Bampa's Flag Ceremony

The final stop on our welcome tour- Glama and Bampa's and a big pile of cousins!

It is so good to be home!

These our our people.

These are our dogs.

These are my sisters.

All the grand kids lined up for Bampa's annual flag ceremony.

I love that the most senior grand kids like to get in the mix. It proves the power of the tribe.

It's good to be a Phrog.

Then it was time to pay tribute to our country on the even of the anniversary of our independence.

Bampa took a moment to explain the greatness of the moment to the Grand-Phrogs

 Bampa assembled our line-up of family heroes, Uncle Rick and Cousin Mike, for the honor.

Abizella and Superkid were called forward to unveil the new flag.

The Unveil

The hoist!

All eyes on the flag and then our pledge of alliegance.

Then it's birthday party time!

And time with my favorite women!

It's so good to be home.

Silver Lake Cabin

Our first stop was the fabulous Richardson cabin near Silver Lake in Big Cottonwood cabin. Andie and HH were spending the 4th of July up there and invited the whole gang. HH was actually in Boston the week before and flew directly to SLC that morning. I think we only beat him there by 9 hours. It was such a crazy busy week that we didn't get to see him in Boston so it was great to catch up with him.

Together at last!

And a delicious lunch of Andie's famous meatball subs. Yum!

Then Grandma Sandi and Grandpa Bob were on the scene!

Oh, how we have missed them!

The whole gang

Whackiness is obviously hereditary

All the generations enjoyed getting reacquainted!

I cant tell you how happy it made me to be part of the 4th of July celebrations with the family!

Thanks for making our Utah debut fantastic! We love you and we love your cabin!

The best part is that Andie and the gals will be book-ending our vacation. They pick us up from the airport in Boston in 2 and a half weeks. We love that they always take their time and resources to be with us!

Bathing in Grandma Sherrie's Affection

It's SO good to be here!

We can never get enough Grandma love!

FINALLY!

Little Chief was up, packed and ready to hit the road T minus 13 hours from our departure. To say we were all really excited would be the understatement of the century. It was pretty much the longest day of our life waiting for our 7:45 p.m. departure. But it was good to have some time to pack, clean our house and make an emergency trip to the dentist to re-attach my temporary crown (stupid frozen gummy bear).

We got to the airport early to put in some quality time at the play area. 

This was our first direct flight to SLC!

Jaws' official family vacation job is to pull this little Thomas the Train rolling backpack forever.

Life is good.

The kids have been talking about playing Uno on the plane for months. Superkid actually won with the distinct disadvantage of sitting on the row ahead of everyone else... or was that the advantage?

Jaws was very interested in all of the airport action. He was thrilled with the whole experience until he realized we were leaving the surface of the earth. 

That concept made him a wee bit nervous.

Everyone did great- including Jaws.

The miracle of the trip is that Jaws got a 3 hour midnight nap, woke up cheery and remained cheery during the entire car rental debacle (think 1.5 hour long line) that got us to Grandma Sherrie's at 1:30 a.m Utah time. But let's be honest. We were still keeping Massachusetts time so it was 3:30 a.m. to us.

But we are totally about making lemons into lemonade.
The kids played several rounds of cards and did about a million laps on the escalator...

 and crashed.

 By this point we were ready to take any old clown car they were ready to give us- but guess what? We scored: a Dodge Grand Caravan with a DVD player!
It was dirty- but we all fit.

Oh ya- and it was Pop's birthday too! Happy (Crappy) Birthday Pops!