New Mexico Trip

Sean finished up his family practice inservice rotation at the end of September and we were all so happy! That last week he was especially busy and worked long hours. I don’t know if I was more excited about Sean being done with the long hours or that I was finally starting to feel less nauseous and more human. Whichever it was, September was a long month and October has been much more pleasant so far! Sean took a week off at the start of October. Mom P ended up in the hospital with some stomach issues and we went down a little earlier than planned. We left on a Friday afternoon from Sean’s work in Salt Lake. We left about 5:30 and were hoping to get to Cortez Colorado around 11. Unfortunately I forgot that we live in Salt Lake County now and traffic is atrocious on i-15 at rush hour. It took us FOREVER to get to Provo! After we finally made it through all the traffic, the roads were great and we arrived at our hotel in Cortez around 1 AM. They had no crib for Alana so she slept with me and Brett slept with Sean, the kids thought it was so fun! We ate breakfast at the hotel while watching coverage of the NM Balloon Fiesta. We tried to listen to General Conference along the way, but had trouble going through dead zones. We arrived at Mom and Dad P’s house right at the start of the Saturday afternoon session of conference. Mom P. had been discharged the day before and was feeling great! We had so much fun just being in their home and being with them! It was weird to think it had been 6 months since we had been there! We spent the weekend reading books, watching conference, eating yummy food, taking naps, and playing outside. Our good friends just moved up to Los Alamos so we went and played with Cam on Monday, which was so fun! On Tuesday we went to Santa Fe to buy new pajamas for Brett and look for Halloween costumes. We also ate lunch at Dions-mmmm! While we were at lunch we got a text with news that Sean’s oldest brother and his wife are expecting their first baby! Yay! On Wednesday, Dad P got the day off and we went to Albuquerque. We went to the mall in Rio Rancho to start, then to Wecks for lunch. After that we went to the putt putt by our old apartment to play in the arcade. The kids had so much fun and Alana even hit the jackpot on one of the games and scored us 250 tickets. The kids got lots of prizes. We stopped at one more halloween store in hopes of finding a giraffe costume for Alana and a Luke Skywalker costume for Brett. No such luck. On Thursday we needed to head back home. We left about 5 AM, but by the end of the 12 hour drive we were all done with being in the car! It was really nice to be back home and to get some things done around our house. On Saturday, Sean fixed the broken towel rack and finished the touch up painting in our bathroom, helped Dad paint the front door, and painted another door for our linen closet. It was fun to have a work day! We also bought Alana her very first underwear and potty that afternoon. She has been so interested in using the potty and was really excited to pick out a little lady bug potty and some Frozen underwear. We have had two potty afternoons so far and she has done a great job. I need to be more diligent about trying with her. Sean went back to work this last Monday and has enjoyed his surgery rotation as much as he could ever enjoy a surgery rotation =) His hours have been great and its nice to actually eat dinner together again=)