catching up. part 2.

Ellie's first trip to California....

As you probably know, I was born in California and lived there until I was six. Although the first 6 years of my life do not probably qualify as "growing up" so much, but I still love to claim that I'm from California. My dad still lives in California (LA area), along with my Aunt Lois and a few other family members. Nick has only had the privelege of going to Cali once, which was for our amazing honeymoon. By the way, that was 4 years ago this week. Yesterday was our anniversary! I can't believe it's been 4 years already!! Anyways, the point of this post is to tell about Ellie's first trip to Cali back in April, so here it goes...







First I must say that our trip was not planned far in advance, as it was for my Uncle Lee's funeral, Aunt Lois's husband and love of her life. My sisters and I knew that we had to be there, for Aunt Lois and for our Dad. He was probably my dad's best friend, so we really wanted to be there for him too. I decided to take Ellie since she doesn't have that many opportunities to see her Grandpa, and none of my Dad's siblings had met her yet (with the exception of Uncle Larry, who lives in Missouri and has random connections with Nick's family).

< all the attention from her great aunts and uncles. We were able to see 2 of my dad's sisters and their husbands that we hadn't seen in years. One of them came to our wedding 4 years ago, but the other, I hadn't seen since I was 10 years old. It really was such a special time for most of dad's siblings to be together. It had been a really long time since that had happened. It was awesome to hear stories of their childhood!

< Ellie especially loved the attention from Grandpa. I wish she could see him more often, but this was only the 3rd time she had seen him. But she has such an incredible bond with him that melts my heart. I want her to know her Grandpa so badly, but since he lives so far away, it's hard. He came to visit when she was a couple months old, again for her 1st birthday party, and then we saw him this trip in LA. I can't tell you how truly happy it made me to see her fall in love with her Grandpa so quickly! She would run to him every time he came in
the room, which she never did with other people at this point! He is so proud of her :)



And of course, we ended the trip with a visit to In-N-Out Burger. Ellie enjoyed it, even though she's not quite old enough to appreciate it yet! :) We got to the airport only 30 minutes before we were supposed to leave, because we absolutely had to get some In-N-Out! :)

It was a great trip, and I hope we get to go back soon. This time we have to take Nick and our new baby though too :)