Family, Friends, and Dresses

Mallory's sister (Kaitlyn) flew in to SFO last Wednesday and has been adjusting to our time zone in preparation for EFY this week. She is really excited and has enjoyed visiting California so far (we hope). She has been great at being a last minute babysitter for Madie when we have to make a quick trip to the store or want to get away for a date. It was really weird running to the store after 8:00 pm without having Madie with us...can't remember the last time that's really happened.

Want to know why this girl is so happy?

Look at her nails! She was so excited that Kait painted her nails. Since she had them done, she has been very careful about taking care of them and asking for touch-ups as needed.

A new hobby Madie has taken up is throwing rocks into the creek. Does she need an excuse to wear this dress? Absolutely not. She sports it on bike rides, shopping trips, to the mall, the park...pretty much anywhere you could think of. Thankfully it cleans up really easily.

On Saturday we met up with Adam and Tari McDonald in Sacramento. We haven't seen them since we graduated from BYU-I in December 2009! It's a shame we haven't hung out more often since we have only lived two hours away from them for the past year. They are heading down to Arizona for Optometry school in a couple of weeks, so luckily we can still get together with them when we visit my parents. So we met at this community water park and had a picnic lunch.

Madie really liked the water, as you could imagine. She was apprehensive at first, but then warmed up really fast. We had a near 'scare' when Mal thought she spotted Madies shoulder starting to burn, so we took her out. She lost it. She is quite the stubborn two year old. She was inconsolable for a good 15 minutes. We tried putting a shirt on, which she refused to wear in the water (thanks anyways Adam and Tari...sorry for the wet shirt). I took her under the canopy for a few minutes to try and calm her down, she wouldn't have any of it. After checking her shoulder again, it looked to be alright. In the end, we just lathered on some extra sunscreen and put on some aloe vera afterward. No sunburn! But she was instantly better once we put her back in the water. She loved playing with the fountains in the shallow water.

On our way home, Mallory commented how she was a little worried about getting together with Adam and Tari because she wasn't sure things would be the same as they used to as far as how we would joke with each other, etc. Needless to say, we picked up right where we left off in 2009. It was a great visit and we were glad we could get together before they took off.

While Kait was babysitting Madie on Saturday night, she introduced the lava lava's to her. Madie wore them proudly, dancing to the ABC's.

She is pretty particular about how she wears the lava lavas. Tassels have to be on the bottom so she can watch them when she dances (runs in-place and jumps around).