Aspen Grove

My mom's side of the family had an amazing week-long family reunion at Aspen Grove in Utah. Sam's supervisor was going to be out of the country so Sam was able to get a week off! It was such a fun vacation and I took way too many pictures thus resulting in way too many pictures here. I would like to say a special thank you to Matthew and Laura for giving me their pictures without which I would not be in a single one of these pictures. This has taken me so long to post because I had to sift through over 1,000 pictures to decide which ones to use.

As fun as this week was, it was challenging for me as well. I really don't like missing out on things. I am usually the last one to leave a party because I don't want to miss something. Leaving activities to feed, change, or put Alex to sleep was very difficult for me. It was also stressful because I was unable to get anything done. My to-do list just kept growing and growing (I am not very good at relaxing) and there was nothing I could do about it. I have now been home for a week and I have still not caught up. Sam can attest that I have just been very worked up trying to get caught up on everything. There were 263 items in my Google Reader, the house was a mess, I had two weeks of laundry to do, my sleep schedule was way off, and our refrigerator was empty. It was pretty awesome. We had only lived here for two weeks before I left so I was not even completely done moving in and taking care of forwarding and canceling things from Ithaca! Also, Sam's flight was delayed getting into Philadelphia so we didn't get home until 2:00am! Sheesh, vacationing is hard!

There were 41 people from my family there. On Monday, Sam's parents and two siblings were able to come spend the day with us as well. It is hard to get that many people together and yet we always seemed to find one another. It was amazing. I loved hanging out with everyone and it makes me happy how well we get along. The reason for this vacation was because my Grandpa Hilton turned 80 years old! My Grandma put so much time and effort into planning this trip for everyone and we really appreciated it. I doubt this will ever happen again so I savored the moments with the whole family around (minus four missionaries currently serving in Ukraine, Russia, Brazil, and Heaven).