Kennemesawick Week

Back in January (eish!) Adam had one of his highly anticipated vacation weeks. Hallelujah! We found out about the vacation kind of late because the SCH residency scheduler is suuuuuper awesome at his job. But we figured we should try and snowbird somewhere warm while we had the chance. We found some pretty cheap flights to Phoenix from Kennewick so we were able to see almost all of Adam's family during the week. In true Allison fashion I totally slacked in the picture taking department. So I'm just going to throw what I've got down here and we'll see what kind of story it tells, yeah?

We had a "small" family party for Anders in Kennewick since it was the weekend before his birthday. Of course, there's no such thing as a small family gathering for the Ottleys.

The smash cupcake was a huge success. He devoured the whole thing and then signed for "more". Because I'm such a pushover I gave him another half. But don't worry because he threw it up 20 minutes later. Oops.

Little baby big balloons.

Surrounded by birthday presents and looking like he's ready for middle school (sob!)

Ok, now we're in Arizona! Try to keep up. We stayed with Adam's brother Brett and his family in their new house in Mesa. The weather was great and we got out a lot despite all 3 of us getting sick during the trip (sob sob!)

Adam played a billion rounds of golf. Or as he calls it, "two".

 

Anders woke up on the morning of his birthday looking like this. He was up most of the night before with really bad congestion and a fever. This was only his second real cold and we were bummed it had to happen on his birthday but we made the most of it.  

 

Feeling a little better by dinnertime and requesting pancakes. All the pancakes.

Opening a ton of presents for the third time in 3 weeks. 

Here he's thinking, "I could get used to this". #onlychild

Smash cupcake round II!

 

He must have learned his lesson from his first cupcake because he held back a little this time. A lesson I've been trying to learn for 26 years.

 

At the zoo with his buddy Harper who directed photo shoots constantly throughout the day. Looking back at this all I can see are his sick eyes and sad little face. Poor baby!

Playing with his adoring cousins/fans

Hiking Badger Mountain with Dad, Uncle Brett and cousins

(Unfortunately, the bug had caught up with me by this point and I was asleep at home)

  

Aaaaand back to Kennewick where Adam's parents opened their mission call. 

Headed to Denmark in May! 

Anyway. This post was kind of hanging over my head. Glad to get something down here! I'm trying to be a better blogger (have you noticed?) just as blogging is dying out. I've just started to realize that there are lots of things that seem so significant at the time that they're happening that I think I'll never forget them (eg I don't need to write down when Anders said "mama"! How could I ever forget that?") but then the memories inevitably get hazy so quickly. Blogging is a pretty great resource for preserving memories and I'm totally fine if no one reads it but me and my kids (someday!). Adam will never read it ;)