MORE Weekend Warriors!

I feel like we've won the visiting jackpot! All these weekends back-to-back-to-back of getting to see our family, it's starting to seem like the norm, but I swear it's not - sorta like having money is the norm after you win the lotto, but winning the lotto is definitely not normal. Perhaps with our new location it could become the norm, though... mwahahaha! Anyhow, Joe surprised me Friday morning by having the day off work, so he and Patrick and I loaded up the car and headed to Grand Junction (where we were planning on spending the weekend anyway, just not such a nice long weekend!) for my new niece Amelia's baby blessing. We arrived to quite a packed house, since Kari and Jonathan were there (obviously) with Amelia; Elsha, Brian, and Kalena now live there; my crazy Grandma Gustavson has been living there quite a while now; our uncle Mark Gustavson was visiting from California (and though I have no photos of him, he looks a lot like my dad. Patrick immediately took to Mark and seemed to adopt him as Grandpa Gus #2); and Eric, Amy, and Espen live in town and visited most of Saturday and Sunday! So we had lots of adults and 4 babies under 2 years old! We tried to get a decent picture of the "older" cousins together, and here's roughly how that went:

Close! At least everyone's on the bench...

Uh-oh, things are falling apart....

Quick, Brian! Sit them back down again!

Now THAT's not bad... you're just all looking the wrong way! Well, maybe next year...

Now, let's bring in the newborn and try it again!

I imagine Espen is thinking "excuse me, buck-o, this is my baby that I'm trying to hold. You need to scoot back because she obviously wants to be on my lap."

Patrick doles out some consolation pats for the wailing baby. She seems consoled, don't you think?

Even trying smaller groups with more adults wasn't very successful. You need a lightning quick lens to catch them not in motion!

Espen slowed down and Amelia calmed down for a nice snuggly hug. Awwwww :)

But watch out! Crazy Grandma is trying to eat Amelia! And Amelia's trying to eat grandma! Quick, find these girls a snack!

Grandma gives up, but Amelia seems to have acquired a taste for sweaters.

Amelia is a huge fan of her bouncer, and when she wasn't in it, the big kids were ALSO a fan of the bounciness! Kalena and Espen battled it out for the throne...

If you won't move I'll just have to SIT on you! And you don't know where this diaper has been...

Sometimes Espen won and could bounce to his heart's content

Sometimes Kalena won and busted out her celebratory supermodel poses.

On Sunday we all got dressed up, including Amelia, who wore her mother's blessing gown.

Here's one proud grandma! She thought this day might never come, much less come in such an adorable package.

Two proud parents, plus one tired baby. Good work, Kari and Jonathan!

Two parents and two proud grandparents; Jonathan's mom and step-dad were able to visit for the weekend as well (though they didn't stay in the House of Craziness like the rest of us).

All in all, it was really an incredible weekend! Good thing more babies are on the queue so we can do it again soon! Haha!