dear mom

This morning I attended a BootCamp class at the gym and had a blast! Hope to make it to that class more often. After the gym the kids and I started working on power washing the deck. We’d love to get it all washed and stained asap. It’s proven to be a very slow process, but something even a 7 year old can do, so we’ve just been taking turns.

In the early afternoon a friend from church came to go to the beach with us for the afternoon. The little girl just got a new sister (who came early and is still in the hospital) so we thought it would be a fun break for her mom, and for her to join us for the day. We met another family from church at the beach and had a great afternoon! Evelyn even ventured off the beach blanket and enjoyed the water; looking for crabs, digging in the rocks, and going a little too far out the sea. Excited to see if my little beach baby can get more used to salt water than my other UT native children.

Yay! It’s Friday. Just spent the rainy morning with a wonderful friend and the sister missionaries serving here in our ward. What a lovely way to start the day. I am blessed to have good friends.

And so are my kids! Here’s Nora pretending she has a broken leg the whole walk home with her brother and her friend to lean on!

We drove around the Northeast and listened to General Conference last weekend and had a great trip. We headed to Hartford CT first to see the new LDS Temple site. It’s coming along! We’re so excited to have a temple that will be easier to get to than the Manhattan temple. I think it’s supposed to be finished next summer.

After seeing the temple we had time between sessions so we found an apple picking farm nearby and spontaneously went apple picking. It was a beautiful afternoon! Northeastern apple orchards never disappoint!

After we got our fill of the beautiful outdoors we jumped in the car and drove the rest of the way to Boston. The drive was beautiful, the kids were happy and General Conference was uplifting! We stayed at a Marriott near Fenway Park. We chose the hotel just because it had a pool! What’s a hotel stay without a swim, right?

Sunday morning we went out to see Paul Revere’s House and looked around at the Boston Tea Party Museum. We loved Boston! The city roads were so windy and small, it really felt colonial. We would love to visit again and spend more time on the Freedom Trail.

Outside Paul Revere’s House

But it was Sunday and Conference was starting so we got loaded up and started driving and listening again. We stopped halfway home in Newport RI, which is also beautiful!

Breezy Rhode Island!

Although our stops were short they gave us an idea of what these beautiful cities are like. We’d love to revisit all of them! It’s always so refreshing to go away for a few days!

It really has been months since I’ve been here, and a lot has happened in the past few months! I should go into great detail about all our adventures, and maybe sometime I will, but today I just want to keep it simple. Here’s a list:

School finally ended for the kids (Not until June 26th!)

We bought our first house in Fairfield, CT.

We packed up the house in NY and moved to Fairfield.

The next day we flew to UT for a month long visit.

While there, we celebrated Evelyn’s first birthday!

And bought our first minivan.

Travis drove the van back to Ct and then toiled away working long hours at work and fixing up the new house.

We flew back home and I started to unpack the boxes.

The kids fell in love with riding bikes around the neighborhood.

We celebrated Nora’s sixth birthday!

We visited the beach that is less than 10 min away.

We all made new friends.

The kids started school.

We had dear friends visit from Chicago.

The kids joined a bumper bowling league.

All the while, whenever we could fit it in we: tore out a wall, put down new laminate flooring on the entire main floor of the house, redid the fireplace mantel, tore out the top kitchen cabinets, painted the bottom kitchen cabinets, refinished the butcher block countertop, changed all the door knobs, tore out the old baseboard and molding, added new baseboard and molding throughout the entire house, added shelving in the family room and the kids’ room (which required a trip or 10 to Ikea), tore out 4 enormous Alberta Spruce trees in our yard, and painted all the walls on the main floor.

Travis really has done almost all this work himself. He’s amazing. I’ve tried to help out mostly by keeping the house running with food and clean laundry. Hence the scarce time that I have had to spend on the blog. We still have a lot we want to fix up, but it’ll have to happen eventually.

For now, we are thankful to be here and happy to feel as settled as we do.

Life is good.

It’s October! (I dare say, one of my favorite months of the year.)

General Conference weekend is here!

And I have this little sweetie by my side all day.

Travis and I celebrate our 10th anniversary today! I don’t want to be too mushy here on the blog so I’m going to keep it short.

I am SO happy/thankful/blessed/lucky to have this man by my side!

The photos from our wedding day are pretty fun to look back at:

Yesterday we decided to take a short evening bike ride before bedtime rolled around.

Lately we’ve been taking rides on a road that’s just around the corner from our house. It’s called Dewey lane. It’s a quiet road with a bridge over a little waterfall and hardly any traffic.

Sorry so blurry, they were on the move!

We love riding there with the kids so they can ride with little worry about cars.

The highlight of the ride was taking Eivie for her first bike ride!

She loved it and wouldn’t hold still for even one picture.

We’re looking forward to more bike rides this summer!

I better go find Evelyn a helmet. . .

Last Saturday we attended a fishing derby that was being held at a park in our town. Our wonderful neighbor was in charge of the event and got us outfitted to participate with fishing rods and bait. It was so nice to be out early at the tiny lake with other families!

Nora and a friend from the school bus!

They had stocked the lake with trout, but they weren’t really biting that morning.

Travis needed to play the piano for a funeral later that morning so we only fished for an hour or two and had to head out.

And although it was a short fishing trip, it was just right for our young family! Evie didn’t stay this happy for long.

P.S. Travis made the shirt he’s wearing!

I thought I’d do a Throwback Thursday post since I missed sharing the wonderful trip we took last Christmas to Utah. I think I was overwhelmed at first by the amount of pictures and fun I wanted to share from the trip that I just haven’t ever gotten to it. So here I go. . .

Our Christmas trip started out amazing because it was a surprise for the kdis!! We didn’t tell the kids we were visiting UT for Christmas until Christmas Eve morning!

We’d come to the city the day before to visit Travis and stay with him for fun (at least that what the kids thought, but it was really so we’d be closer to the airport that morning). The hotel called in the morning and said an elf left something on our door for Will, Nora and Evelyn. The kids ran to look out the door and found stockings and poem that lead them to the airline tickets. They were SO surprised and excited. We packed up and headed out for a full day of travel.

Taxi ride to the airport!

Not only did our kids not know about the trip, neither did their cousins. We went straight to Erin’s house and caroled on the porch until Emery and Jane answered the door. They were totally surprised. It was so much fun to surprise them on Christmas Eve night!

All my pictures from that night were too blurry to post. I guess that means we were all pretty excited!

Christmas morning waiting on the stairs for Papa to check if Santa came!

Excitement was in the air!

The rest is history. Our trip was perfect!

Evelyn’s first Christmas!

Snap Circuits!

Cowgirl boots from Santa!

No UT trip is complete without a root beer candy cane!

Visiting Temple Square, waiting for Papa to be done playing at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building.

One day Travis and a few others planned to go skiing. Unfortunately, it ended up being too windy! We could practically see the snow blowing off the mountain!

Evie stayed in a cabin and tried to stay warm.

We were thrilled to spend a day at the Heber Valley Camp sledding. It was beautiful.

Evelyn enjoying her new Christmas books with Dad.

One of the best things about visiting UT is that both sets of grandparents live there, so we get to see everyone!

We had a wonderful time with Juju and Tie and even stayed up until midnight to ring in the New Year!

Luckily Evie was snoozing.

We took the chance to swim at The Homestead Crater which is only a few minutes from Mark and Jill’s new house.

Even though there were below freezing temperatures outside the water was perfectly warm. Evelyn loved every minute!

We also drove through the canyon to visit the Bean Museum at BYU.

The snowy mountains were beautiful!

And the museum was an adventure!

We were in UT for Travis’ birthday. It was fun to celebrate with his parents! We all wore mustaches to feel more festive at the party. Unfortunately the kids took theirs off before I got a picture.

We’re starting to plan our summer trip to UT and after seeing all these fun pictures I can’t wait to visit again!

We’ll be there before you know it!

For General Conference weekend this spring we decided to visit Washington D.C. We’ve found that a long car ride is the perfect place to listen to conference with our little family. Our first stop between sessions on Sunday was the Washington D.C. temple. What a beautiful place to stretch your legs after being in the car all day!

We made it to our hotel (which was just a couple blocks from the White House, lucky us!) in the afternoon so we had some time to go out and visit some monuments.

Nora called it the “Fancy Nancy” hotel throughout our entire visit because of the beautiful chandeliers in the lobby.

We enjoyed the beautiful weather and walked past the White House, rested on the grass near the Washington Monument and even trekked all the way to the Lincoln Memorial before our night was over.

“Peace”

While we were looking at the memorial, I explained to the kids all the great things Abraham Lincoln did for our country and Will said, “I think if he could look out on us today he would be proud.” Thoughtful little Will.

On our way back to the hotel we needed to grab a bite to eat but since it was Easter Sunday, NOTHING was open. Luckily they were having a free family movie night at the hotel so we had popcorn for Easter dinner. . .

The next day we enjoyed perfect weather and saw as many cool artifacts as you can see with three young kids:

Evie, and Nora near the Capitol.

Nora at the Botanic Garden. (Travis and Will were on a tour of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, which I don’t have a picture of.)

Touching a moon rock! We spent at least 3 hours at the Air and Space Museum.

The kids earned an outrageously over-priced popsicle after all that walking!

Tuesday we made a quick visit to the Natural History Museum, then headed back to the hotel to check out and get on our way to Arlington National Cemetery and Mt. Vernon.

Evie-Long-Legs at Arlington Cemetery. We luckily made it to The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier just as they were changing the guard. 

Puzzle hunt at Mt. Vernon.

With perfect weather, and happy kids the trip was perfect!