Final Four

Aaron had the lucky opportunity to go see the final four games and the National Championship game this weekend. They played in Arlington and my Dad got tickets for my brothers, himself, and Aaron. This is pretty much a once in a lifetime opportunity and we were all over it. We drove down Saturday afternoon after Carson's soccer game and left early Tuesday morning. Aaron had a great time and we are grateful to my Dad for making this possible. 

We spent the rest of the weekend watching General Conference, eating delicious food, and playing with our cousins. It was such a nice, relaxing weekend. It seems like I always have to share my parents when we go up to visit lately and it was nice to have them mostly to myself this trip. My Dad even took a day off work! I sure love seeing how much my kiddos love their Grandparents, they were counting down the days until our trip. (And so was Aaron, lets be honest. :) 

I not know

Do your children have things that they say that you know are grammatically incorrect but its just so darn adorable you don't care? Camilla has several of those things and we love them all but our favorite is, "I not know." We hear it so often as Carson is often found asking Camilla math questions and she is constantly replying, "I not know." Well this week out of nowhere I asked her what she wanted for her snack and I got, "I don't know." What? What did you just say? I was heart broken, it made me so sad. It reminded me of how much Millie has grown up lately and how much more she talks then she did 6 months ago. I feel like I need to record her speaking because we love her voice so much and I know this stage will pass and I will miss it terribly. I thought perhaps her I don't know comment was a slip of the tongue, but no, she has continued on with saying I don't know ever since. And just like that, my baby is growing up. 

I used to blog

I want to start again but its like where to begin when you've taken such a long break. Aaron tells me that I can just forget what happened during my hiatus and start again but can I really just leave out such big events like the birth of my 3rd child or Carson starting pre-K? What about a video of Camilla's adorable voice or singing "Little Red Caboose"? I just feel like life is going way too fast and I want some way of recording it. We are truly in the happiest time of our lives. Adding Brooke to our family has brought us more happiness than I thought possible. I could never have predicted how much the kids would love her and how much we would all love another addition to the family. I'm always amazed at how another child becomes a part of our family and I simply can't remember life without them. Aaron is finishing up school and oh how we will miss his school schedule. He took a class in DC for a week that counted as 3 credits and he took a block class at the beginning of the semester so now he just has 9 credits for the rest of the semester. We love having him home every night for dinner, taking walks and jumping on the trampoline, and reading books together before bed. I know life will never be like this again and just about every night I tell Aaron that I just want to bottle my happiness up and save it. All too soon Aaron will be working, traveling every week, and while our income will be higher that simply can't compete with how much fun we are having. I hope to start recording things better, maybe going back and hitting up the highest of highlights from the past year. 

Lately

We've been practicing a lot of soccer outside. Carson insists upon changing into his soccer cleats (our Goodwill find which were originally black and pink and Aaron colored over with black permanent marker) and shin guards every time we play. 

I find my kids reading to each other sometimes and it makes my heart very happy. 

Love my boys!

Mad skills. 

Volleyball

I don't get to play volleyball very much anymore. I wish that I played more often because each time that I do I am reminded of how much I love it. I have played in a women's league here in Austin and I played a few times while I was pregnant with Brooke in a coed league. Today I played in a tournament through the MBA program. It was a lot of fun. It was a hot day and I haven' t played sand volleyball I years and I mean years. The first time I went up to hit at the net it went straight into the bottom. I forgot how hard it is to jump in the sand. I was on a good team, they would've been good with or without me but we won. I was proud of my trophy. Also proud that I hung with those young kids. (Okay not kids but younger than me and have no kids of their own.) My little family came to cheer me on and I was so proud. Aaron kept the kids all day for me to play in this tournament and I'm grateful that he was so nice about it. Just chalk this tournament up to another thing I love about Austin - active, outdoor fun!

 

Bull Creek Trail

 

Tonight for FHE we decided to go for a hike through the Bull Creek Trail. We have never been there before but heard it was pretty and dog/kid friendly. That is as perfect combination for us. The weather has been gorgeous today so it was great timing. We went after dinner to give traffic some time to die down and the trail was pretty empty, just a few others. We walked for awhile but spent most of our time playing in the water. We threw rocks and sticks and watched Josie run all around. We stayed until it got too dark to stay anymore and headed home. Just a 20 minute drive to west Austin and this trail. I sure love having a family who enjoys this stuff as much as I do. (And a dog who enjoys it the most!)

 

Florida

So this is how Aaron and I normally take trips. We talk about it, for a LONG time. Then we make lists of when we would go and what we want to do. Then come the spreadsheets which budget every cost and includes ways that we could cut costs or splurge depending on how we feel. (i.e. budget hotel or nicer hotel) Well not this time. We decided on a whim to go visit our dear friends the Williams and just kind of took off. We knew it was a 16 hour drive and would require 2 hotels. We knew that we had never driven that long before but for some crazy reason we thought it would be fine.

 

(20 minutes before we arrived at our destination)

 

Well we survived, we're not interested in doing it anytime again soon but we are glad that we were able to spend time with our friends. The weather was awful while we were in Florida. We had visions of a day trip to the beach and Aaron was going to watch some spring training baseball but that all got canceled due to rain/cold/wind. But that's okay because we are happy to just stay up way too late talking to our friends with a lot of laughing and letting our kids bond.

We were able to see some gators, real life gators people. I wasn't very scared, maybe I should've been but none of them came out of the water. It was weird that we were in a real life swamp. I felt so Florida while we were in there. We also drove around the campus in Gainesville.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After a day of being stuck indoors and another rainy day, we decided to go to a bounce house. We had a blast. The kids, and the dads, ran all over the place and Carson was pretty much in heaven.

 

The drive home was rough, everyone was ready to be home. As soon as we got home, Aaron started looking up flights to Utah. (We are driving out there this summer) But like child birth hopefully we will have forgotten by the time we go again. :)