Firsts

We've had a lot of firsts here in our family recently.

1) Weston had his first visit to the Emergency Room and his first black eye. The story: No matter how tight we strap him into things he always seems to find a way free. While shopping at Target he wormed his way out of the safety belt on the cart and then thrust himself over the side landing smack on his eye. Nothing we tried would consule him and within five minutes he was looking like Quasimodo with a serious drooping eye. Ten minutes later he was projectile vomiting. Since trauma to the head mixed with vomiting is not considered a good thing we were told by our doctor's office to take him to the E.R. Luckily after five hours and a clear CAT scan we were able to go home. He did have a nice shiner for a few days.

2) Cicialy started gymnastics for the first time this summer. She is learning to balance on the balance beam, become familiar with being on the bars, do forward rolls and cartwheels, along with different kinds of jumps on the trampoline. Basically just extremely elemental skills, but she is loving it! Her coordination is vastly improving too.

3) We took our first extremely long family road trip a few weeks ago. Since we had already flown to Utah two times in the past year and a half, we decided that this time we would drive. Our reasoning was so that we could stay longer and have access to our own vehicle the entire time. It took two long days in the car to get there but was totally worth it! We spent two whole weeks jammed packed with bar-b-ques, cousin sleepovers, going to Lagoon with all of Dan's siblings and their families (except for Jake whose on a mission), movies, cousins' baseball games, going to Idaho to see my sister and her kids for a few days, and visiting with some of our good friends from Stansbury Park ( Alisa I will never forgive you for not showing up - just kidding but I was really sad not to be able to see you on this trip) - Thanks Holly for all the planning and for the visit. The highlight of the trip, and our main reason for going to Utah as our family vacation this year, was the big Packer family reunion up in Heber on the 3rd and 4th of July. We had so much fun canoeing, participating in the challenge course, camping overnight in cabins, eating endless soft serve ice cream cones, and most importantly seeing Dan's grandparent's, aunts and uncles, and all the cousins, cousins, cousins. My kids were in cousin heaven our entire trip. During the drive back to Utah, and even now a week later, Will starts crying about how much he misses his cousins. Thanks everyone who took the time and effort to make our trip so much fun!

(Cici threw and in Will's eye right before we took this picture)

(I hope Cici is only itching her nose : )

4) Last week William started swimming by himself in the deep end for the first time. The motivating factor - his friend Riley learned how to swim while we were on vacation and I guess he didn't want her swimming around without him!