Our Vacation

As promised, here are some pictures of Kailyn's first swimming experience. I think she was 6 months old (I already forgot, oops) and we went up to swim at Carol's condo's pool. It was really fun. Kailyn was great. No one got sunburnt and also I believe she seemed to have a mediumly nice time. Captions beneath the picture.

I think her gigantic hat is great and I also love this face.

Carol and Elizabeth trying to show Kailyn how fun it is to swim and Kailyn not looking entirely convinced.

I didn't have a swim diaper yet and we thought what happens to normal diapers in water was hilarious so we just had to get a picture.

So this past week, Kailyn and I flew out to Maryland to get together with the Moore side fam. The flights went well, she was a doll everytime, although I did get exhausted trying to entertain her the whole time. We traveled all day Saturday and got there late that night. Sunday we went swimming at Aunt Kim's house in Virginia. The picture above is before we started swimming. From left to right it's: Kailyn (7 mo), my niece, Lilli (7 yrs), my cousin, Becca (9 yrs), my nephew, Sage (almost 4 yrs), and my dad, AKA G-dad (old).

Becca and Lilli are the best of friends and all three of the kids were so fun with Kailyn. I loved letting them play with her and I think it's going to be fun to have older siblings for my future children because they can help entertain her. Becca is a great little dancer and I was so happy because finally I met someone who would teach me the 'Hannah Montana I forgot the name of the hoe down song' dance. Lilli is a little smarty and currently she seems to be into tech decks and flip tricks (little skate boards and finger-sized bikes) and other extremey kinds of sport things. Sage is a sensitive little sweetheart. When you can't understand what he's saying, he tells you to just 'forget about it' and that was my favorite little phrase to just tell people the rest of the trip. And G-Dad is doing well. Sadly, I left right before Father's Day so I didn't get to spend it with him but Sunni and I went in on a couple gifts for him. We got him a black belt, which he wanted, and did a crafty photo thing with the grandkids that hopefully Sunni will blog about.

Anyway, here's Aunt Kim, Aunt Bonnie, Sunni, all the same kids as the previous picture and my almost 15 year-old cousin Taylor. Her family lives in Indiana and I think since they were visiting, we all decided to get together. It was fun.

I think this picture turned out cute. Becca up top, Lilli, Kailyn, Sunni, and Sage. I don't think I got a picture of any of the dogs that were there that day. There were five. Nana has one named Molly. Aunt Kim has three, named Daisy, Flounder, and Scoops. And then Aunt Bonnie and Uncle Paul currently have one, named Buttons. Oh yeah, and Aunt Kim has a cat too, but I forgot his name at the moment. It was a zoo. A fun zoo though.

Kailyn with her Aunt Sunni. So adorable.

So this is Kailyn and her Great grandmother, AKA, Nana, after we started swimming at Aunt Kim's. Kailyn looks like a thug. And I think this turned out nicely as well, apparently Nana hates being in pictures, but I don't know why. I think it's a good one. Sunni and my dad picked out and bought this float for Kailyn for us to take home which was really nice of them. Kailyn had a great time spinning those ring things.

Aw, siblings. Sage and Lilli. This picture is very representative of their personalities. Goofy and cute. I think this is from Monday, maybe after we went to Chuck E. Cheese, which was a blast. FYI, we learned that Chuck E. Cheese previously announced their mascotty thing to be a mouse and not a rat, in case you were wondering. I was.

Tuesday we drove down to Ocean City which was about 3 hours away and stayed the night there. This is Missy Kai's first time in Atlantic Ocean. I didn't post it here, but on my facebook page, you can see how much fun Kailyn had in the water... She did enjoy the sand though. She had fun grabbing some in her hand and watching it fall through her fingers once she opened her hand. We ate out on the Boardwalk and later that night, we rode the tram down to the carnival ride end of the Boardwalk and did that. Taylor and I rode some barfy but super fun spinny rides while the kids played some games and rode a couple children's roller coaster things. Sage and Becca had a lot of fun on the haunted house ride, but dear Lilli did not have too fun of a time. Sunni and I split a funnel cake (LOVE THOSE) and bummed some vinegar-covered french fries from my dad (also delicious).

The next day, we did some shopping on the boardwalk and I found the coolest things! K, so in my whole life, whenever I looked at souvenir stores with names on the items, I could NEVER find one with my name spelled properly on it so I never bought any of those things. But I found a shot glass at this store with "Kasey's Bar" on it that I thought was so rad. I didn't end up getting the shot glass because, well, that's not super useful to me, but after that I did find a keychain with my name on it. And the kicker is, Garrett has always had that same experience, where he could never find his name spelled right, but I FOUND HIS NAME TOO! So I bought us some keychains that look like Maryland license plates. Awesome. I also bought some Reef matching flip flops for Garrett and myself. And Nana bought Kailyn a fun smiley face noisy toy that Kailyn loves.

We ate out a billion times over the course of the week. Buffets, seafood restaurants, fast food restaurants, Chinese order-in, it was intense. It was cool though. Anyway, I drove home from Ocean City and there's a really long bridge I had to drive over that I was SO scared on. Luckily the kids were asleep and Sunni was talking to distract me so no one could really tell how scared I was. It was scary though, narrow and walled in and every time I glanced anywhere, I could see the vast amount of water surrounding us that we could plummet into at any moment if I got freaked for just one second. It turned out fine though. I didn't freak or accidentally kill anyone.

The next day, Thursday was scheduled for us to go to King's Dominion, which is a theme park in VA, but instead, I wanted to rest for a day before I flew home so we didn't go till the following day. My family went without me. I was glad because I really did want some time to rest but I was slightly bummed that I didn't get to go since I don't think I've ever been there. They had a nice time though. And our flight home turned out really well too. People were really helpful and it went by way faster than I was worried about. At the end though, when we were unboarding, a lady accidentally dropped her hard cased piece of carry-on luggage on little Kailyn's head. She felt awful and Kailyn was really sad and then I started to get upset worrying if she was going to have brain problems or something. Anyway, the flight attendant was really helpful and sweet and we had the paramedics come just to take a look at her and she was totally fine. She didn't get knocked out, she didn't have any swelling or bruising, and she wasn't acting strangely or anything. The paramedics, Southwest Airlines, and the airport all had to do reports but either way, nothing was wrong. After we finished talking to everyone, we finally got to see Garrett! We missed him.

It was the perfect-lengthed trip. Not too long that I was tired of my family or anything and not too short that I feel like I didn't see them. I missed Garrett but I wasn't like dying without him. Anyway, it was a really good week. It was fun to see everyone again and we kept pretty busy. It wasn't a cheap trip, but honestly, I'm grateful to my dad and my Nana mostly because they pretty much helped with everything for me and Kailyn. That was REALLY nice of them. Anyway, it was fun.

The night that we got back, the three of us went to our ward Prom. It was cute. It was outside someone's house, with Christmas lights streamed along the top and Chinese lanterns hung all around. They even took professional pictures (because the Activities Committee leader is a photographer) that I am excited to see. There was a Prom King and Queen (our Bishop and his wife) and a little dancing. The other head of the Activities Committee, the photographer, Heather's, husband, Elliott, was so funny with Kailyn. He makes fun faces and dances with her and she just giggles and giggles when he plays with her. So she had a nice time as well.

Sunday was Father's Day and I had just seen my dad so I just called him to wish him a Happy Father's Day. And for Garrett, I counted those flip flops I bought him in Ocean City as his present plus he bought a wireless router for us which is what he counts as his Father's Day present. And I got him a card.

Sunday, we went to Elizabeth's for dinner and games. We played Pit and Apples to Apples. Then my favorite part of the night was when we watched part 2 of a fun episode of the Disney tween show, "Sonny with a chance." I love that show. It made me so happy because finally Sonny and Chad made some headway in starting their romance. So fun.

And one last thing, last night I went with Elizabeth, Hannah and Kenna to see "The Last Song." I really liked it. I've also decided Miley Cyrus is not a bad actress. I didn't know what to expect really because of Hannah Montana and how her performance there is not great but I was pleasantly surprised. And another thing, I really enjoy love stories. Lately I have been feeling so mushy because I keep watching things where the characters fall in love and it's like I fall in love all over again because I live vicariously through them since I no longer have that 'falling in love for the first time' thing. Don't get me wrong, I love Garrett way more than I can even describe, but there's something so fun about seeing other people find that too. It has just put me in such a good mood. So The Last Song had that and that's one reason why I liked it so much. But it also made me think about a lot of things. I won't go into them because I don't want to give anything away, but that movie really made me happy.

Okay, this post is getting way too long. Kudos to you if you made it this far. Peace.