We got our last lower 48th State!!

Either together or as individuals Josh  and I have been to all of the lower 48 states!!  Our last state was Kentucky, and we went there over Thanksgiving weekend.  We were not originally planning on going to Kentucky during Thanksgiving because we were planning on going to Colorado to meet all of my family at my brother’s place for the Thankful Holiday.  Unfortunately, Josh accidently booked the wrong weekend to Denver, so we ended up going the weekend before everyone else.  It was too expensive to change the flights, so we went early, and used Thanksgiving weekend to go to Kentucky.

Our flight was an easy one with Payson!!  Some have not been so easy.  We had a whole row to ourselves, and he slept the entire time in the middle seat! (Yes, he still has a pacifier.  It is so much easier to have it on the airplanes.  We are going to nix the “paci” as soon as our flights our over!  Our last flight is planned before he turns 2 while he is still free!  Just in case you were wondering).

Colorado was snowy and cold, but it was a lot of fun to see my brother, Benji, his wife, Kayla, and their sweet baby girl, Alexis.  Payson absolutely adored Alexis.  He always wanted to go check on her when he heard her crying.  When he was holding her, he didn’t want to give her back to me, and he was so soft and gently with her.  It was really fun to watch him with Alexis.

Benji is a medical student at Rocky Mountain Vista in Parker, CO.  He is also one of Payson’s favorite uncles. He warmed right up to Benji and let him “practice” his medical skills.  It was cute to see Benji listening to Payson’s heart beat, looking in his ears, and checking his reflexes.  Josh also let Benji practice by letting him pop his back and work on his body to relax it

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Here are some other pictures at Benji and Kayla’s house:

 

Josh and I finally got to go to the Temple and see the new Temple movie!  Thank you for watching Payson for us Benji and Kayla!!  The water fountain was so pretty with the snowy background.  It was nice to have a Temple date with Josh.  We went to Cafe Rio before the Temple for lunch!

 

For part of our Colorado trip we drove South to Alamosa, CO.  Our plan was to visit Great Sandunes National Park and Canyon City/Royal Gorge.  The three places were pretty much snowed out, so we didn’t get to see much of them.  We did see Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument and saw some cool fossils in the State of the Art visitors center, but chose not to see the fossils outside because of the snow and coldness.  Our favorite place was Garden of the God’s.  We bundled up and took a little walk on the trail.  It was pretty, and the rocks were really neat.

     

Our trip the next weekend was a little different.  We drove instead of flew, Josh was sick most of the time, and we were all still tired from the Colorado trip, but none-the-less, it was better than staying in our tiny coach house I suppose!!  ha ha  It was pretty cool to see Mammoth Cave- which was the reason we went down to Kentucky besides getting the state off our list!  Mammoth cave is huge.  A semi truck could literally drive through the cave.  It was too dark in the cave to take good pictures, and we couldn’t use flash, but we got some pictures around the cave

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For our Thanksgiving dinner we went to Cracker Barrel for the second Thanksgiving in a row!  It will probably be a new tradition when we have no where else to go.  (For the record, we have been invited to people’s houses for the past two years, but we traveled both Thanksgiving days, so ended up turning down the invitations).  On the way the home we wanted leftovers like everyone else gets for Thanksgiving so we went to Cracker Barrel again!!

 

The rest of our Kentucky trip consisted of Josh being sick, and me getting lots of Christmas shopping done!!  I loved some of the Black Friday deals this year, and we found outlets on the way home, where we spent even more money!  Now we can officially saw we have been to all of the lower 48 states.  Payson has been to 41 states, and he isn’t even 2, yet!!