Utah Trip

This is going to be a fairly boring vacation post because I didn't take pictures of anything! Self: that is your new goal, get with it. But anyway despite the lack of photographic evidence we did indeed visit Utah.

The flight there was the worst part. I was flying alone with Cooper which is already number one on my least favorite things to do, I would rather spend the day getting a root canal. We decided to try and get there an hour and half early because every other time I've gone we've gotten there way too early, breezed through all the special family lines the Seattle airport has, leaving a long two hours to wrestle my wild man at the gate before we could board the plane. So this time I decided to try not to get there too early... Well we got to the airport and there were five Alaskan cruises that had just docked in Seattle and about one million cruise passengers were all at the airport right then catching flights that didn't leave for hours and hours. Long story short, when I got out of security I had ten minutes before my flight took off so I ran with Cooper as fast as I could to my gate (why is it always the last one?) and I was the last one to board. Somewhere in my hectic running I dropped Cooper's boarding pass and they weren't going to let him on the plane, the flight attendant at the gate asked me to please look through my stuff so I set Cooper down for a second to look through my papers even though I knew I dropped it somewhere and Cooper bolted past the flight attendant and ran down the ramp to the plane. I couldn't chase after him because they hadn't checked me in yet and the flight attendant got on his walkie talkie and called security to come get Cooper! He was so mad, he was yelling into his walkie talkie, "we have an unidentified passenger making way to the aircraft." And Cooper was just standing right out of reach and ignoring all my requests to please come back to mommy and counting to three. It was so embarrassing. Finally the flight attendant took Cooper's birth certificate and made a phone call and let me through before security came to arrest my toddler.

Once we got there things got a lot better! We hung out with family and friends which is why we go to Utah. We saw all of my family members which was fun! We went to the aquarium and to a splash park with my good friend and her little girl Lyla who is Cooper's age, they are good friends too they just don't realize it yet.

Cooper threw his toy car into the piranha tank at the aquarium. We were leaning over the edge to see the fish and just as I was thinking "wow this is kind of a scarily open, accessible tank of water" Cooper hurled in his toy car.
Also in this picture Cooper is wearing a leash attempting to be disguised as a stuffed animal backpack, I immediately became a lover of the leash and purchased Cooper his very own for the plane ride home.

The splash pad was awesome! Cooper had a huge blast because it's nice to play at splash pads when it's warm outside.

I also got to go to dinner with my high school group, minus Lisa who I guess I'll forgive since she's in Africa. And Cooper got to meet Rachel's baby Marshall who is a sweetie, they are also the best of friends they just don't realize it. That was super fun and I'm glad I got to catch up!

I got to see a movie with my favorite non-family family, the Waters girls! And we got to listen to Divergent being translated into Spanish behind us the whole time which was hysterical. There are no better people to experience that with!

And I got to see my Texas friends, Debra and Megan and their collective cute little girls. We went to lunch and took our kids to a playground. It was fun to catch up. Debra has a new baby girl and Cooper was in love with her, he kept touching her tiny feet gently and looking at me in awe and then he would go over and rock her car seat. I think he has more maternal instincts than I do! He is going to make a great big brother!

Sometime in the midst of this Cooper and I came down with an awful stomach flu! Hooray. It was three full days of fevers and other stomach flu related ickiness and it was awful. Yuck. Trip illness number one of three.

Then one day Josh finally came! I was so happy to see him that I cried at the airport like I had never seen him before! Geez. And Cooper was so happy to see him that he did not let him out of his sight for the rest of the trip. Me he didn't care about so much but Josh was not going anywhere, to the bathroom, in the other room for a second, no where.

Right after Josh got in we headed to his family reunion in Eden. It was so great to have one trip and be able to see both of our families! We got to see everyone and I even got to meet a few people in Josh's family I still hadn't met yet, including a new baby, Carter! Cooper kept trying to give him kisses and as soon as we got home Cooper marched over to Carter's picture on the fridge and gave it a big kiss (he does this several times a day.) There were lots of cousins there for Cooper to play with and he had an absolute blast with them.

He was quite enamored with his cousin Toby. :)

So we swam and went for a hike one day and hung out in beautiful Eden for four days. It was great! Until the last night when... Cooper got another stomach flu! He had been healthy for about four days in between the two illnesses. This one was awful as it included a lot of projectile vomit. it breaks my heart into a million pieces to see my kid sick. As soon as he woke up barfing Josh and I rushed over to him and he said the saddest "mama, dada" I have ever heard in my life! Poor buddy was just so sick. The rest of the night he refused to sleep unless he was on my chest with his arms around my neck, he just had to snuggle me or he couldn't sleep. It was sad and awful and we both got about two hours of sleep that night. And as a pregnant lady in the first trimester I had to do three loads of vomit laundry when I usually can't even wash the dishes without gagging. Let's just say it was unfortunate.

After that we went back to my moms for a couple days before our flight home. Thankfully my mom took care of my sick baby while I took a five hour nap. We said goodbyes to family and our last night Josh and I ditched Coop and hung out with our friends Andy and Alianna! A nice way to end the trip.

Thankfully Cooper was semi-recovered by the time we had to fly home, but I had a cold (illness number three.) Though we did have three diarrhea blowouts in the airport and had to buy another package of wipes! Poor guy. Our flight was an hour late but eventually it came. And Cooper was a very good traveler for the airport, the plane, and the two hour drive home! (Purely because he watched Daniel Tiger the entire time but I'll take it.) Cooper was so excited when he walked in the door and saw his home (I was too, I cried again)! He ran around screaming and dancing and laughing for hours. And now we're home and Cooper caught my cold and we're taking a break from traveling and illness for a while!