My Gorgeous Girl!

We had a failed attempt at Family Pictures in October... Raegan was so patient and tried so hard for us, but we got started late and the lighting was bad, so we ended up with zero group pics. But the whole day was worth it for me because Raegan got this picture: This picture completely captures the essence of Victoria; such a beautiful, genuine smile and you can see the glorious coloring of her eyes!

Yummy!

Recently Tori has developed some new favorite foods!
One of her favorites is blueberries. She loves, loves, loves them- and usually looks like this at the end of any given day: Except the blue is usually mixed up with whatever we had for dinner on her face as well.

And of course, her other new favorite is: Guacamole! Matt's sister makes the best guacamole and this was my first attempt at replicating it. Victoria loved it and I've made it many times since. She eats it with a spoon.

PIGWAB 2009

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I'm posting about that time of year again: PIGWAB! For those of you who haven't experienced a PIGWAB post before, you can find out more about this family celebration here.


This year, of course, we celebrated on 09/09/09. Because the Acronym for our celebration's name includes the word PIG, I made piggie cupcakes for this year's party: As in year's past, the kids spent much of their time in the bounce house. This year, some of our little munchkins figured out how to deflate the bouncer, which seemed to be as much fun as actually jumping in it.

Because September is woefully lacking in a holiday-of-the-month, we voted on a theme for this year's party, and the winning theme was: Through the Decades!
So, basically, each family was in charge coming up with costumes and a report about their decade.

I'd like to apologize in advance about my photography for the weekend. This was our first weekend back from Germany and I guess I was just so exhausted I couldn't take a good picture? The camera battery died, so we ended up with more video footage than still shots. I don't know- I really have no excuse, I'm grasping at straws.

So, our family was in charge of the 1980's!!! Yea! Tori and I wore leg warmers:

You can also see one of our other trademark Acronyms for the PIGWAB celebration: WWG1WGA, which stands for Where We Go One, We Go All. It's just a little tribute about our eternal family. I don't know if that actually counts as an Acronym since it is not a word... The bell is symbolic also, maybe I'll explain that one of these years!

For one of our activities, we decided to do karaoke with a selection of songs from each decade of the 20th century. Paige, Matt's sister, worked really hard to compile all the music for us and we had a total blast! We decided to have karaoke at all of our future PIGWABs!

Matt's sister, Raegan and her family were over the 1940's. She is pregnant and dressed up like Rosie the Riveter and looked awesome! David dressed up like an American soldier, with Corbin dressed up like a Kamikaze pilot and Luke in liederhosen, symbolizing the young Aryan Nation! Totally hysterical.

Paige and John didn't dress up, but Sydney reported on the1950's and Lexy on the 70's. I wish you could see her excellent bell bottoms in this pic. They are perfect!

Matt's parents, Calvin and Marsha, were representing the 1960's, and I think they should win the costume contest for the year! Calving made his pants- totally priceless.

And of course, here we are! As I mentioned, we were responsible for reporting on the 1980's, which was so much fun. Matt's going for a Miami Vice look and Isaac threw the biggest fit about wearing those short shorts. He kept saying, "I look like a dork!" Daphne is wearing an outfit that she actually wears right now, but I thought it had a Cindy Lauper feel to it. If only that skirt were neon.

As with all of our PIGWAB celecrations, at least those throughout the summer, we had to partake of some BlueBell Ice Cream. Blue Bell is the absolute, hands-down, best ice cream in the country. Maybe the world. I had some pretty stellar ice cream in Europe, but Blue Bell's homemade vanilla will always be first in my heart. Victoria approves as well:

First Day of School 2009

Since we were in Germany for the first two weeks of school, Isaac and Daphne's first day of school was a little delayed. Not as delayed as I am in posting this, but delayed nonetheless!

Matt was able to take some time off work when we returned, which made our transition back into regular life much easier. I had a lot to do to get my classroom ready and to get the kids all ready for school, so matt got to pick up a little extra Daddy duty!

That first Monday back was filled with an insanely long to-do list and I finally got to make the "back to School" Cake, our Hunter Family Tradition, very late Monday night. The cake is ridiculous looking this year, but it served it's purpose. It says, "First Day of School 2009" and then has each child't initials and what grade they are starting. They get to hold it for photos ont he first day and then eat some cake with me while they tell me about their first day back!

This year, if you can believe it, I have a second grader:

and a Kindergartener!

The cuteness is overwhelming, isn't it?

There's No Place Like Home.

In the days leading up to our return trip back to America, Matt and I both wished we could just click our heels and teleport to our home. We were ready to leave, but not too excited to embark on this long and stressful adventure:

Our flight back home was at 11:00 am, so we had time to catch one last breakfast at our hotel's extravagant breakfast buffet! Then we headed to the airport. This was supposed to be a really smooth process. Mostly.
We had a pretty small rental car and our luggage would not fit in it with us. So the plan was: Matt would drive me and the kids to the airport (only 10 minutes from our hotel) and drop us off with the stroller and carry-ons. Then, he would go back to the hotel and get the other bags, check out, return to the airport, drop off the other bags, drive over and return the rental car and then meet me at the airport to check in. Matt even drove to the airport the night before so he would know just how to go to get to the right gate and to the rental car place, etc.. He timed it and we gave ourselves plenty of time. Then as we drove to the airport Saturday morning, we saw construction all along the autobahn on our way to the airport. Sure enough, our exit was closed!!! We had to take a detour and our finicky GPS had no idea about the construction, so it kept re-directing us the wrong way... this little kink in our plan added an extra 10 minutes to each leg of the 4 leg trip- which meant 40 extra minutes!!

We were both pretty stressed and Matt dropped me off at the airport with the kids and everything we had been able to fit in the car. Unfortunately, I couldn't carry everything that fit. So, in order to move about and get into the airport, I was pushing a stroller and dragging a big heavy bag and the kids were holding as much as their sweet little bodies could handle. We would go a few feet and then move what we left behind, then move a few feet and go get the rest. It was sort of an inch-worming process. Then, we got inside and I couldn't find our flight on the board. No one was at the desk for our airline and Isaac and Daphne were playing tag around me and all the luggage . I could feel the sweat beading up on my head. I was praying that Matt would get everything else done in time.... I went to check us in and Victoria's boarding pass was for a different flight from the rest of us. Ughhh! SO, I stood there at the counter trying to keep an antsy Tori appeased in the stroller while Isaac and Daphne contuinued the aforementioned game of tag around me and the Airline workers tried to make sure my baby was on the same flight as me!! Finally I saw Matt start bringing in the bags and then watched him dart back out the door to return the rental car to the rental car station, which was a 1/2 mile or so to the terminal. So, he had to drop off the car and then run back to me and the kids....

Finally he came in and we got all the bags checked and loaded, but unfortunately, they considered our carseat and stroller to be over-sized baggage, so we had to walk to another area of the airport to get those checked. The attendant there asked for our boarding passes three different times and by this time Victoria had to be out of the stroller so we could check it, so with all three children now part of the game of tag- I was a little flustered. We walked over to security and went through, losing lots of toiletries on the way. Then as we put on our shoes, we went to look at our boarding passes to see which way to go.

Problem.

No Boarding Passes.

Gasp!

"They're at the over-sized baggage counter!!!"

I sprint back out of security and back to the over-sized baggage counter, where they tell me that they returned them to the ticketing counter SO I run as fast as I can to the ticketing counter where I find: our boarding passes! Thank you, Lord!
Then, I sprint back to security and go back through all the checks to see my sweet family waiting for me. And we actually had about 45 minutes still until boarding time. Really? It didn't seem like we should have had extra time, but somehow we did. Since we were about to embark on 17 hours of flight time, we decided to brave the germy airport playland and let the kids get out some energy:

And off we went, from Stuttgart, Baden-Wurttemburg, Germany to London, England. We were all smiles on this first leg of the journey!

The next flight was a little less smiley. We arrived in London and barely made it to the gate in time to board our 11 hour flight to San Francisco. That's right. Eleven hours. Unfortunately, we weren't seated together. Matt was seated by himself and I was seated with all three kids a few rows ahead. We thought that certainly, on an over-night flight, someone would switch seats with us. So we asked the two single passengers on either side of me and the kids an both of them said NO! Are you kidding me? You'd rather sit by a screaming baby all night than move back 4 rows? Nice. Very neighborly. And then, I started to cry. All the stress and emotion of the day backed up on me and I was picturing this tremendously long flight with a screaming baby and all of us seated separately. The tears started streaming down my cheeks and 3 extremely kind passengers from Matt's row switched with all of us so that our family could be together. Thanks, unknown kind strangers! We were so grateful for their kindness and the flight, although very long- ended up being relatively calm. Although Matt and I didn't sleep at all, the kids slept for about five hours and were relatively happy for the awake portion of the trip. Yay!

We arrived in SanFrancisco, where we had to:

• deboard the plane, go to baggage claim and
• retrieve all 9 of our checked items,
• take them through customs and
• re-check our baggage,
• go through security again,
• then get across the airport to our gate and make our next flight.

All in about an hour- oh yeah and with three children and no stroller. Piece of cake.

Well, we did actually accomplish all of those things in our very sweaty and stressed state, and remarkably walked up just in time to board. We hopped on our tiny little commuter jet from San Fran to Salt Lake City and all three kids fell asleep again! So after a very short flight, we made it safely home to our Rocky Mountains. I wish I had thought to pull out the camera so you could see Isaac and Daphne run to Nanny and Papa, who came to pick us up. It was so sweet to see!

We were so happy to be home! Even when we went to pick up our bags and we had only 3 of our 9 checked items, I couldn't get mad. I was just happy to be home.
We made it back to our house and Victoria had a great time exploring her new pad. She fell down the stairs right away, but you couldn't get her down. She thought she'd never seen so many toys. The next 24 hours were filled with "Hey, Isaac, Remember this toy?" or " Daphne, look- they're still here!" They were like kids on Christmas morning. Everything that had bored them before was so exciting. I guess absence does make the heart grow fonder.

Later that next day, we were able to go to Nanny's house for family dinner. Isaac and Daphne literally could not wait to see their cousins. Matt's mom offered to let them come over early so Matt and I could nap with Tori and recover from 30 or so hours of no sleep and traveling.

The girls (sans Sydney)

The Boys (sans Austin and Luke)- Don't ask me why Isaac is wearing his hat that way. I have no idea.

And Tori got to meet Luke again, and we all looked at them and gasped! I couldn't believe how similar they look! I had always thought Luke looked like Matt, and Tori also, but seeing them together was a whole new feeling...

And with that, we were back. Right back into normal life. Sooo grateful for family and our own home and air conditioning and ice.... the list goes on and on. We loved our summer SO much, but ...

There's No Place Like Home.