Vacation time!

Warning......Lots of pictures ahead :) This year our vacation took us on a 12 hour drive to Vail, Colorado! We love Colorado, we would move there in a heartbeat! What made this trip even greater was the fact that our family from Wisconsin and Iowa met us out here! How we choose Vail was due to my cousin. She is dating a profession triathlete (crazy and absurd!) and we really wanted to meet him. We couldn't think of a better way to do so than to go to one of his competitions :)

 We all stayed at a fun, super family friendly resort with our condos close to each other. Goodness how it made us sad to not live close to each other. We got spoiled just walking over and walking in each others homes.

 I love mountain vacations because they are so outdoors. We spent time hiking, biking, having beautiful picnics and just being lazy having fun together.

 How exciting to watch Brandon compete! He finished 2nd place!!

Out order but, we took 2 days to get to Colorado. Lo and behold a Dairy Queen was just up the street! How perfect! And delicious! :)

 My aunt threw a birthday party for Aubrie :)

 The day after the triathlon, there were a couple trail runs. Here is our family represented with the 5k and 8k :)

 And there was even a fun run for Brody! Mike carried him most of the way, but gosh! I was so proud of my boys :)

 Brody got a medal for his accomplishment ;) Poor guy missed the ceremony due to needing to go potty ;)

 In the middle of our condos there was a beautiful barbecue area. Family meals, just the greatest!

I'm thinking this is the first of many annual family vacations! We had a great, great, great time!!!!



Happy Birthday Aubrie Marie!

Miss Aubrie Marie is officially 1! Can you believe it, because we can't! Way back when I got pregnant with her and realized her due date was right smack in the middle of summer, I began planning her Hawaiian Luau :) Mike of course thought I was nuts, but how perfect, right?

 These parties are really all for us as Aubrie had her one friend best friend there, Adele. Adele's mom and I were pregnant together with these two sweethearts and our families are great friends. Adele is one week older then Aubrie, they are so sweet together :)

 Our friend who watches the kiddos when I work has son, Jake, who is 6ish years old. He adores Aubrie :) So much so this was his gift to the birthday girl; a balloon that says "Happy Birthday Pretty, Pretty Princess" tied to a rose. Melt. My. Heart :)

 

 Keep the heart melting coming! This is Graham (Adele's brother). He walked right up to Aub's and started serenading her with "Happy Birthday"!!! The whole song! What a great treat :)

 We served chicken, shrimp and steak kabobs with Hawaiian rice, rolls and fruit. A very tasty festive lunch. Of course followed with birthday cake.

Another incredible cake by my friend. It's a pineapple with these beautiful flowers and sand surrounding it! If you look closely to the right and see the red string, its a Leigh! :) 

 This is Jake :) Can you tell he likes her ;) Aubs loved her cake (Did we have any doubts? No not one!)! I'm pretty sure we were picking cake out of her ears later than night ;)

Happy Birthday Aubrie! We feel so blessed to have gotten a whole year with you! You are such a sweet, sassy, princess diva, and gosh do we love you!



Our camera has been broke for a few weeks and so not too many pictures. Mike was the one who finally caved and braved the 2 hour car drive to get the thing fixed. Living in a small town definitely has it's perks but goodness it also has it's negatives when you have to drive so far to the largest city.

 Our sweet and great babysitter has been putting pig tails in Aub's girls hair. OH. MY. WORD. Too cute! :)

Our first outside play set was received today! Got it for a whopping $30 from a friend and it's just perfect.

 

 My favorite part of it is the smiles it brings these two faces :)

Brody has been loving "exploring it" and calling it the "Clubhouse". I think this was one of the only times I caught him actually going down the slide on his bottom ;)

Can you tell who the one with no fear is? Oh my son, he is a monkey I tell you! Aubrie is slowly learning how to climb the ladder, she's so cute as she tries so hard with such dedication :)



Floors and Cousins

We placed new floors in our home! It was a crazy, crazy week but goodness was it all worth it!

 Here is a snap shot of our old flooring in the kitchen. Mike tore this up, the carpet in the living room and hallway and broke up the tile in the foyer.

 As with most house projects, I'm not sure what we were thinking. I imagined it to be no big deal to keep the kiddos here in the house. I saw us going on with our normal lives. About midnight on the second work day after pulling up nails I realized I can't keep the kids in the house!

 So....the next morning after our picnic breakfast the kids and I packed up and drove to Oklahoma City to spend time with the cousins :) Duh!!! Why didn't we do this sooner?! While daddy worked away (now this is the kind of house work I can do ;)

The kid's were in heaven! 

 We love being with the cousins!!

 They even have an Oklahoma City Thunder bathroom!! What??!! This caused for some MAJOR excitement each and every time B had to go potty :) The rule was no shooting hoops until the toilet lid is closed ;) 

 Stayed up late, woke up SUPER early, got to watch TV, can life really get much better for a 2 year old?

 We had a blast while daddy worked away! Hmmm....what other projects can we start on now.. :)

We returned to the most beautiful home we've ever lived in :) Mike did WONDERFUL!!! We love our wood floors, love them, love them, love them! I love only having carpet in the bedrooms. I will never again have carpet in the living areas, never! A huge pet peeve  of mine is shoes on the carpet, I mean huge! Really, I cringe every time I see it and my heart does a tiny heart attack. I still cringe when I see shoes on my floors but the great thing is I can get on my hands and knees and scrub those shoe germs up! :) It's just beautiful :)

Camping! We had a blast! We just went to a cute state park about 15 minutes from our house and planned it to be simple. Simple as in one night, hot dogs for dinner and lunch and warm up pancakes for breakfast :) Couldn't have had a better plan.

 The reason for just a simple overnight is the stage Aubrie is at, crawling. She just doesn't have much fun being confined to a blanket, she wants to be doing what we are doing. So until the chica is walking, we will do over nighter camping adventures close to home ;)

 Brody loves, loves, loves being outside, so of course he was in heaven!

 Trigger kept thinking the blankets we layed down for Aubs were for him :)

 I know this pictures is blurry, but I love the true joy and everyone's face :) I love being with my family and making these great memories with them. We stay up way to late and wake up WAY too early ;)

I'm not sure if we are going through a mid life crisis or what but Mike and I planned a CRAZY camping trip for September. We are heading out to Zion National Park, Arches National Park and Bryce Canyon. Yep, all 4 of us with our camper. Are we crazy?! Surely not, right??

I'm so behind! We FINALLY got the camper out last week and I have pictures but I haven't figured out how to get them off my phone. So stay tuned, because they are really great :)

 Grandpa's old hair cutting cape has received a new customer! :) It was time for B's summer cut, one which I'm very comfortable giving. Nothing says summer more than a buzz cut on a 2 year old ;)

 I love these pictures above! To the left is Aubrie and the right is Brody when he was Aub's age. They aren't allowed on the dishwasher but once (to get a picture). The funny part is it took B maybe 5 seconds to get the nerve to climb up the dishwasher and it took Aubrie about 10-15 minutes! I absolutely love how different the two are. It definitely keep us on our feet and never knowing what we are doing ;)