Back to Cali

Any excuse to go back to San Lois Obispo, CA is fine in my book.  Kevin and Kimberly live there, and their twins just happened to turn 8 and we just happened to be available to attend their baptism. 

SLO is about a 9 to 10 hour drive from Globe, which isn't bad. Our kids are getting to an age where they are really easy travelers. So it totally makes sense to have another baby to make it hard on ourselves, right?

Oh how I love this place! Going to places like SLO makes me a little bit sad. I struggled living in Globe for the first couple of months. The hardest part for me was not having many places to go during the day with my kids. I kind of hate staying in my house all day long, I'm the opposite of a homebody. I love going out on adventures with my kids and husband, and Globe doesn't offer that too much. 

I've made friends and have established play dates and library story time, etc, so things are a lot better. But when I go to places like SLO that offer unlimited adventures and places to take my kids, I get a pit in my stomach. I get anxiety because these are the things I want to do with my kids before they grow up. I want to take them hiking, I want to take them to the u-pick fruit orchards, I want to take them to the beach, I want to take them to the petting zoo. So yeah, I just feel a little bit sad knowing I'm missing out on these little things with my kids.

 Now that I got that serious sappy stuff out, I will just explain now what we did and show you pictures.

Mostly we were outside. It was around 80 degrees all week, so we went hiking and beaching.

But the coolest part was seeing Alex and Shane get baptized

It was really special. 

When I first met Travis's family, his older brother, Kevin kind of scared me. He was kind of quiet and intense. But now that I have been in the family going on 8 years I have come to admire that guy. He did such a great job baptizing and confirming. You can just feel the love he has for his kids. 

So Kevin and Kimberly, uh... anything else coming up soon? Birthdays? Graduations? Anniversaries? Need a babysitter? We will jump in our car anytime to come and see you and of course your beautiful town.

Stake Conference BYE

Did you know that its not a sin to skip Stake Conference when you have children under the age of 5? OK well maybe it is, but lay it on me because trying to control your kids during two hours of church speakers is for the birds.

 Instead, we took a drive up to the Pinal mountains and had our own church. The Pinals are about a half hour drive away. 

It felt so dang good to be around green, beautiful, and a mildy snowy mountains! At one point, the road got too snowy so we had to pull over and just hike the rest of the way up. 

When we found a nice and cozy spot, we all took turns teaching a church lesson. 

Avery's and Brooklyn's were the best! 

Brooklyn tried to tell us about the foolish man and wise man, but in the end, both of their houses washed away. We might need to review that lesson with her, she loves destruction.

 Avery taught us about how Jesus calmed the sea in the fishing boat.

 I loved it, and I think we got more out of this little church than we would have if we tried to tackle Stake Conference. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to justify my actions, I know I should have gone, but we just didn't want to. No courage here! 

 After we got back to our van, we drove down to a picnic area and ate bagels, oranges, soda pop, candy and chips. It was glorious!  I do think that maybe, while our kids our young, I will take this sin every 6 months... or maybe more? Ha ha JK, don't worry Sid. Avery would totally do it though, she asked if we could have church in the mountains every Sunday. Probably not, sister!

DISCLAIMER!!!!

Alright, I have totally dropped the ball on this blog. I procrastinate posting anything, and then all of a sudden I have a million events I need to post about. 

I was looking through my blog a couple of nights ago, pre-children, and I noticed that I was kind of witty back then. Fast forward to the present, and I pretty much just cover the special events in our lives.

 I miss writing down my random thoughts. I miss writing in general. My goal is to get back to that place. I definitely have my hands full with my kids, and now I have major placenta brain, so I have no vocabulary, but one of my New Years resolutions is to write more. 

I'm not always going to post about my kids, I might write about the Bachelor or about how I feel about showering every day. 

I'm also noticing that my pictures absolutely suck. I've been so extremely lazy in this department. We have a nice DSL camera that just collects dust and we have been using our IPhone for pictures. I don't have any desire to learn how to use the camera, I'm just gonna put it on auto and let it do its thing. I want nice pictures, and that is another thing I'm going to work on. 

So friends, hopefully this will be my last notification to inform you of the 8 or 9 posts I just did. Pray for me! And enjoy reading the novel I just posted, serious, its a lot of stuff!

Absence makes the heart grow fonder...

Or is it out of sight, out of mind? I think, with our pals the Johnson's, its the first one because we are quite fond of them (cheese ball moment).

Seriously, would you drive 15 hours out of your way to see your good friends? We actually knew they would, so we "secretly," "passively" planted the seed for them to come to us. I mean, they were already in Utah (from Missouri) they might as well just drive a teensy bit further. They totally did it and we were so glad to have them!

It was a short trip. Only 3 days, really 2 full days. On their drive here I started thinking, "hey, wait, what if its different and "we" aren't the same? What if its a little bit awkward?" psshhhhh yeah right. We started right where we left off. There was lots of making fun of each other, yummy food, and lots of pervy jokes, just like the good old days.

We played Puerta Rico. It was magical. I sure miss that life we had only 6 months ago.

 And our kids were champs! I was expecting it to be a little bit chaotic and crazy, but it really wasn't. 

 Avery and Gabbi are long lost sisters.

K Johnson's, that wasn't long enough. Just drive back here, its not that far! JK, I'm thinking after their 20 hour drive home through snow storms it might be awhile till they venture Southwest. Maybe we will make the trek back soon to Missouri!

One day we will be next door neighbors again, right?

We love you guys.