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| Utah Lake at sunset. Gorgeous! |
Our time in Utah was mostly spent hanging out together around the house. With Evie’s fragile medical state, crowds are unsafe and she can’t go into higher elevations due to the decreased oxygen. We were able to go on a couple scenic drives in the area that didn’t involve going up into the mountains and the scenery was as amazing as I remembered.
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| Wide open spaces. |
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| Love the combination of green and snow-capped with beautiful blue skies and puffy white clouds. |
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| Catching a glimpse of some local pronghorn. |
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| The road beckons despite the storm clouds. |
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| Kerri snuck a picture of me in my usual state–with a camera in my hand. |
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| Oh, glorious sunset! |
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| Happy kids heading to the playground and a picnic lunch. |
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| James, Gracie, Mils, and Mads. Love these kiddos!! |
Kerri knows I’m always thrilled to take pictures of her sweet girls and she asked me if we could do a photo shoot with Evie on the day her feeding tube came out to be changed. She, unfortunately, didn’t get newborn pictures because of the surgery and subsequent hospital stay, so we were excited to take some ourselves. So much fun!
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| Mads was my beautiful assistant. |
We also did a “sisters” photo shoot with all four girls. That was much harder. Still fun, but much harder.
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| They are mostly all smiling. Evie, however, is not sure about this whole thing. |
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| This one is the definition of sisters. Mads is pouting, Gracie is giving her a look. Mils and Evie don’t care. Hilarious! |
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| These two asked if I’d take their picture together and then James did this. On his own. Unprompted. Good grief. |
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| They are so sweet that I don’t even care it’s not totally in focus. Such a great moment. |
James managed to catch a little cold while we were out there, so he had to wear a mask to try and keep Evie as safe from the germs as possible. He still desperately wanted to hold her and talk to her, though, which was super sweet. We all took turns snuggling beautiful Evie P.
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| She was just babbling away at him and he was pretending he understood her and they were conversing. It was adorable. |
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| I love having that sweet baby sleeping on me. Heaven! |
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| I’m always amazed by how much James genuinely loves babies and holding them. |
Kerri and I managed to sneak off one day without the kids (Thanks, Chris!) and we had a great time exploring Antelope Island and some random dirt roads through the mountains. Because we had a Jeep. So why not?!
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| Kerri and me. I’m so grateful to have such an amazing person as my friend. Love this girl! |
After a few weeks of fun, it was time to head home. We were sad to go, but happy to be returning to Chris and Leo.
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| James and Mads on our last day together. |
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| James and Mils hanging out while we enjoy our last Cafe Rio lunch for a while. (It’s one of my favorite Utah foods.) |
On our road trip home, we were happy to stop in Golden, Colorado and see Aunt Charlotte and Uncle Jim. They hosted us for the night and James milked every ounce of playtime with Aunt Charlotte that he could.
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| Giving baseball a go with Aunt Charlotte in the front yard. |
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| Riding the toy tractor down the hill in the backyard. He giggled the whole way down. |
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| Showing off his Lego creation to Uncle Jim. |
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| James and Aunt Charlotte. They just adore each other. |
