catch-up

Chris/CB had a conference in Montreal. I tagged along after I successfully renewed my passport. I travel "overseas" so little that I didn't notice it was expired until days before, so Chris found a place I could renew it on the same day -- New Orleans, of all places. The passport part was pretty easy -- within two hours of arriving, I had a hot off the press brand-new passport and headed back to the airport. If only I would have known my plane from NOLA would be delayed 3.5 hours due to bad weather in Atlanta, I could have spent more time exploring that interesting city, in all its humid glory. Anyway, after several hours, I made it to Atlanta, and miraculously was one of the last people on my flight to Montreal (also delayed). I arrived in our hotel room in Montreal at 2:30am. I had left my house that morning at 4:30am. I was very tired, but slept in, so that was great.

Anyway, Montreal is a great city. Full of modern architecture and then old stone churches -- right next to each other, all over the city.


Another highlight was using the city's bike rental system to ride all over with my sister-in-law, Amy (her husband teaches at BYU and gets to go to the same conference, so lucky for me, she came, too!). It was such fun. Here she is, looking very Audrey Hepburn, I think.

We ate what we wanted, when we wanted, and did just what we wanted, so really the trip was perfect. Here we are after one such meal --

Directly following our Montreal trip, some friends invited us to join them at their beach house in Surf City. We are not people who turn down beach trips, so of course we went. The kids even got to miss a day of school -- that's just how we roll with beach trips!

There was boogie boarding and some surfing.

burying -- Grace, Daisy (who at that moment screamed that something was biting her), and Noelle.

S and G doing some digging.

And Claire, 18 months, loved feeding Ollie, 15 months. He loved being fed, so it was a win/win. These two were fun to watch . . .

All the kids, on the steps of the beach house making silly faces.

Thanks, Hansons! It was a great time!!

This is just a random picture from our last swim meet. I just threw it in there for the grandparents. :)

All in all, there is lots going on, but I'm sure that's not at all surprising. The kids are doing great in school, and we are looking forward to track out in three more weeks. Then it's back to the beach for us again, this time to Emerald Isle. Anyone want to join us?