Once Upon a United States Visit

What a fun time we had going back to the USA recently! This was the kids and my first visit back and Mark's second (you'll remember he had an emergency trip back right after Thanksgiving to see his dad in hospital).
Here's a few stats and some fun pictures from our trip:

12,579 roundtrip flight miles
3 countries
4,765 miles driven
8 churches visited
6 states (Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma)
2 Taco John's visits
1 Chick-fil-a visit
3 Sonic visits
1 Chipotle visit
1 ER visit
1 herd of elk sighted
MANY mule deer sightings
3 fox sightings
1 MOOSE sighting
3 different Wal-Marts visited (did you KNOW they have Peanut Butter Cookie Pop Tarts now?! LOVE!)
4 -the number of times I tried to pay different cashiers the £5 note I had in my wallet

The starting of packing for 4 children 

this is just the girls, this is not bows, 

or shoes, 

or accessories

girls are high maintenance by nature...

Here we're waiting to board our plane for our 5:30 a.m. flight out of Aberdeen.

Airport security is the PITS when you have four young children, 

apparently you have to tell your kids ahead of time that is NOT acceptable to prance through metal detectors in airport security

it's a pat-down she won't forget

Hanging out in Frankfurt, Germany. 

Turns out native hotdogs (frankfurters) are pretty dang delectable. 
Who knew?!

 The big girls CRASHED, hard, on the 9 hour flight from Germany to Denver

 in real-life Nessie would FLIP if she knew Deenie had her foot that close to her face--

ain't gonna happen

My parents met us in Denver so Airdrie's Papa could meet her for the first time....lots of tears of joy!

At Mark's parent's farm there was a plethora of guys doing a controlled burn.

Shouldn't it go something like 

"How many Anderson men does it take to burn a small patch of grass..."

The kids with some of their cousins

This is only a very small percentage of Anderson grandchildren represented here. Our children have THIRTEEN cousins on the Anderson side and still counting... 

Mark with his dad and two of his 5 brothers.

I love the way Mark's brother Micah is caressing him. 

Mark, obviously doesn't share my sentiments

Ok normal pose now

See how tame Mark's beard is for all y'all who think he's wild and wooly

A most accurate representation of the fellas in this photo

Cousin Micaiah meets Airdrie!

Oldest (Isaac) and youngest (Airdrie) Anderson cousins!

Caedmon doing a little bit of miniature donkey/Shetland pony/halflinger horse wrangling.

Ness and the baby mini-donkey. 

Presh

Deen and the baby

This is prior to being bit by the pony and getting the heck outta there

My kids climbing all over creation and having fun hauling stuff around on the farm

Aunt Molly meets Airdrie for the first time!

A bazillion and four lambs were born while we were there. My children enjoyed playing with them

and subsequently 

smelling like them

What my husband enjoys doing in his free time--flint knapping. 

At one point in time there were FIVE grown men sitting at a picnic table 'playing with rocks'

This is my friend, Kara. I got to see her pretty face in Missouri. 

It's a funny story called I had to move to Scotland for us to know we should be good friends

This is the day Airdrie got her tongue-tie corrected by our wonderful Dr in Missouri

She's looking totes adorbs here

Did I use that in context? 

Please someone smack my hand if I ever write 'totes adorbs' again...

This is called an ER visit when Nessie falls out of a tree she's climbing

My poor sweet baby girl broke her arm, here it's 11 p.m. and they're getting her all fixed up

 Next day Ness is doing much better! 

Waiting with her daddy in the "casting room" to get her permanent cast

I felt like I had to take this photo on the sly...like celebrity, NO PHOTOS!

Can't even remember Dr's name

Yes, ma'am it's PINK

This is before she realised this cast would be a part of her life for the next 4-5 weeks and she could not indeed slip it off when she tired of it. 

Upon that realisation her facial expression changed, drastically

Mark Anderson LOVES this place to the flag.

"The Taste of Fresh Mex"

I ain't never seen a Mexican tater tot yet, y'all

En route to my parents we woke up to SNOW in Limon, CO--the children were THRILLED!

I-70

We were not so much thrilled

Heading up into the Rocky Mountains just out of Denver

WHOA, so thankful this part of the interstate was no longer icy!

For y'all non-mountainous people:

There are these freaky things call Runaway Truck Ramps when you come down off of particularly steep mountain passes...

If your semi truck has lost it's brakes you hit one of these suckers and it slows you down, stopping you

Mark's actually seen a truck use one--FREAKY!

Finally on the other side of the pass in beautiful Silverthorne, Colorado! 

Mark said his hands were cramped from gripping the wheel so tightly

Annnnnd Mark's taking selfies now...

Places in Colorado I've never been 

and I was raised in Colorado

Look at all the snow, in April!

My momma with AirBear

Ok, flashback. 

 This is Kitchen Little.

Can I get a witness, child of the 90's?

I found the Barbie boxes my mom stored our old toys in.

This is what I did one evening 

for AN HOUR OF MY LIFE.

As if I don't have a kitchen of my own to "play with"

And then I snapped pictures of it.

My. Word. Jordan. Celon.

Mark had a quick couple of thousands of miles to travel from Colorado to Texas to Oklahoma to New Mexico back to Colorado.

This is what he did in his hotel room in the evenings.

Another fine point by my husband.

Seriously he loves this stuff...he also makes the bows and arrows to go with these little works of art

The state I was born in, the lovely New Mexico!

Happy to have Mark back with us in Colorado!

Mark's brother, Matthew came to see us! He's a church planter in Utah.

Go to his website now, he's a fabulous website designer--if you need a cool site look him up!

Caithness turned 5 on April 11 and Aberdeen turned 3 on April 10! 

Usually I'm not a fan of combined parties, but we did it with lots of family and it was fun!

(More on their party later--it's too fun to not have it's own post!)

On Palm Sunday with my two sisters and their husbands we all celebrated Easter Sunday with our big family Easter dinner and an egg hunt!

Nothing says Colorado Easter like egg hunting in the snow...

Then we started dropping like flies...

The SICKNESS of all sicknesses came upon our family and lingered long enough for quite a few of us to have it on airplane rides.

I can't handle this kinda of thing.

Not enough trash cans.

Not enough hand sanitiser.

Still the sickness hung on as we made our way back down to Denver for our flight back.

This is a picture of a moose. Said moose made us momentarily forget our sickness woes.

Another fine example of Jordan Anderson Photography.

Y'all don't go all at once crashing our email asking for me to do your baby portraits

Panorama shot as we're leaving Denver...

We're leaving on a jet plane, don't know when we'll be back again

Finish those lyrics

Let me go on record and tell y'all how amazing our kids did on the flights.

They BEhaved so Nicely And we Didn't have to get steRn or YeLl at them.

Kinda cool after a long and hard trip back, we're greeted by this advertisement in Aberdeen.

We love our America, but we are truly back home in Scotland now!