The Leiningers: UT trip pics: graduations, marathons, and Dane Dane Dane!

I feel like we are in that song "The Wanderer" right now. I look at our summer plans, and our current status, and it looks like we are just going to be ping-ponging across the United States for the next two months. We are going to be crossing the country some six or seven times for different trips this summer! Not to mention that small detail of moving to a different state in a couple of weeks . . . oh yeah! I am not the hugest fan of flying with this crazy toddler that we have, but it is so, so worth it to see him loving loving LOVING his extended family we don't get to see all that often. And really, we choose to live far away from our family (or we have to), so we have to choose when we get to visit them and we have to choose which family events we get to make it to. It's a bummer to miss a lot of big family events, but we have been ridiculously blessed to be able to visit our families twice a year while living in North Carolina. And this summer, we're going above and beyond . . . there are lots of events we want to be there for, with Austin coming home from his mission and Lindsay and Travis coming to visit from China, so we're going to just bite the bullet and DO IT even though it kind of feels excessive. It just looks like we're going to be traveling quite a lot the next few months (trying to get our money's worth before Dane turns 2 and we have to pay for his tickets!).

With that said, we are currently in the middle of a trip visiting our families! We spent a week in Ogden at the Leiningers', and are in the middle of a week in Irvine with my family. As usual, we are so glad to be out here. Dane is seriously having a blast. He loves his grandmas and grandpas soooooo much! And he is constantly talking about his aunts and uncles and asking for them when they're not in the room. It makes me so happy to see Dane making these connections with our family who he loves so much. We picked a great week to visit Ogden as well; we were there for Callie's graduation from HS, Kenzie's graduation from elementary school, and the Ogden marathon which Tommy, Troy, and Kurt ran together. It was a perfect week for us to be visiting. It was pretty funny because Tommy's mom and dad came out to visit for Tommy's graduation, and then three days later, we flew out to UT to visit them for all of this stuff. But it's worked out great. And we will see them in a month or so again! (Like I said . . . we're traveling a lot.)

We went to one of Kenzie's softball games, and Dane spent the whole time crying for Kenzie and trying to figure out a way to get out to her on the field. "Kenzie! Kenzie!" It was so cute and pathetic how he was so sad he couldn't get to play with her.

Dane loved Auntie Yaya. She showed him some videos of Zach on her phone and he was convinced they were of him, and he was laughing so hard watching them!

Dane and Zach were put to work in the backyard. They took care of all the sweeping.

The marathon probably deserves a whole post on its own, but I am too lazy right now. But hooray! Tommy and his two brothers ran a marathon together! And they did a FANTASTIC job. Tommy's goal was to run it in 4 hours, and he beat his goal time by 10 minutes--and he beat both of his younger brothers! But man, they were CHAMPS. It was so fun waiting for them at the end; it was the most exciting thing to find them running and cheering for them. And I absolutely LOVE this picture of the three brothers finishing the race--Tommy and Kurt both finished before Troy and came to run the very end with him when he finished, and it was the perfect Kodak moment. What a great picture.

Three marathoners!

Not to be outdone--Kristen, Callie and I ran the 5K associated with the marathon. We are pretty awesome too, just so you know!

Oh my goodness, Dane LOVED Uncle Troy. He would climb into his lap and snuggle with him for a ridiculously long amount of time (longer than he'll ever do with me!). It was so cute.

Melissa and I took the two boys to feed the ducks on Weber State campus one morning. Such cute boys!

Callie's high school graduation! (Don't worry, we took pictures and then I took the two toddler boys home and didn't force them to sit through a whole graduation. We were all happier that way!)

These two both love Auntie Kenzie.

We also took the two boys swimming together!

We went and had lunch with Grandpa at the hospital while he was working one day too. I'd never actually gone to eat at the hospital with him before! It was great!

Kenzie's elementary school graduation, where she also received an award for being an awesome reader.

The last day we were there, we went to the This Is The Place monument, to see the little baby animals exhibit they had there with the two boys. It was so cute to bring them there and see them petting the animals. I'm really glad we went!

Dane couldn't stop talking about the "baby chicks."

Dane was really nervous about the horses. We tried to get the two boys to ride the horse together when we first got there, and they both started crying. But after we visited all the other animals, Dane said "horse!" and wanted to ride on the horse. And he did! He sat there so patiently and happily let the horse walk around with him. It was just adorable.