Wedding

And finally....the reason we went to North Dakota...Erica and Corey's wedding!

Here comes the bride.

Mr and Mrs. Hager

First Dance

Our Family

Mommy and Gianna at the reception.

Mmm. Cake.

Picking out an ornament favor.

With the Bride.

Gianna loved Dancing at the reception! She also loved walking around the room and flirting with all of the other guests. North Dakotans know how to party Gianna style! She had so much fun and so did we!

SNOW!!!

On saturday morning we woke up to snow! We are so glad Gianna got to see it. Here are some pictures we took around our hotel.

Gianna thought that the cold was so funny and giggled so hard once we walked outside.

She also loved touching the snow and looking at it on all of the cars.

She was very cute, she really seemed to be studying it.

Our hotel

We stayed at the hotel that the wedding reception was at, and were surprised that they had a waterpark inside! It was a fun hotel and Gianna enjoyed watching the kids in the pool and even going swimming once. Justin and I liked taking turns going down the waterslide too.

North Dakota Heritage Center and State Capital.

On friday we went to the State Capitol and the heritage center, it was a great way to spend an afternoon and Gianna seemed to love it!

The North Dakota state capitol is called something like "The Tower of The Plaines", I think this picture shows why. Here she is with a Bison, I don't know if it's the state animal , but they sure are proud of their bison. She even got a stuffed one to bring home!

Here's Gianna with a Bald Eagle, they had so many birds (and eggs!) Gianna was capitivated by them.
Here's Justin pretending to drive an old tractor (I think this was his favorite part).
Here Gianna is riding a wooden horse alongside mommy and then daddy. She thought this was fun and kept calling it a doggie.
Here we are with a Wooly Mamoth skeleton, you can see how huge it is! Gianna was amazed and couldn't take her eyes off of it....until she saw the fake Bison standing behind us (I know, it's a terrible picture), she loves anything that even resembles an animal or has fur.

She looks so cute in this teepee. What a fun place for us to visit!

Around Bismarck

Bismarck was Beautiful but cold. It's very different from California but they are very proud of their cultural backgrounds and the history of the area. We drove around Bismarck to see the sights and here is some of it:

First we drove up to Erica's college (and work), Mary, ND University. The view of the cottonwood trees from here was breathtaking. You can see how cold it looks. I think it was 32 during the day.

Then we drove along River Road, we saw lots of Native American statues and a few tributes to Lewis and Clark. It was very pretty!

I took this picture just driving around Bismarck, I love the contrast of the evergreens and the cottonwood trees.

Gianna's 3rd and 4th times on a plane!

On November 15th we left for our Friend Erica's wedding in North Dakota! It was a very exciting trip. We flew out of San Jose Airport and got to walk out onto the Tarmac to board (Gianna must think this is standard since it's all she's ever done!). Then we made a quick stop in Denver and we were off to Bismarck, ND. The plane rides were very nice and one stewardess even gave Gianna a sticker that looked like flight wings. People were so kind to us and we felt very lucky to have such easy travels. Gianna loved walking up and down the aisle with all of the other kids on the flight (with a little help from mommy or daddy). She also loved looking out the window or flirting with all of the other passengers (some were even going to the wedding!). She is quite the ham, and a well-behaved ham at that! When she got cranky she just snacked and that seemed to keep her happy. She went the whole way to Bismarck without napping! See next posts for more on our trip.