My Weekend Trip . . . and a Picture of Parker!

This past weekend, I traveled to Washington state to see my oldest sister, Julie, participate in the Mrs. Washington pageant. I thought I'd post some pictures of my beautiful sister and tell her how proud I am of her. I'm sure most of us have something that we dream we could do or wish we had the courage to do. For Julie, growing up, she loved watching pageants and dreamed of participating in one - but she never had the courage or confidence. When she heard about this pageant for married women, she decided to go for it. She did an excellent job and got fourth runner up!! Not only is this an accomplishment itself, but most of these women have been in pageants for most of their lives and are very experienced. Julie gave it her best and although she was much more inexperienced, she gave all those women a run for their money! I'm proud of her for two reasons: 1) She had the courage to do something she dreamed of that was a HUGE step outside her comfort zone, and 2) She was the most modestly dressed contestant - something that was very important to her as she participated in this pageant. Congrats on doing a great job Julie - we are very proud of you!

Here is Julie with the top five contestants - Julie is on the left, dressed in black.



Here is Julie on stage just after she was announced as the fourth runner up. I wish I had some better on stage photos, but my camara kept taking fuzzy pictures!



Here is Julie just after the pageant. She was all smiles!



Here are Julie's four cute kids - my nieces and nephews (Wynter, Payton, Josh, and Jayce)!



My big accomplishment for the weekend was that I left Parker with Dave while I traveled to Washington! Dave is probably ready to nominate me for the "Most Paranoid Mother" award and I could very possibly win. I typed up an hour by hour schedule for Dave to use - which I knew Parker would never follow exactly, but I had to do something to make myself feel okay about leaving him. Plus, I'm sure I called way too many times! But, as most of you could guess, Dave did an excellent job taking care of Parker. Both of my boys were happy and healthy when I got home. I'm grateful that Dave was so willing to take care of Parker so I could go - I missed them both a ton! On the trip, I traveled with my mom and my sister Shauna, and although most of the conversation revoloved around Parker and Lukas (Shauna's little boy), we had so much fun and it was a great time. On the way home, my niece, Wynter, rode with us and she'll spend a few weeks with my mom in Idaho. It was neat to spend time with her too!

Below is a picture of Parker I took on the day I left - I probably looked at it on my camara about fifty times during the trip. When I took it, Parker was being silly and sticking out his lips and taking really deep breaths. Be careful . . . you might just fall in love with this face!