At the beginning of March my Mom came to visit, bringing our GIANT puppy with her. We explored more of our winter/Alaskan surroundings, learned about the history of the beautiful place we live and even got to go to the temple! Jocelynn also had her first taste of real food with Grandma here and wasn't the biggest fan of it. It's crazy to think how much her taste and DEMAND for food has changed in just a few short months! Then Justin's parents came for a long weekend at the end of May. With them we got to see incredible glaciers, otters at play and some other really neat wildlife.
We thoroughly enjoyed both visits and are so grateful we have family who WANT to see us, though I know they all just come for the baby :) But this is the first time in our married life that we've lived more than a half hour away from family, so months between visits can seem kind of long sometimes.
My sister and her family, with a new little addition, were stopping in Rexburg for a few days on their move across the country, giving me another perfect excuse to go to Idaho. Our visit was perfect, except for the fact that Justin wasn't able to come. With almost everyone on both sides around we had a lot of fun. We went fishing, had frog races, a super soaker water fight, went to the zoo and a poetry slam, BBQ'd, played BANG, ate, chatted, hung out and laughed a lot. With grandparents comes new food to try for Joce, and she loved it! From ice cream to pork and seeds or pickles, she was up for anything they threw at her!
Jocelynn was able to play with her cousins a lot, who were soooo great with her! It was so much fun for me to see how all our nieces had grown and how their personalities are coming out so much more! We couldn't ask for better cousins! We were also able to meet the first boy cousin, baby Sam, and be there for his blessing. He is such a sweet boy and adorable too! I think he'll be catching up to Jocelynn soon!
I love Alaska with its incredible mountain ranges that never end, the ocean, the trails all over the city and parks, the lakes and ocean as well as the wildlife and we definitely have incredible friends here. But Idaho is beautiful and you can't beat those sunsets (especially when the sun hasn't set for us in a while!) Being with family who are such great people was wonderful. We're so blessed to have family as friends who are simply just easy to be around and we definitely miss hanging out more often with them. Jocelynn is definitely a blessed little girl with the cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents and even great grandparents that she has. There's no shortage of love there! And we LOVED seeing everyone and look forward to next time! Come to our neck of the woods and we'll have some more adventures!
