June 2017

Bring the heat!
We actually did a ton of new things this month! Here's a few photos to prove it.

 The Katy Trail

 Six Flags Amusement Park

 Water Park in Grapevine

 Giant Bears in Highland Park

 Getting brave in our pool

 Found a "waterall" in Richardson

 Played at the Klyde Warren Park splash pad again

and explored Fair Park.

This month, the highlight was Gavin's family coming out! We love visitors! Gavin's entire family wasn't able to make it, but we had fun with his parents, sister, and her husband. I'll post about that next!

McClearys Take Dallas

We were so stoked to have my family come visit us in Dallas! I loved giving them a visual for our life here, plus it's always fun to have an excuse to play hard. I did a more formal post on their visit here, so I'll just do a quick photo & info dump on this blog. 

 Owen forcing a smile at the Ranger's baseball game after he got freaked out from the crowd cheering about a game-winning home run!

 Touring the cowboys stadium and me fan-girling in the cheerleader's locker room

We took a day trip up to Turner Falls, Oklahoma. Read more about that here.

More sightseeing...

 Fort Worth Water Gardens

 Arboretum

 Deep Ellum

 Playing & Exercising at the park

 Touring downtown

 Showing my fam where Gavin works

 Playing a "how well do we know each other?" game designed by mom.

Showing off the skyline

 and barbeque.

 And of course just soaking in being together.

Come again!

May 2017

May in Texas means that summer activities are already in full swing! So we spent a lot of time at Splash Pads,

 (Campbell Green Park)

 (Klyde Warren Park)

Escaping the heat,

 (Playdate Co.)

Eating popcicles,

Steel City Pops- of course!

And taking more trips to the Arboretum.

The heat in May is not too shabby. June - August is a different story, but we're grateful for the warm Spring and Fall weather. 

Of course our highlight of May was that our family came to visit us in Dallas! We LOVED having them here! Their trip deserves it's own post, so look for that one next!

Goodbye Utah

Ugghh leaving was emotional. Within the past few years I have sent three siblings off on missions, and this time it was our turn to get the goodbye's. It's a little different considering we can (and do) Facetime our families like five times a day, but it was still hard to leave everyone. Our families helped us so much with packing and cleaning and getting out of there.

Last sight of my hometown for a while.

We left Owen with our parents while we drove down so that we didn't have to take him on an 18 hour drive. My mom flew out with O a couple days after Gav & I left. I missed him a lot those couple of days, but getting pictures like this helped.

Showing his stuffed animal some Steph Curry highlights. 

We actually had to drive separately, which stunk. Gavin drove the moving van and this is just me checking it out.

The first day of our drive we stopped in Moab. We could have just ended our trip there and stayed in Moab the rest of our lives, that'd be fine with me!

 Millcreek hike. I strongly recommend this! Short, easy, and a nice payoff. I've heard you can cliff jump here, and some people were, but I wasn't about to do that considering the pool was about 8 feet deep and the cliffs were about 15 feet high.

We had never been to Canyonlands National Park before, so we took a little drive and a very quick hike to Mesa Arch. Canyonlands was so cool! It was beautiful! Now we have been to every national park in Utah!

Right by Canyonlands is Dead Horse Point State Park. Apparently this is different than Horseshoe bend, Arizona! So that means we checked one item off the bucket list, but gained another, haha!

Bonus picture- I couldn't bring myself to leave it out! O on his flight outta SLC!

California 2016 pt. 1

Yup... A Hawaii trip, a few camping/hiking trips, and a California and Disneyland trip all in the same summer. Remember how I said July and August were the best months ever?! Truth!
Gavin's parents found an awesome house on Air BNB about a mile away from Disneyland that accommodated all of us! They rented a 12 passenger van and took the whole family with them!

The first day we drove 6 hours and stayed the night in Nevada at Buffalo Bills. Of course we had to stop at the *Scipio petting zoo on the way. The boys spent the night *gambling and they did pretty well. For some reason we didn't ride the roller coaster this time. I think we were all just tired from travelling and ready for a break. Buffalo bills is where Owen started saying "To infinity and beyond," or "to iffy an neon!" then putting his arms out like wings and pretending to fly everywhere. It took us a while to figure out what he was doing and saying! He continued this activity throughout the whole trip, it was awesome!

We made it to California the next day and, like I said, our house was awesome! Go Sue for finding it! It was small, but it had a room for all of us. The whole house was Disney themed and Disney painted and very kid friendly! There was a pool in the back that was safe and gated off, thankfully, so the kids couldn't get in without an adult. The other part of the backyard was full of playhouses and kid toys. The three toddlers were in heaven! They could have played out there all day every day.

While in California we had a beach day, a zoo day, and three days of Disneyland. It was perfect. I'll cover the beach here, but the Zoo and Disneyland can get their own posts.

So, my family loovvees the beach. We have passed this love on to Gavin, but his family isn't as passionate about it as we are. I'm glad they agreed to a day in San Clemente so that we could share our love for the ocean with them. We brought our boogie boards, and the waves were bigger than I have ever seen before at this beach. There were some legit boogie boarders there! We also introduced the Scotts to Pedros Tacos which was, always has been, and always will be, a success. 
We checked out a couple beaches in San Clemente. Note to self: spend all your time at T-Street beach... it's the best one!

Yup... O is waist deep in sand right here!

Fish tacos people.

*Scipio is a town in between Salt Lake and St. George. There is nothing for a while before Scipio, and nothing for a while after. So... the people of Scipio have a perfectly placed gas station right off the freeway and at this gas station there is a petting zoo with goats, rabbits, and exotic animals. It is the most random thing but we always stop!
*The other day someone asked Gavin if he would gamble if he wasn't Mormon. He was like "umm, well, I do sometimes! haha maybe I shouldn't brag about that.

Anniversary

On August 11th, 2008 Gavin and I were outside together and we saw a bunch of shooting stars and we were 18 so of course we ended up kissing a little. Come to find out, August 11th is the peak night of an annual meteor shower. We originally wanted our wedding date to be the 11th, but that didn't work out and we ended up getting married on August 16th, 2012. We tend to celebrate our anniversary sometime within the week and not always on the day of. This year we wanted to celebrate on the 11th by finding a cool place to watch the meteor shower. It was supposed to be awesome this year!
Bless my mom for taking O (again) the night of the 11th. Gavin and I took our first little overnight backpacking trip up to Lake Blanche. Not too shabby... except even though we were way up Big Cottonwood Canyon, we could still see the glow of Salt Lake City and guess what- I only saw one stinking shooting star!
The sunset that night though, was the best I have ever seen. Seriously. 
Again...iPhone camera... I'm not going to be able to share much, but it was beautiful and it made the whole trip worth it. I'm so glad that Gavin agreed to be my adventure partner!

July 2016

I posted about our major awesome events of July. We did have a few mini-adventures in between the big ones. 

 A hike up to Cecret Lake because wildflower season is insane! It's my favorite time of year to hike because these meadows are no joke. Beautiful!!

 Shooting the tube...again... with my brothers this time.

 Perfect summer nights.

And this kid.