I'm so glad when Daddy comes home ...

Hip, hip hooray!  Gordon is home from China.  He had two long trips at the beginning of the year this year.  His first trip was 2 weeks long and we decided we would stay here.  It went fairly quickly.  We kept ourselves busy with play dates and fun stuff (a girl's night out for Mom with buddy, Kelly, and a girls night at our house with some friends from church). 

But, this last trip was supposed to be 3 weeks - so we decided we would break up the trip and go down to LA to visit friends in the middle to make the time go more quickly.  It was SO fun and it DID make the time go more quickly.  PLUS, Daddy got to come home 4 days early, so that was an added bonus.  :)

The first week he was gone we had a fun weekend.  We had a Valentine's Day dinner and dessert auction at church and a birthday party on Saturday morning. Saturday afternoon, Spencer was invited to a birthday party for a friend that was moving away soon. It really helped our weekend to go quickly and helped us to not miss Daddy too much.  :)

Spencer's best friend, brown haired Jack, and his Mom, Kelly, came along to the Valentine's dinner.  (Jack's daddy had to work late that night)  It was great.  They had a spaghetti dinner and then they auctioned off desserts to the congregation and the money raised was used to help the girls go to their camp this summer.  It seemed like they made lots of mula.  I didn't hear the final count, though.  A lot of the items went beyond our pocket book, but luckily they had a little dessert bar where you could buy goodies for little prices so we were able to help out too. 

The birthday party on Saturday was at a local bounce house.  Spencer had a BLAST!  To say Spencer likes to jump is quite the understatement, so this is his idea of a good time!!

I didn't know all of the parents there, so I went ahead and blurred out all of the other kids.  But, check out our cute boy's smile.  He was having a good time!

That night he fell asleep at 5 pm and slept until 7 am the next day.  Wowzers. 

Monday morning, we headed down to LA to visit our friends for a week.  It was SO fun!!!  We stayed with the Ditty's first, and Spencer and Caroline immediately reconnected and found the swings outside.  The whole way down (7 hours) Spencer kept talking about the fun playground in their backyard.  He could have stayed out there all day every day.  It was awesome, for both of us.  :)

One of our first days there, we were also able to go and see my friend, Megan, and her cute new baby girl, Ava.  She is adorable!  I can't believe we didn't get a picture, but thanks for letting us come, Megan.  We love her already!

Unfortunately, a few days after we arrived, the Ditty's little guy woke up in the night throwing up.  So, the next morning we headed out to the Fletcher's to try and avoid the flu on vacation. (Yuck) They were gracious and accepted us earlier than expected and we had a great time there as well.  Spencer LOVES their kids.  And he usually plays pretty well with them.  We had a few melt downs, but that's to be expected on vacation, right?  New place, new friends, new toys, no naps ...

We took WAY too few pictures, but we had a great time.  Thank you for having us, friends! We were able to catch up with lots of old friends over the week!