utah and homeward bound!

when we got back to salt lake, we celebrated our 5th anniversary! my dad and katie watched Prim and Jon and I went to bruges waffles and frites for appetizers which actually turned into dessert! then we went to the copper onion and shared a burger and fries which was soo good!

prim wouldn't go to bed as easily as we hoped she would, but we were secretly happy that she was awake when we got home. we took her outside and she helped us let go of each of the five balloons one by one. each one representing another year of marriage, each better than the last. 

my dad likes to get prim up in the morning and get her dressed (and i like to sleep in a little bit!). almost every night, even in normal life, i pick out prim's outfit for the next day and leave it on her changing pad so the morning is easy. when i came down to see my babe, she was wearing her headband on backward. ah but still so cute!

baby alex came to visit with mike and kim! they are the best friends, they always cater to us while we are in town. that really is not necessary, but we appreciate it so much. 

they are four months apart. don't they looks alike with their pale skin and bald heads?? so cute!

kim text me and said that mike got teeny a present (we told them a few weeks previous that we were expecting again!). i didn't think it was weird at all. i opened the card and it said something along the lines of "we know the perfect gift for your new baby..." i pulled out a tiny onesie and on it read "A new friend!!! baby bird coming december 2015!"!!!!! i was not expecting that at all and freaked out! i am so excited for them!!!! all four of our babies are going to be so close in age, i hope they love it growing up as much as we have so far!

amanda nanny's this sweet little boy named sam. we took primmy over to meet him and i think she liked him more than he liked her:)

aunt amandy

here prim is with her great-aunt nancy.

we always try to fit a good hike in with amanda while we are in town. this time we did the living room hike. it was both easy and hard and was the perfect challenge for us. poor jon was sick and was huffing and puffing in this crazy altitude that we aren't used to.

finally our babies get to meet! here is elliott checking prim out.

elliott with his hot mom and mom's hot friend. we walked from their house to a cute everything shop and got sodas and treats. 

elliott wasn't too interested in prim, but he did such a good job sharing his toys with her! even if she was playing with a toy he wanted, he would just go get another one for himself. so sweet.

love my ladies.

dads walking to little caesars/7-11 for firewood. 

a couple days before memorial day we went up to idaho for our usual celebrations.

happy memorial day!
we got pictures with the cousins and couldn't resist getting a few of Prim by herself. the flag was Jon's idea.

this was one of the first times we did this with Prim and she loved it, haha!

all packed up. katie blessed us with all her baby toys Casper has grown out of. As usual, our car was packed to the actual brim.

as we were passing Payson i remembered the new temple! so we did a very brief detour in order to pass it. so beautiful.

we drove straight to the grand canyon! neither of us had ever been before and thought that was a real shame. we only spent an hour or so there.

from there, we drove to John and Kat's which was a couple hours away. they are spending the summer at his parents house while John trains with Edward Jones. it was so good to see them and although they both had to wake up ridiculously early, they waited for us and stayed up to chat! Prim was an angel on the drive and visited with us until we were all ready to go to bed. it was pretty late so it took awhile, but she finally fell asleep between us. such a dear. 

new car + road trip 2of4!!!

we got to raleigh, nc at about 1:30am. at this point we'd been up for like 20 hours. we were staying at my friend jessi's house who i love so much!!!!!!!!!! we met when jon and her boyfriend at the time were in bootcamp and we've keep in touch ever since. she has visited us a few times because she is a flight attendant and can do things like that. i'd never been out to see her, so we planned our trip so that we could stop at her place. when we got there, she had a pilot friend sleeping on the couch and one in her room and had a blow up bed for us on the floor. by the time the pilots left at 6am, jon and i were sleeping on the hard ground with no air left in the mattress. i quickly got into bed with jessi while jon slept on the couch. 

 i know these are horrible out-the-window pictures, but raleigh is so cute!! who knew???? also, how dare you have such green grass in the dead of winter!!

 as you can see, we went to the flying biscuit cafe in the morning. i love being with jessi, she has such a positive outlook on life and she is theeee funniest! she is not lds and she grew up in nauvoo, a mormon town. she very kindly told us that we are her favorite mormon couple (eye roll). she followed up by saying, "no, i know a lot of mormon couples! i see them every once in awhile. when they ask me how i'm doing i say "good. still drinkin' and swearin'."" my goodness does that woman have a mouth on her, but it makes her that much funnier. i really did not want to say goodbye to her, but we had a long day ahead of us...

 here she blows!!! isn't it so cute!!! we stopped to get gas at this teeny tiny gas station where everyone knew each other but us. this is when i started to drive for the first time. it is such a smooth ride and gets up to 83 miles per hour quick! so quick that i didn't even see that cop with his radar! needless to say, that 45 minutes was the only time i drove the whole road trip and yeah. i do have a north carolina speeding ticket i still need to pay off.

our friend aaron is from asheville, NC so we decided to stop in and see his stomping grounds! it reminded me a lot of park city, ut with all the cute little shops and sub zero temperatures. he was so excited to see pictures we sent him. it was fun but would have been much better if he and ashton were there to show us around. we got four little meatballs from the mellow mushroom. (turns out we have one of these in san antonio too!)

 our next stop was the tomato head in knoxville, tn!!!!!! i can not explain to you how cold it was here. it was very difficult for me to pull my pants down (tmi?) to use the restroom and this is why:

ice. along the walls and floor in the bathroom.

knoxville was really cute, i'm glad we stopped there for a couple hours. the square was dead because the weather was so bad. while we were driving, we were getting text messages from family asking how we were doing because that part of the nation was experiencing arctic chills. there were signs all over telling people to stop driving and stay inside. luckily, all was well for us although we were very, very cold.

next stop, nashville!!

guesswhatigotanewcar. 1of4

as much as i loveeeeee my nissan altima, jon has been encouraging me to entertain the thought of replacing it with something a bit newer and more reliable. over thanksgiving, jon was perusing his land cruiser forum and came upon a 2010 toyota camry xle with 28,000 miles located in Virginia. he talked to the owner for a few weeks before we decided that we wanted to fly to va and get that car! (shalon from SNL) while we were in utah, we went to the bank and got everything finalized so that we could make the big purchase. we got back from UT on thursday and left sunday morning at 6am. we flew from san antonio to atlanta then from there to dayton ohio and finally from dayton to baltimore, md. 

 jon thought these m&n's were the funniest.

 the owner picked us up from the airport and drove us to his apartment in virginia. we passed the DC temple on the way! he was a really nice guy with an even nicer car. he had taken very good care of it, it is honestly like new. this is us excited about our new purchase and heading into DC!
(sun roof!)

 DC is my favorite place in america and also where we spent our 'honeymoon' when jon got back from deployment. our capital has a special place in our heart so we were sad to only be passing through. jon dropped me off at the lincoln memorial and drove around (we couldn't find parking and didn't have license plates). it was nice to be there for a few minutes, even in the dreary weather.

we got to go see these two cuties!! they are living the life in alexandria while melanie goes to GW and stephanie is a nanny. they made us an awesome dinner complete with dessert. it was so fun seeing them and catching up, i wish we could have stayed longer. stephanie, being the sweetie that she is, prepared us a road trip bag of goodies. she knew that we didn't bring anything for our road trip since we flew. it was complete with veggies, crackers, fruit, water and sweets. she is so thoughtful and motherly (always).

almost immediately after we left them, we realized that we forgot to get a picture! they sent us the one of the two of them and we sent this. good enough, haha!

we left their place and headed for Quantico, VA to see jon's gunny. it was nice to be on a marine corps base again, it felt like home and quantico is so cute and homey. it was fun seeing him and his family and hearing about what their plans are. their place was not our last stop of the night although it was already 9pm. we left quantico and headed for raleigh, NC!!!!