Shortly after returning to Washington from our Canadian adventures, the rest of the siblings took off and made their way back to wherever they came from. Rory and I had a few extra days with Grammy and Grandpa all to ourselves, and boy do we both live for undivided attention. On Tuesday, it was finally time for us to make our way to Vegas to meet baby Evie and help Kacey get her crazy crew around. We were already prepared for a late flight, so my mom and dad drove us to Pasco and stopped at a new yummy BBQ place for dinner. While we were at dinner we got the message that our flight had been delayed an hour, so we decided to make a few shopping pit stops along the way to the airport. The delays kept rolling in and by the time our flight finally took off around midnight we had done enough shopping damage that we had to buy Rory her own backpack to carry on. She did not sleep a wink on the plane, but she happily watched her movies as close to the screen as possible and only spoke up every so often to demand more candy. All in all, I would call the flight a success.
Sleep did not come easily for Rory that first night, but we finally managed to get a few hours and then she even slept in when I woke up early to begin my school carpooling duties. I thankfully did not have to drive Kacey's party van, but I did get to drive their Pilot, which had an "interesting" smell left over from when some of Jon's employees drove it. (It was weed. Very, very pungent weed that they also tried to cover up with a strawberry air freshener.)
The ten days I spent with Kacey included a lot of driving, a little bit of Hercules play practice, almost zero getting lost (hallelujah!) and lots of fun time with the Nielsens. My favorite day there was when we got to leave the toddlers with a sitter and go out to a nice little cafe for a sister lunch. Afterwards, we stopped by Crumbl cookies and picked up a variety box to take to play practice. Kacey did an incredible job putting together the kids' school musical and I truly don't know how she accomplishes everything she does, but somehow we came from the same gene pool so that is pretty awesome.
Rory loved playing with her cousins and meeting baby Evie. She even learned how to climb out of her pack and play while we were there! Which meant lots of time to sneak into my make up and very little time to sleep. It made me laugh so hard it was a little tough to be mad.
Evie is the best little baby and has only gotten better and better. I loved being able to snuggle her squishy newborn goodness and to give her all the bottles. What I especially loved was that I got to sleep all the way through the night because at the end of the day she was not my baby :)
After a great ten days with the Nielsens it was time to make our way back home, and as amazing as it always is to be with family it was definitely time. We missed our house and our routine and most of all our Stephen, and we were so so happy to be reunited.
Once we were finally home we got to put one of our Christmas presents to good use. This year we got Rory a pass to the Phoenix Zoo and weekly zoo dates quickly became the norm at our house. Rory loves the "Lion King", the tigers, the baby orangutan, and the peacocks. They also have a little farm area with a goat petting zoo and Rory loves petting "Flora" the white goat with the pink name tag. Our pass allows us to bring one extra adult and kids under 3 are free, so we were able to take our friends Sarah and Rebecca to the zoo. Rory loves playing with Rebecca and the two were just giddy the entire day.
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