Yet another trip home...

Tessa and I surprised my mom, dad, and brother with a visit a couple of weeks ago. My Aunt Krista was already planning on going with her kids...And last minute she invited me and we just kept it a secret from them! When we arrived after our 13 hour car ride, I put Tessa on the door step and knocked on the door while I hid behind the screen door. When my mom came to the door, she was so surprised that she started to cry. Now my mom is usually not an emotional person, so it really meant a lot to me when she reacted the way she did! We stayed a week and when it was time for us to come home, we got all the way to the Sierra's and got snowed in over night...So we ended up spending the night in Reno and were driving in the car for a total of 21 hours! It was a crazy long trip that I never want to repeat...that dang snow...how grateful I am for the California weather! Here are some of the many things we did while we were there!

This is my brother John's last Young Men's basketball game of the season. I got to go to his first one and it was fun to see how much he's improved!
Here's mom and Tessa being silly while we watched the game!

While I visited my Aunt Cindy, we took the gang of kids and wen to a place called, Jump On It. It's a big warehouse filled with trampolines and the air blown jumpy thingys. I was surprised at how much Tessa and my cousin Lizzie (who's almost 2) had fun playing and going down the slides. This is a pic of Tessa and my cousin Preston going down together....

Lizzie and Tessa trying to get up the ladder!
When Tessa was sliding down, her shoe was coming off, so she grabbed it in attempt to fix the problem and the result ended up in this position! Don't you just love those rolly thighs?!
My cousins Rachel and Lizzie with Tessa...on one of the trampoline!
We visited my grandparents a couple of times. This was my dad's attempt to occupy Tessa by reading to her. It's so cute to see them interact with each other. It makes me so happy!

I got up from my nap on Sunday to find that Gramie was taking Tessa out to experience the snow...I quickly followed with my camera since Tessa has never been in snow before. She was apprehensive and didn't really understand what was going on, but it was cute to watch just the same!

Here's Tessa, my cousin's Jared and Lizzie, and my bro Johnny!
One of the things I love about going home to my parents is all of the relaxing I get to do. And it's even better when Tessa does it with me!
One of the activities we did was visit President Hinckley's grave site. Along with his, we saw 4 other prophets graves too. It was a spiritual experience to be in the presence of such great men.
This was a plaque on the back of President Hinckley's tombstone. This just shows what a remarkable man and servant of the Lord he was. He dedicated his life to the Lord, what an example to live by.