nana & grandpa + ohio

we were so lucky to be able to spend five days with them.

we took them to kirtland. my, oh my am i in love with this town.

cutest yellow house i've ever seen.

i guess we are all supposed to be here. read this family: come on over!

i love how the town was preserved to look just like it did in the 1800's.
a lot of the doors and stuff were the originals!

i just love my nana.

kirtland temple. the first temple ever built by the latter day saints.


breath-taking

i have such cute grandparents

mmm. my favorite.

we went furniture shopping. we found the best deal on the comfiest king mattress. thank you, costco.. you can tell we are in heaven :)

grandpa hauling our stuff out. looks like we bought the whole store..

we went to check out doctor pattee's hospital. it was very nice. they have the best food their too! emergency medicine: his specialty

while he was doing doctorly stuff, we went to lake erie. it's huge.
i abolutely love living by one of the great lakes!

okay so in 70-80 degree weather, i'm used to wearing a little cardigan.. well, i'm theeee only one.. people were actually swimming in the lake. brrrr. maybe next year i'll wear summer clothes?

love sand between my toesies

seriously its so green everywhere. a lot different from the "brownery" i'm used to

the lake erie science center

husband joined us towards the end. his favorite was the bald eagle.
cutest bunny foo foo

i wanna try sleeping like that..

such a huge fishy

come back soon nana and grandpa!

2,000 miles

ended up taking us 38 hours.

my husband drove every single second.. he loves it, lucky for me. i probably slept 1,000 of those miles. [not really, but if you were to ask him, he would probably say it was pretty dang close..
last day in arizona

tara came to visit, so much fun to see her cute prego belly and to catch up and eat yummy frozen yogurt. love her.

went to dinner with sister, caitlin and britt at our traditional pita j. sure love these girls.

saw sister's FIRST house. oh how charming it is.

sister and i had a melt down. it was SO SAD. oh how we are going to miss each other.
being 2,000 miles apart wasn't in the plan that we made when we were five and seven.
if you were wondering, our plan was: when we had houses to have a slide that attached to them.

and jammed to jack johnson with mitch in the car. [it was his last night too, he was off to byu]

tears were shed, trust me.

it's hard not knowing when i will see the whole family again.
luckily mom, dad and jake are coming in october!
but sister and g.. who knows ..

and mitch.. it might be 2 1/2 years til i see his face after his mission. hope not.

the drive:

we went through new mexico,texas, oklahoma, arkansas, missouri, illinois, indiana and ohio

a big thank you to : nana and grandpa for driving mister up. they kept up with us the whole time. impressive!
took pictures in my favorites..

new mexico. haha, loved this. so random

stopped at sweet buried cars in TX

then the famous st. louis arch.
it was so much fun driving through st. louis. such wonderful memories of living there.

finally - our destination.

BRYCE canyon

was the most beautiful place i've ever seen.

it goes down as justin's FAVORITE national park ever.

seriously every step we were in awe.

{love this posed picture}
some of the ceilings were perfect size for me..
oh, how i love holding his hand
this girl is my absolute favorite
we didn't plan the stripes. {earlier this morning i was actually wearing sister's exact shirt, color and all without knowing.. she made me change}

the newlywed's. -ish

cutest little chimpmunk. i should try closing my eyes when i eat, maybe it will taste better?

so glad my family decided to share this experience before heading home..

til we meet again bryce..

whiting reunion

this family is crazy. don't believe me? let me prove it..

haha..

this is normalcy

but this is what makes them a "whiting" and life so much FUN.

this year the whiting reunion was in deer creek, utah.

we stayed in cabins and we had so much fun.

we were very entertained around the fire..

and what would be a reuinon without crafting? even if it's in the woods..

or huge hugs/squishes?

we played TONS of games. we even had a very competitive olympics. didn't know my grandpa was competitive til this reuinon. .no WONDER whiting's are competitive ;)

and grandma is too.. just look at that face..

lots and lots of fishing occurred..i thought it was intriguing/disqusting when i watched them go through all of the steps to cooking fish. davin grossed me out when he ate the eyeballs.

NOT for me.

we ended by going to mammoth cave. it was very fun. at one part of the cave, we were army crawling to get out. it was verrrrrry dark! eek!

i just love experiencing new things with this man.

the whiting/pattee/milne clan.

sure was fun spending time with every single person on the whiting side. what a rare occassion!

my adventurous husband decided he wanted to build a fort. it took a couple hours a day, i helped and it was very fun.

the final product.. 13 feet tall :)

we went on a little detour to brian head to see snow!

there's never a boring/dull moment with this guy or this family!