January 2017

Crazy that it's 2017 already! What?! Gavin had to return to Texas the first week of January for work, but Owen and I stayed in Utah in order to attend a wedding and take advantage of the the snow!

 My family the Provo City Center temple, enjoying my cousin's wedding.

Owen was the best dancer at the reception! I'm not biased, right?

The picture above is my sister and I enjoying some fresh powder on the slopes. snowboarding is my happy place! 

 We went on a snowy adventure to Potato Hill. I loved having my mom, aunt, and sister join!

The winter is, in my opinion, the best time to visit Hot Springs. Since Texas doesn't have any (at least that I know of), I needed to get my fill of hot springs in. I have awesome, adventurous family members who were willing to make the trips to Meadow Hot Springs, and Mystic Hot Springs.

By the end of our long trip, it was hard to say goodbye. 

Coming back to these friends made it easier though:

I'm thankful for my loving home, and also thankful for my growing Texas family!

December 2016

Christmas season is great, isn't it?! I love all the charity campaigns, decorated cities, and I especially love the extra time spent with family.
This December, Owen and I took some time to sight-see some of Dallas's decked out cities. We checked out the lights in Addison at Vitruvian park, saw the decorations in Mckinney, and took pictures around Bishop Arts District. We also gawked at the "tallest indoor Christmas tree in America", which is at the Galleria, about 2 miles away from us.

Gavin's work threw a great holiday party! It was held at the Perot museum, which is a very nice and expensive museum to get in to. We were grateful we got to experience it in a way where we didn't have to pay and we didn't have to fight crowds or bring our babe! It was fun to get all dressed up and hang out with Gavin's work friends!

Then the best part of December was flying home to see our families! Hanging out with our siblings is the best! This was the first Christmas in three years that my whole family was together. The cherry on top was that our parents did a good job of spoiling us with presents again this year. 

We ended the year with some snowboarding, Top Golf (twice!) and NYE parties. Unfortunately, I lost a lot of my December pictures due to my computer crashing! These are the two I have left:

This is the first time we've had to travel to see family for the holidays. It was so nice that we were able to just stay with family and play and relax, instead of worrying about to-do-lists. Thank you family, for letting us take full advantage of that!

Santa on the Square

I think I mentioned in a previous post that I love our neighboring city, Carrollton. The city has done a great job of preserving the small town feel of Downtown. Yesterday they hosted a FREE (I love free!) Christmas event. We met Santa, got a printed picture with him, saw some elves, ate some cookies, got a balloon animal, and pet a reindeer! 

"We're basically in Star's Hollow" -Gavin

November 2016

Day by day, life feels pretty mundane. I'm currently looking through all our November pictures to write this post and realizing that even though sometimes it feels like all I do is dishes, we really are having an adventure out here in Texas!

Arbor Hills Nature Preserve
This is a pretty area with running and biking trails, lots of trees, and is apparently a very popular place for family pictures! We found a little stream off trail and hung out there for a good amount of time. I think Owen's favorite thing to do is throw rocks into water. Seriously whenever there's an opportunity, he goes at it for as long as I will let him!

The Arboretum...again!
We get six people in whenever we go, so it's nice to bring new friends every time!

White Rock Trail
We got Owen a little ride-in bike trailer for his birthday, and the past few weeks Gavin has put a ton of work into tuning up our bikes so that we can start this new hobby. We've biked on this White Rock Trail a few times and plan to take it all 7 miles to a lake here in the near future.

Grapevine Lake

This is one of the closest lakes to us so I wanted to check it out. There wasn't much to do there besides boat and fish. O was in Heaven because, back to the throwing rocks in the water thing, he got to do his favorite activity for a whole evening.

Dallas Zoo

A few times a year, the Dallas Zoo only charges $1 to get in! I'm not a huge fan of zoo's, but I do love Owen's animal excitement. The weather this past "dollar day" was perfect, and it wasn't even too crowded. I'm glad we went! You can buy lettuce here to feed the giraffes. It was cool to be so close to them, but Owen was pretty traumatized when him and the giraffe bonked heads!

The weather this month has been perfect for playing outside! I am loving when our friends in Utah post pictures of the snow, but I'm enjoying wearing t-shirts in November!

Thanksgiving

It was very different being away from family on a big Holiday. We really missed the celebrating at home! However, friends came up from Houston, and having company is so fun! We ate our dinner with two other couples, plus the babes. We did a ton of cooking in order to incorporate all our favorite Thanksgiving foods and it was worth it!

We have so. much. to be Thankful for. I frequently wonder how I got so lucky. My heart and my stomach are both pretty full!

Owen Turned Two Yesterday!

I could go on and on about this babe of mine. He is so funny and so smart and so bossy! 

He can sing a few songs like "Take Me Out to the Ball Game", "Sunbeam", and "Love is Spoken Here." He loves to dance, shoot his basketball, play with cars, and throw rocks. He is super friendly and will give anyone and everyone a hug. He knows most his colors and basic animal noises. He knows some numbers but never counts in the right order. He recognizes about half the alphabet. He can Facetime family without help from his parents! 

I need to do a better job of documenting his funny phrases like "Hey mom, what are you talkin bout? You talkin bout Daddy?" He said that a lot and I have no idea where he got it from!

Every day Owen asks Gav if he works at "WC".

He is definitely our greatest blessing and adventure. Love you so much Owie!

October 2016

As usual, I already posted pictures from the bigger events of the month, but here's what I left out...

 Exploring the cute Farmers Market downtown,

 and visiting Gav's work to enjoy the lookout. 

 I finally tried an $8 juice just because I've been wanting to try and $8 juice for a while. This may be politically incorrect, but it wasn't worth 8 dollars! Not bad though, and it was pretty. Next time I will just make my own!

 The restaurants here are so cool! I rarely see a chain restaurant. All these authentic, family-owned places are so fun and usually decorated in a cute, unique way. The truck bench above is at Babe's Chicken. Also, Owen's new sense of independence sometimes causes him to deliberately stare right at the camera with a straight face when I tell him to smile.

Being a stay-at-home-mom to this kid is great 90% of the time. This selfie was taken in the middle of a tantrum when he realized I was taking pictures.

Weather here is still pretty warm. Leaves haven't changed yet, so I love it when people from Utah post pictures of the colorful canyons. The bridge above is where I run a few times a week, so I'll enjoy this scenery until Texas catches up with the season.

And, of course, Halloween...

Within the week, we had a church trunk-or-treat, a work party, and a friend's party. By 8:00 that night we were watching Curious George's Halloween and we continued to watch it until 11:00, when the sugar had finally worn off Owen and he fell asleep! We are party animals!