wish I had gotten one of the baby holding a squirt gun and looking like she was about to shoot it at people.

Monday morning before I left I spent some time watching Jaclyn while her mommy was working, her sister was at school, and her daddy was running errands. She’s a little goof. She can totally walk around while holding on the edge of furniture, but unlike most babies who have reached that stage she has zero interest in you helping her walk. If you try and hold her up and help her walk she just lifts up her legs or gets noodle legs. She totally knows whats going on with the camera. When I went to take this picture she was lying down on the floor with her face on the pillow. She saw me get the camera, sat up, and gave me this big cheese face.

We of course spent some time reading books. What kind of librarian aunt would I be if we didn’t do that?

I probably wont’ see them again until Christmas, which is the major drawback of them all living so far away. I’ll just have to keep in touch with them the old fashioned way…you know, via Skype.