in utah

We've been in Utah for a few days now, enjoying our stay with Justin's sister and visiting with my family.

Juma is the only Wilson cousin (out of 13 of them) who doesn't live in Utah Valley, so it's a real treat for everyone (except the four youngest who are too young to have any idea who he is) when he comes to town. He was greatly concerned about being bombarded by excited cousins saying, "Juma, come play with me!" "Come play with me!" "No, come play with me!" As he said, "I just can't take all that pressure! It's just so much! I don't know if I can take it, Mom!" So we tried to take it easy and see just a few cousins at a time to ease him in. Still, the first stop was Rus and Kelly's, where there are four kids (plus a neighborhood kid who also, apparently, loves Juma), but Juma handled being surrounded by five very excited kids quite well.

The next day, we saw some of the smaller cousins in the morning, and then in the afternoon we were off to The Big Event of the trip: my sister Jody's wedding party. Yes, Jody eloped recently, with a man named Kaerlek (that's a Swedish name), and they had a party in the canyon to let everyone meet each other. We had only met Kaerlek the night before; it's pretty strange to have a new brother-in-law, but he's cool, and Jody is quite happy.

Later, we took Juma rock climbing with his cousin, Ammon, and uncle, Patrick. Five minutes in, Juma had a complete and total melt down--screaming, hitting, kicking, stubborn tantrum, and we realized we pretty much hadn't really fed him food all day...So we got free passes to come back to the climbing gym and took Juma to dinner where he happily ate naan, mango lassi, lamb kurma, and not so happily ate saag paneer (spinach and cheese).

Sunday, we hit the special exhibit, Monet to Picasso, at the U of U art museum, where Juma's favorite piece was Rodin's The Thinker. His cousin, Mariah, was with us, and she contented her two-and-a-half year old self by following Juma around and ushering him to the next painting by putting her tiny hand on his back and gently pushing. Later we took the kids to the Discovery Gateway Museum, where they had a grand time playing house, builder, grocer, farmer, life flight operator...Afterwards, we tried to find a replacement pair of sandals for Juma since he lost one of his flip-flops in the river at Jody's party. In typical kid fashion, he cried mournfully about not being able to find his right size in a style of shoes he didn't know existed 10 minutes before.

Monday, we took Juma back to the climbing gym, where he actually climbed a wall (to about 10 feet up) and joyfully played Tarzan while Justin and I climbed a few walls. Today, we have his bff cousin, Ammon, all day, so they can have one last hoorah before we take off tomorrow (on to the Grand Canyon!).