The Day After and The Journey Home

The day after Christmas we shopped till we dropped. Nana, Lauren, Emma and I went on our traditional shopping trip where Nana buys some cute clothes for the girls and we squeeze in as much shopping as possible before the sun goes down. This time Lauren only shopped at Justice with us, then went with Dad and Christina to ride her scooter at the park and play some more at Chuck E. Cheese. Nana went with Emma and me to shop at JC Penney, where Emma was able to restock her clothing supply. She outgrows clothes so fast that by Christmas she needs as much as she needed when school started back in August. We met up with Landon, Christina, Lauren, Justin, Stacy and Lincoln at Pei Wei for lunch, then continued our shopping at JoAnn so I could buy fabric to make some church clothes for Emma.
This is Lauren playing with some modeling clay at Nana's house...
When we got back to Nana's house, I did laundry, organized and packed our stuff for the ride home (I do a lot of the preliminary stuff, Landon loads the truck before we leave). We left Sunday morning. We made great time and only stopped once. We made it to the Luke's house in Spanish Fork by about 4:00pm. They had made an amazing dinner for us! I almost wanted to cry because it looked so good after our long drive. We love visiting with the Lukes and unfortunately we only had a couple of hours to get in as much talking as we could. The kids are always so happy to see each other and I think they could play for days without wanting a break. Talking to Jane is like therapy for me and always puts me in a good mood. Sadly, Emma wasn't feeling well and we had to leave early because she was in a lot of pain. We left and drove up to Kristen's house where Emma soon purged a whole week's worth of food. I'm sure the Lukes were grateful we had arranged to stay with Kristen that night.
Monday, Kristen and Oliviana went shopping with us at Barnes and Noble, Nordstrom Rack and JoAnn's (again) and we all ate lunch together at Pei Wei (again). Emma was feeling much better and we kept a close eye on her portion size and food choices.
This is the girls playing on the way inside to Barnes and Noble so Emma could spend her giftcard...

Here's a picture of Oliviana and Lauren enjoying their chicken Lo Mein kids' meals...
We hit the road for home around 2:00pm, and arrived in Rexburg around 6:00pm.
We are so happy to be home! We had such a nice trip, but sleeping in our own beds and relaxing in our house is pretty great after 10 days away.
Here's a video of Lauren doing her hula hoop while we pump gas in northern Utah...