Girls' Weekend

What a weekend I had last weekend! I got the chance to head to sunny Arizona for my sweet niece Claire's baptism and had the chance after the baptism to enjoy a brief but super-fun get-away with my mom and sisters at a hotel nearby. We laughed. We cried. We got bugged with each other. We remembered how much we love each other. Oh, how I love to be with my mom and sisters! (Here's a whole post about my sisters if you're interested - and here's a post about our get-together last year)

And as always, it was so fun to be with my nieces and nephews. I love how when I don't have my own kids with me, I can focus more on my sibling's kids for a bit. Shawni's got great kids and this little Claire is such a dear friend for my Eliza as well as being quite a remarkable little girl in so many ways. I loved being there to see her glow with joy at being the center of attention and following Christ's example with her baptism. She really understood what her baptism meant and was so happy and sweet about everything.

Here's me and Claire after her baptism (somehow didn't get a shot of her in her baptism dress, oh well)

After working together to prep and clean up all the food for the post-baptism luncheon at Shawni's house, my mom, sisters and I headed over to a hotel nearby to have a little time to ourselves.

Our sister, Saydi, is currently living in London so we spent about 2 hours
talking and laughing with her on Skype in our hotel room. Gotta love technology.

We were laughing so hard we were crying.

Here we are headed out for a nice dinner together.


Before we had to go our separate ways on Sunday evening, we made this podcast about how love is the ultimate answer to so many things. We were sitting right near this sign in Shawni's house as we made the podcast - very appropriate.

Love is the answer. Love is always the answer.