The Fam Damly

About two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to sneak home to Utah. JUST ME!!!!!!! All by myself. You see, it was my Mom's 50Th birthday, and my Dad had the brilliant idea to sneak TC and me home for a good old Jones family weekend. Honestly, I had never left Avery for more than 5 hours, so I didn't really know how I was going to handle it. But I quickly found out that I was handling it better than I thought. Don't get me wrong, I missed the little turd, and the big turd, for that matter, but I SO needed the break! The first thing I noticed when I was dropped off at the Kansas City International airport was that I had left my cell phone at home, don't worry, I didn't forget to pack my cell charger, just the phone. So like I said, it was JUST ME, no kid, no husband and no cell phone. Its a darn good thing all the airports have free Wi-fi nowadays so that I didn't have to pay a pretty penny for a long distance phone call. Did you know that it would have cost me $10.99 for three bloody minutes to call from Denver? I went back about 15 years to the pre-cell phone age, and I'm proud to say that I survived!

When my Dad picked me up from the airport, he announced that my sister, TC's, flight was cancelled due to bad weather. Did I mention that she was coming from Phoenix? You know, Phoenix, Arizona? They must have had a cloud in the sky or something for that city to cancel their flights for bad weather. All kidding aside, apparently they had some monstrous winds. We were sad that TC wasn't going to be able to make it till the next morning, she was going to miss the surprise for our mom.

So the plan was for my Dad to check us into a hotel in Salt Lake, pick my mom up, and then bring her inside and we would be hiding in the shower. We would pop out and surprise her and it would be the best experience of her life. That didn't go down as planned either, my mom decided she was pretty hungry and wanted to eat before going to the hotel, so my dad took her to a restaurant first. He called us while my mom was away and told us to just come and surprise her at the restaurant. Sadie and I headed across the street to the restaurant without a plan. When we made it to the restaurant, we were outside, and we actually saw my mom and dad sitting in a booth right next to the window. I looked at Sadie and just smiled and we decided to just pop our heads in the window until she noticed who it was. Well, we were sitting there for awhile and my mom never looked over. My dad finally spotted us first, and to get my mom's attention, he started fiddling with the blinds. Finally, my mom looked over and saw us. Her expression was priceless! We ran into the restaurant and my mom was crying, what a sap! Good call on the surprise Dad, I think it was the perfect idea!!!

(I think I forgot how to pack just for me and not two other people, because I also forgot my camera, and this is the only picture we have from that weekend!)

Anyways, to sum up the weekend, I will just say that after TC got in, all we did was go to movies and eat out. What a joy! What a carefree weekend! We laughed a lot, and of course there was a fight or two in there (don't ever have all girls).

I hope my mom knows how much I love her and that she is one of my best friends! Its fun to say that she is 50, she probably thinks its old, but compared to a lot of my friend's moms, she is a really young mom. Way to have kids young Mom! Happy Birthday.

On the way home, I totally missed my flight! Salt Lake was literally "the place" and everyone was flying home that Monday morning. There was some bad decisions on what line to choose, and in the end I missed my flight by two minutes. TC's flight left 5 minutes after mine, and that lucky girl made hers! I was a little stressed out because I didn't have a cell phone! Southwest just bumped me on a flight to Vegas then to KC, which for me was nice because we all know how I feel about Denver. And Luckily I had Joanna, the other woman in our household (aka Trav's lap top) and I shot out a million emails and I somehow made it home! It was fun. Thanks Dad!

One of the best parts of coming home was right when I got into the airport I saw my baby running towards me with a balloon tied to her wrist saying, "mama" with a huge smile. She remembered me! I missed my girl and my boy!

Did you think I was done? Well I'm not. Since we're on the subject of family visits, I thought I'd add that my mother in law and sister in law came to the KC to visit last week! They claimed to be happy to see us, but we all knew who they really came to see. I don't blame them, they haven't seen Avery since August, and she is a totally different person now!

Tracie and Avery instantly bonded. They both like to shake it.

Avery loved her Mumu (that's what we call Grandma Kath).

Excuse my crude language, but we call Kansas City the "butthole" right now, because it is the WORST time of year to come. It is dreary, ugly and stinking cold, so there wasn't a ton of things to show them. We of course went and got some BBQ, went shopping, but we mostly just hung out. Its kind of sad to say, but the most exciting thing we did was make hair flowers.

Our stylish hair flowers

Sometimes you don't need all the fancy lights and shows to have fun with people though, and these two were definitely the type to just hang out with! Thanks for coming. Oh, and thanks for hooking Avery up with so many cute things. Tracie, I secretly don't want you to ever have a girl because then you won't think its that cool to buy Avery girly stuff! Oh and thanks for hooking me up for my birthday as well! Oh and thanks for hooking Travis up too... what was his reason for getting a present? I forgot?

It is hard living away from family, but such a blessing to have these rare experiences with them. We love you all!