Woods of North Dakota

Many of you may frequent my blog enough to look at the other blogs I scope out. One of which is entitled Woods of N. Dakota. 'Who are these extraordinary people?', you may ask yourself. They are my brother and his family. Rob, Valarie, Haley and Jake Wood. This blog entry is extremely late, as I was hoping that Valarie and I would share pictures before posting. Turns out, neither of us took too many while they were here in Utah (Val, feel free to steal any of these for your blog!). We were lucky enough to have them visit from North Dakota in late July. They were only here for a few days, so each day was priceless. Much to my dismay, half of these days I was home with Mason while he was sick. I only get to see the Woods once a year, if I'm lucky. I was so heartbroken that I didn't get to spend more time with them. Haley is '5 going on 15', as Val puts it. Jake is 2. They are the sweetest kids. So much fun and yet so polite. No doubt they get this from both of their parents. (I didn't get very many pics of Haley, so Val, I stole some from your blog.) The couple of days I did spend with them were filled with laughter and delight. Valarie introduced us to a new board game called Banagram, which we have since ordered from Amazon.com. Nicole generally kicks everyone's butt at it, but I have my wins occasionally. My mom was sick at the same time Mason was, so my Dad came over to Nic's house to visit. I had him bring all the old photos of his family that we'd just printed from slides. Not only were there lots of Rob's Grandma Reynolds, but there were even half a dozen young pictures of Rob in there. I was happy that I had asked Dad to bring them, since I wasn't sure how much interest Rob would have. Turns out, he had plenty of interest, so we let him take as many of them as he wanted home. Both his/my Grandma and Grandpa Reynolds have passed away, so these pictures aren't easy to come by.

There were many hours spent in Nic and Wade's fabulous backyard. They have a great swing set, trampoline, sandbox, and teeter totter. I found the teeter totter pictures were some of my favorites. It's just not that often that I get to teeter with my Dad. Wade and the Woods were able to do lots of activities together, including hiking to a waterfall and going swimming. Val had some cute pics of these events that I 'borrowed'.

Valarie got in some shopping time, during her stay, but sadly not with me! She has such great style and I would've loved to have some girl time with her. Instead, we had wonderful quality time with the kids. This was the first time the Woods had ever met Mason, so it was great to have pictures of the cousins together. Not to mention, it was so great to get hugs and kisses from Haley and Jake. They just don't know us very well and Haley takes some time to warm up to people. In just a few minutes she was following me around and I was so HAPPY about it. It took me a few (zillion) tries to get kisses from Jake, but I finally succeeded. Granted, he was hopped up on Root Beer and it was way past his bedtime. So I took advantage of him, sue me! Hopefully, if all goes as planned, the Woods will be moving back to Utah in the very near future. They've been in North Dakota for 5 years now and we miss them terribly.

Love you guys!