Our trip home

Well it's been an exciting last few weeks! We got back Wednesday of last week from WA. Our main purpose in going there was for a whole slew of concerts Stephen had - Seattle, Chelan, Tricities, Walla Walla, and two different events in Moses Lake. He had something almost every night for a week straight. It's good he handles stress so well.

While we were in WA we were able to spend a lot of wonderful time with family. Stephen has lots of family living in Othello -- his parents, two brothers and their families, plus tons of aunts and uncles and cousins on the Beus side. My parents live in Touchet, about an hour and 15 minutes away from Stephen's parents home in Othello. And my brother Spencer and his wife, Andrea, and their two children (and one more on the way!) live in Tri-cities, which is right between Othello and Touchet. It's so nice to have so much of both sides of our family in the same area. We love going home to see everyone. Going home this time was especially exciting because we got to introduce everyone to Jonathan. He was a big hit. Especially with his cousins who live there. Here is a pic of Jonathan with four of his cousins (Nathan and Heather's kids) -- Colson, Hayley, Parker and Evan -- such cute, cute kids. They couldn't get enough of him. It was so sweet.

We are so blessed to have such amazing family on both sides. While we were in WA, we had Jonathan's baby blessing. We love our ward in Provo but wanted to have our family at the blessing. Stephen gave the blessing, and it was beautiful. Such a sweet experience.

One of our best friends, Nicole, who lives in Seattle drove down to see us in Othello and meet little Jonathan for the first time. It was so fun spending time with her. Here is a picture of her with Jonathan. He fell asleep sprawled out like that while she was holding him.

Jonathan had his first five hour night-sleeping chunk while we were in WA! I wondered if it was just some awesome random fluke, but he's kept it up since then! Some nights it would even be about 6 1/2 hours of straight sleep. I can't even begin to describe what a welcome change that has been. For the first four weeks I was getting up every hour, sometimes every fifteen minutes during a few hours of the night. It really had started to wear on me.

I am now happy to report that last night was the second night in a row that Jonathan slept for a whopping 9 HOURS!!! I haven't slept for such a long stretch since before I was pregnant! I hope it's the start of a new habit for him. I'll try not to get my hopes up.

Before we left on our trip to WA, Jonathan had a photo shoot with a professional photographer friend of ours named Christine Olson. She's amazing. But I don't have to tell you how good she is -- her pictures say it all. Jonathan is 2 weeks 6 days here.