Amber's First Trip to PA!

By: Shelsy

I have a lot of things to write about, so I'm going to break it up into a few separate posts over the next few days.

Last week Amber visited PA for the very first time! This will be the first trip of many. :-) We drove, so this was also Amber's first road trip. We were kind of nervous--we didn't know how she'd do. But, she did great! We drove straight through to get there. It took about 20 hours exactly, which is only 2-3 hours longer than it would have normally taken us. Considering we had to stop for about 45 minutes every time she needed to eat, that wasn't too bad!

We were all pretty beat when we finally got there, though. Amber slept most of the drive, and then got really cranky for the last two hours--understandably. Ryan and I didn't sleep at all--and I was cranky for the last several hours. :-) But we got there around 9:30 in the morning and once we all had some naps we had the whole day to spend with mom, Mindy, and Carter, which was really nice!

Speaking of Carter, he's getting so big! He's running all over the place now, becoming very independent. And he and Amber look so much alike, it's crazy! There's no denying they're related. :-) Here are some pictures of him, including a little photo shoot we had with the two of them. So cute!



The reason we headed up to PA was because Ryan's second cousin got married. It just worked out perfectly that the wedding was being held on the bride's family's property about 15 minutes from where my family lives. How convenient! The wedding was beautiful! And Amber got to meet all of her extended family on the Joseph side. Here she is meeting Situ for the first time!

Here's a video of her first slow dance with daddy!



The next day mom and dad had a bunch of family over to their house so that my whole side of the family could meet Amber. Here she is with her great grandparents:

It was so nice to get to see everyone and give them all a chance to see her. :-)

Our last day there was very relaxed. Mindy and Carter came over and we just hung out on the porch with mom pretty much all day. It was wonderful. Gram and Grandpa came over for a little while too, and we just did whatever we felt like, which wasn't much. :-) Here we are going for a little walk in the afternoon:

We got out the little kiddie pool for the kids. Amber loved it! Carter was not too interested in sharing his pool with her, but he was in there long enough for me to get some pictures:



Then it was time to come home. We took it a little slower getting backed and stopped in a hotel halfway. We ended up with a room that had two doubles, so here's Amber all sprawled out on her bed while Ryan and I shared the other one. :-)

I'm sure she liked being able to stretch out after being in the carseat for all those hours. I don't think she really appreciated having to go back into the carseat the next morning either:

When we got home we made sure we didn't go anywhere for about two days so she could recover a little. :-) It was a great visit and I can't wait until we can go back!

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