fourth of july in wichita, ks.

for the long weekend, we headed north to jb's home town.  it was our first trip since emme arrived, and we had a lovely time.  the trek is rather arduous - i-35 is a beast and it's an 8-hour drive when you speed and don't hit any traffic.  the ride up there on friday ended up being a little over 10 hours between construction, traffic jams, and our gas/diaper change break.  but, it was worth it, of course.

our primary reason for heading up for the holiday was that justin's cousin, patrick, is being deployed to afghanistan.  his family was throwing a farewell barbecue, so we wanted to make an appearance for that.  he's going to be stationed on the afghan/pakistan border in a very aggressive battalion.  we wish him a safe time and speedy return.

while there, emme got to meet her cousins maddox (3) and julianne (5 months).  maddox was unbelievably sweet to ek - he gave her about 3,000 kisses and was constantly hugging on her legs.  it was very cute.  julianne is still a little young to be super interactive, but the girls enjoyed looking at each other and i'm sure they will have much to share in the coming years since they're only about 2 and a half months apart.  emme also got to meet her other great grandmother, nana jo.

it was a nice, mellow weekend full of good food and conversation.  we had hoped being out of texas would give us some respite from the heat, but it was just as hot in kansas as it is here.  we did take some nice walks and ek got to feed some canada geese, which was really fun.

i'll update with more pictures when i'm on the regular computer, but for now here are a few that i snapped with my phone using instagram, my new favorite iphone app.