♥: Poulton Family Reunion

Myra's calendar shows the countdown. She had been X'ing off the days for a month to the day of our scheduled flight to Utah. Bridger would double check her work and announce daily how many days we had left. Sawyer woke up every morning for a week mad at me because I didn't wake him up, he knew I would wake him up while it was still dark to go to the airport. The kids could hardly wait!

Our flight was scheduled to leave at 5:10AM. Which meant we woke up at 3AM, got to the airport at 4AM, boarded our flight on time, and sat on the airplane for two hours before take off. The pilot had announced a maintenance issue that wasn't a big deal, but would take maintenance crews at minimum an hour to repair. They reopened the door and most people got off. Optimistic and hopeful that it would only be one hour, we stayed on the airplane.

There was something good to come of these delays... The co-pilot, probably bored, walked back to talk to the flight attendants at the back of the airplane. When he was returning and as he walked by us, he was friendly and talked to us, then said, "Would you guys like to come drive the airplane? I'll let you sit in my seat." Too bad my kids aren't interested in that kind of thing.

Actually, Sawyer loves airplanes. If I were to guess now, I'd say he, out of all my kids, will grow up to "drive airplanes" as he says. It must be in his genes. He is fascinated by airplanes and as we waited, he watched as airplanes took off and came in for landing with his nose pressed up against the window. At home he is always pointing out airplanes in the sky to me (if I'm holding him he takes his hands and presses them to my face and turns my head to look).

So when the co-pilot invited us up to the cockpit my kids jumped at the chance! They all got to sit in the pilot's chair, pressing buttons that sounded like machine guns and learning which lever makes the airplanes go up and what way to push it to go down. They thought it was awesome!

Back in our seats, Sawyer conked out while Bridger and Myra had the silly giggles. Finally our airplane was fixed and ready to fly and the pilot announces that there was some weather we were going to avoid so we would be taking another route adding on another 30 minutes of flight time. Luckily we had a 2.5 hour layover! We hopped off that flight and went straight to the next one without another hiccup.

And we were so happy to see aunt Deon waiting for us at the airport! Let the fun begin!

I moved to the row behind my kids. Sawyer was sleeping
and Bridger & Myra wanted to share headphones to watch
a movie. Pretty soon the cutest little face looked over the seat.
He kept popping over to say 'HI'. He is the cutest!

Yeah for cousins!

Mountains!

I'm mountain deprived and that is all there is to it. Everywhere I went this whole trip I just kept taking pictures of all the mountains! They are so awe inspiring beautiful! I miss them.

Our reunion was at the Rose Ranch Resort. The Paiute Trail started there and so we were able to ride ATV's every day. We were camping... there were cabins, some brought their trailers, and we tented it. Thanks to everyone who provided everything for us! We had such a great time just being together. We are so lucky to have such a wonderful family. The kids loved paling around with the cousins.

From the moment we arrived and Bridger saw the mountains he kept asking if we could hike to the top of a mountain? And he didn't want to find a nice trail, he just wanted to walk straight up one. So we did, and we invited all the cousins along, and it was more than any of us bargained for. But Bridger just wanted to keep pressing on, because once we climbed the first mountain he could see another just beyond it. There is just something about these mountains and he wanted to conquer them.

I was so grateful to be with the Poulton's and glad we had made it to the reunion. Everyone was there! Except, of course, Devin who was working hard for us back in Virginia. We missed him a lot too. But its always great to go back to Utah where there are family and mountains, the two things I miss the most!

Sprinklers: