California Trip

We were able to drive to California over Memorial Day to see my family. My mom grew up there and so a lot of my family is still out there. We stayed with my aunt and uncle, who are the BEST hosts ever. They have so much yummy food, a nice comfortable house, and they are just lots of fun!

We left on Tuesday afternoon and drove most of the way there. We stayed in Reno, which is only a few hours from my family, but it was nice to break up the trip and have a nice place to stay for the night. I got a picture of the beautiful Utah Tree. My dad always made the biggest deal when we would pass this when we would drive to California. Pretty weird.

We got to Lodi around noon and Owen was stoked to see Indy in the backyard. She is the best dog ever and so patient and nice. Owen just adored her.

We had lunch with my uncle and then headed over to say hi to my grandma. She lives at a nice retirement center right by my uncle. It is one of the least child-friendly places on earth with old people everywhere and breakable things, but we managed to do okay. And Owen cuddled right up to my grandma, it was pretty adorable.

Keith and Karen made some awesome dinners while we were there, including homemade fried chicken. It was seriously amazing and we are going to make it sometime soon!

We had a lot of fun big family dinners and my cousins have a bunch of kids so it was fun for Owen to be around them when he doesn’t see them often. He took a day or two to warm up but he did really well. Luckily he slept great and took two naps a day a few times!

They turned on the sprinklers after dinner one night and Owen just ran right in and loved it. It was hilarious an he didn’t even mind the cold water. He loved it and just kept running around and pushing his bus right in the water.

Those curls are my favorite. Too bad we just cut them all off! Ahhh!

On Friday we decided to drive to Big Trees State Park. We were going to go to the beach, but decided against it because of a lot of likely traffic with the holiday weekend. It just wasn’t worth sitting in the car for 4 hours with Owen. Big Trees was less than 2 hours and no traffic and it was great!

The trees really were big. They were giant sequoia trees and it was so gorgeous!

We did a loop through the forest to see the trees and it was just so nice and quiet and peaceful. It wasn’t busy at all and it was nice and cool with all the shade. Owen loved wandering around and we just took our time.

Owen gives Big Trees a thumbs up.

Owen dozed off in the stroller while we were walking so we sat down on a bench and just relaxed. It was really nice.

On Saturday we went with my cousin and her family to a little zoo and park close by. It wasn’t crowded and it was perfect for little kids. Her boys are 3.5 and 1.5 so Owen had fun with them. The zoo was fun and we went to the petting zoo afterwards.

Owen really liked the animals and they were pretty funny.

After the zoo we went to a little splash pad in the area and played for a little while. Owen loved Danny swinging him over the water.

Below is Owen and Kimball. Kimball is about a month older than Owen.

The kids had fun in the sprinklers again and Owen was standing on the chair just yelling and shouting about something. It was so funny!

We managed to get all the kids lined up on the table for a picture!

I really love this sweet baby.

Owen cuddled right up to Aaron.

This is the morning that we left. Owen looks way ticked, but he just wanted to get down and run around before we got in the car. We had such a fun time seeing everyone and just spending time together. I wish everyone lived closer so we could do this more often!

May

May started with a late birthday celebration for my mom. We ate on the deck and it was delicious and gorgeous. I had been deathly ill the day before so I was still recovering, but I ate a lot and kind of got sick again. Yucka.

Donuts for dessert!

Owen loved playing with Grandma’s pots of dirt and he made a huge mess, but he was pretty cute doing it.

Josh is Owen’s little buddy every Monday when I go into the office. They had matching superman shirts and it was the cutest thing ever. Owen was more focused on doing “10 Little Soldiers”.

We got a hard cast put on his foot a week after he broke it and it was much better. It took him a few days to adjust to walking on it, but he was getting around just fine with it. We got the cast off after only 2 weeks and it wasn’t soon enough! Anyone in a cast is annoying, but an 18 month old was pretty tough. He was a little wobbly with it off, but was walking around just fine!

We went to baby animal days in Kaysville and Owen liked watching the bunnies but wasn’t interested in touching them and would get a little jumpy when they would hop around by him.

He has always loved horses and dogs. He says “hissies” and “puppies” all.the.time. He also has a little stranger anxiety, so I didn’t know how he would do riding a horse without one of us right by him. He totally understood that he was going to see the horse, so he didn’t even look back and went with the lady and got right on the horse! We were so surprised but so happy to see him be totally fine with it! The best part was when he leaned forward and kept petting the horses neck! I just about died from cuteness.

Looking great in our Sunday outfits after church. He wasn’t thrilled with a picture, but still looks darling.

As part of our contract, we had to fix a small leak under the kitchen sink for the buyers, so Dan took care of it. At first he thought he might have to call in a plumber, but he figured it out and got it all taken care of! He is quite the handyman and Owen wanted to get in on the action. He was right next to Dan the whole time!

We got to see one of our favorite people live in Salt Lake! Dave Ramsey! This guy is awesome and we were stoked to go see him speak. It was really good and inspirational and got us excited to be on the right track for our future and our children with money. I love that he also talks a lot about God and the Bible.

We had street tacos before the show and ran to Blue Lemon for dessert during intermission!

This was one of the last (maybe the last?) times Dan mowed our lawn at our West Point house. Owen loves mowers and had to help dad push it around. Cutest ever.

This is our neighbor’s cute dog Sallah. He is a great dog and Owen just adores him. I’m glad I got a pic before we moved!

And these are our cutest little neighbors, Mia and Lou. They loved Owen so much and he just loved to go outside and play with them on the tramp or swing or wherever. He would yell “Mia!” as soon as he walked outside. Their older kids babysat Owen a lot and they were just the best neighbors ever! We already miss them so much!

We got one decent picture of Owen with Rebecca’s kids on his last day at their house. He had no idea it was his last time playing there, but I got pretty emotional because he just loves them. He says their names over and over all the time. I know he will miss them and seeing these cute kids play with Owen makes me want to have more kids! Staying with the Laws on Mondays was such a great place to leave Owen and he never cried or got upset when I left. I knew he was happy and having fun and I hope I can find some great people like this again!

We moved out of our home on the 31st and it was a crazy and sad day. Moving sucks. Really really bad. I never want to do it again. For so many reasons it is hard. We were very organized and everything was packed and ready, but we had some major hassles with the U haul (canceled reservation and no trucks available?!) which got us pretty ticked and stressed, but it worked out. Luckily we have amazing families who came to help us move all our stuff. We had so much stuff. We had even cleaned and de-cluttered before listing our home but with a big house full of furniture, work out equipment, washer, dryer, freezer, etc etc etc, it was nuts!

They put it all on the grass then amazingly packed it into the back of the truck. I couldn’t believe it all fit and it just barely did. We loaded up the rest of our cars and headed to my mom’s house to unload. My sister in law took Owen which helped a ton, and I was the last one out of the house. I cried a few tears after walking through my empty home. We have so many wonderful memories there and did so much to make it our home. We put a lot of hard work there, and we brought Owen home there! We just love everything about it, except for the location! So it was very hard to drive away, especially not knowing yet where we would end up.

Everyone worked SO hard to get things packed into my mom’s garage and basement. Andrew was the master tetris man and stacked boxes from floor to ceiling in the basement! The garage looks like an episode of Hoarders, but luckily it’s temporary. We are so grateful that my mom is letting us take over her home while we find a new house! We are so excited to be closer to family, but will definitely miss our old home.