Home sweet Home

We are very blessed as we live relatively close to our parents/families. Thankfully, we don’t have to suffer through six hour car rides to visit and we are not limited to seeing them only on major holidays like Thanksgiving or Christmas but no matter how often we see them, there is always a sense that we could use more time with them. It seems like every time we see them we never have enough time to squeeze in everything we want to do and we always leave on Sunday afternoon wishing we could just have a few more hours together.

As K is getting older and appreciating his grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins even more, it seems like he is beginning to feel the same way. It is great to see him acknowledge who they are and even though he doesn’t get to see his cousins as often as we would like, it is evident that they love to spend time together as they all quickly warm up to one another and almost immediately team-up to destroy anything in their path.

Playing in the farm equipment

Jumping with daddy- Mommy a little nervous!

So we will continue to try and make it home as often as possible and even though we know that our return trips will never be frequent enough to satisfy our parents, they should know that we would like to make them more often as well. Clean and snuggling before bed

3 boys in a tub! Being carted around by Grammie!!!

Rock and Roll Number 2

This past weekend was spent in Dallas completing the second leg of a six (or maybe) seven leg journey. For the past couple of years Davin and I have discussed completing multiple marathons and half marathons in the Rock-and Roll series. We love to do the runs and after several years of running in local or regional runs we thought that it would be cool to make this year’s runs more of a destination run or enjoy some places that we haven’t been before. Not that Dallas really fits into those categories but in order to get in six races we needed to have some that we were within driving distance to help keep some of the cost down. So we loaded up the families and headed to The Big D for the weekend. The majority of Saturday was spent enjoying various spots around Uptown. Although we have been to Dallas a couple of times before we never took the time to visit this area but it was pretty cool. We enjoyed riding the trolley around, visiting a few of the shops, and then found a little local place where we had a great lunch. We also found a great yogurt shop that was so good that we had to visit it twice. We then met up with the Hicks family and enjoyed the rest of the evening with them.

As you can see we love Red Mango!!!

"I am fully hydrated but I want some FOOD!"

Having fun on the trolley!!

Kellen's tent/he slept great under it!!

On the road ready to cheer on our Da da's (can you see litte P in the mirror)

Hanging out near the finish line

Lake Tahoe We Love You

While we are not ones who think of ourselves to be drawn to extravagant or costly things, as a couple our one indulgence is definitely vacations. It is all too common for us to say, “So where do we want to go on our next vacation.” Honestly, that may not even be truthful as we usually have about three or four trips booked and in the works when we start talking about getting ready for the fifth. We certainly love us some travel. All that buildup to explain that we just returned from Lake Tahoe and a wonderful ski vacation that has to rank up there with some of the finest vacations we have been on. It was our first post-child trip and so that certainly played into the enjoyment, and not because we didn’t think or miss the little guy every second, but it was great for us to be able to get away and just enjoy each other and some of the most beautiful surroundings that are out there.

The views were spectacular!!!

We had a couple of great days of skiing.

Missing Kellen at 10,000 feet.

First views going up the gondala

Goodbye Tahoe!!!

Thank goodness for great grandparents! While we probably don’t say it enough, Jill and I both are blessed with wonderful parents. They do so much for us and support us in so many ways, but they also care so deeply about Kellen that it is ridiculous. This was again evident as they both stepped up and volunteered to watch K for a few days and he loved every minute of it. A big THANK YOU to the grandparents.

Happy Trout Day!!!

Just wanted to bring this important holiday to everyone's attention. In Jill's hometown the take their fishing serious as they dismiss school for the day so that everyone can spend the day at the river. So get out and fish a little bit in honor of Trout Day!

More blog to come later as Jill and I are headed to our first vacation without Kellen. We know that he is in good hands as he will be having his own personal vacation and will be spending time with both sets of Grandparents. That said, we know that he may be a handful when we get back, but we wouldn't have it any other way and we give both sets of grandparents our full permission to do what they want, when they want, and however they want.

Not necessarily because we want to grant this permission, but because we know they will do whatever they want anway so we might as well not even fight it.

Wordless Wednesday

Pace of Life

With the help of some 60 degree days we have finally dug ourselves out of the snow. We were expecting 2-4 inches last Wednesday and instead we woke up to 6 inches and after a morning and afternoon of continuous snow, we finally ended up with about 22 inches. Although we have grown accustomed to the “dustings” that are generally received in our area, we welcomed this snow and while others may have had a bit of cabin fever we found that it was a good break and allowed us some much needed down time. Right now it seems like we were going 100 miles an hour in every direction and so it is very unlikely that we were going to get a break any other way and so we welcomed the white stuff. Since we couldn’t go anywhere, it made us stop, collect ourselves and just enjoy the time that we had. We know that it shouldn’t take 22 inches of snow to make us slow down a little bit but we will continue to work on that.

Unfortunately it seems like were picked up right where we left off before the storm and so we have resumed our 100 miles an hour pace. Due to this we will be posting pictures from the last two weeks tomorrow, later this week, or certainly by Kellen’s second birthday. Remember, we’re working on slowing down a bit. We didn’t say that we had it figured out; we’re just taking things one step at a time, and hoping for loads of grace along the way.

Enjoying our Snow Days!

We are about 24 hours behind on the blog update but we are blaming the ice/snow storm that hit our area on Tuesday. We are enjoying our snow days and hope to get a longer post completed by the end of the week. Until then we will continue to enjoy the extra play time with K, reading our books and lounging around, the extra hours that have allowed us to start our spring cleaning early, and just enjoying the break in the normal routine.