Earl Girl Family Reunion

For all of you out there that are not an Earl Girl cousin, I feel sympathy in my heart for you. Luckily, most of you will go your entire lives not realizing how much you have missed by not being related to us. For those of you who feel that gaping hole, grab yourself one of the Earl boy cousins left and join the party! The boys are decent and the party... well the party is priceless.

Asher and I headed up to Utah all by ourselves to enjoy the upcoming festivities. Infants are so not fun to drive with. They are either crying or sleeping. Both do not make the drive go by any faster. I have got to get this reunion on another schedule so I can ditch the babies...

The plan was to pick up Kristy at the airport and then get some work done that evening (Wednesday). Then Utah decided to dump rain on me through the entire drive. My windshield wipers (which hadn't been fired up in months) were absolutely useless so we crawled our way up to SLC to find Kristy sitting in the rain waiting for us. Seriously it was like a poor drowned kitten. That girl does not have enough mass to keep herself warm in normal conditions! We hurried her in and cranked up the seat heaters.

After a sketchy trip back to my sister in law's house, we decided to just call it a night. I got up first thing in the morning and purchased myself some new windshield wipers while getting snowed on. Yes snowed on. Crazy Utah.

Kristy is already on the short list of my favorite people in the universe (she earned the title many times over as my little servant girl during our youth) but she is now deserving of the aunt of the year title. She spent six hours in the car driving up and down and all around Utah entertaining my baby. I seriously owe her big time.

We got to meet up with Brad, Courtney and Kylie that evening to enjoy a little Noodles and Co. and dessert at The Chocolate. How do you resist a place called The Chocolate?

Friday evening we headed up to the reunion. The fun began immediately and did not end. We talked and talked and talked and ate and talked and talked and talked. It was late in the evening, hitting hours I haven't purposely stayed up until for years. I think I finally rolled into bed just a bit before 3 a.m. Asher decided to eat three different times in my remaining hours until promptly waking up at 7 a.m. We watched some silent TV to waste a little time before joining Angie and Kim in our solitary awakeness. (Side note - at the first Earl Girl reunion where Rhode joined me, I was also up long before the crowd and got to hang out with Kim, the only other one awake. Good memories)

Saturday was full of shopping and incredibly fun games. "What's Yours Like?" was exceptionally fun, especially when I insulted my cousin's husband and my sister's employment in one turn. Pretty sure they still love me...

Though by far my favorite game of the trip was backwards charades. Any game that inspires these moments... a definite winner.

Can you tell what we are acting out here?

Mistletoe! Get it? Our guesser did!

Asher was the smallest baby in attendance but luckily not the only one. Myles (9 months) and Qiana (3 years) also crashed the party. Sadly, Asher did win the "Most Demanding Party Crasher" award. I discovered he is not a fan of eating in loud situations. And, well our whole weekend was one big loud situation.

And here is the crew. Looking at these ladies always just bring a very big grin to my face.

Also love how stoked Asher is about the ceiling fan he spotted in the above picture.

The obligatory "model" shot. That's just how we roll.

Funny story. As you can see, Asher is mysteriously absent after the first picture. I had been holding him so much that weekend I didn't even think to set him down. Britney, in the most polite way, asked if he could hang elsewhere so our picture could actually just be me and not baby encumbered me.

Thank you Britney, sleep deprived Kacey was not there enough to come up with that very sound wisdom on her own!

And then we all had to go home, promising to do it again in a few years. Two years has never felt so long... I love these ladies!