In the States part2

Today we go home. We've been in the States for just over 3 weeks and have had such a great time with family! Now it's time to say goodbye -the part that is no fun - and head back home. Although I hate goodbyes, we're both ready to go back home and start up where we left off. We're ready to see Sigel and all our other kids, and jump back in!

We are so blessed that Tristan and my family get along so well together! Last week we went up to Tristan's parent's house in South Lake Tahoe with Tristan's family and most of my family also. It was super relaxing and enjoyable. We had fires in the fire place, walked down to the lake, took Hannah (our 4 year old niece) sledding, had some snowball fights, attempted a ridiculously hard 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle - that thanks to my sister's patience we did get it 1/3 of the way done, we ate way too much good food, played games, slept a lot, laughed a lot, and even went ice skating for a few hours. It was a really fun week and we both felt that we were actually on vacation - which is hard for us to shut out busyness and just relax.

From South Lake Tahoe we went down to Sacramento where the wedding festivities for Daniel (my brother) and Sarai were starting. Thursday the ladies had a wedding shower for lunch and a bachelorette party in the evening, and the boys had an all day bachelor party which included 3 1/2 hours of paintball, food, hottubing, and finding random girls at the mall to sign Dan's arms & stomach. Tristan was one of the groomsmen and he said they had a fabulous time! The next day they were all sore ;). Friday was prep for the rehearsal dinner (my families job) and just fun hanging out. The rehearsal was fun and for the dinner we had a BBQ at the park. Saturday was the wedding which was absolutely beautiful! It was outside in the sun at a park and every part of the wedding was sweet and completely them. Daniel made the whole crowd pull out tissues when he started crying when he saw her - it was very sweet and tender. What was really great is that we were able to see a lot of my relatives that I don't normally get to see. My mom's 3 sisters and my grandma were there for all the wedding fun and my aunt Gloria and my other grandma spent lots of time with us as they were even up in Tahoe with us. And Tristan's parents were at the wedding and spent the night in the hotel also so it was perfect - we were surrounded by so much family!