Mustaches and Monocles

While video chatting with the fam in AZ I took these sweet pictures.

Miles kept photo bombing

Camping

Last Fall Aaron and I decided we wanted to try camping so we bought the stuff for it. Unfortunately the weather turned right after this decision and we didn't get a chance until two weeks ago.

We drove an hour and a half to Beckler River Campground, pulled right up to a little site and set up camp 30 ft from our car and 20yds from the river. It was beautiful! Green everywhere, rushing river right there and sunshine. We set up camp, forgot bug spray and drove to the gas station, a 15 min drive, and bought some.  Perfect for newbie campers, which despite camping often in our youth we both are. (Aaron is apparently VERY allergic to bugs. His bites were quarter-sized in less than a minute)

We read our books in the sun by the river, ate mostly cooked tin foil dinners and played with fire. Bragging moment: we got our fire started with one match on our first try and kept it burning for like 4-5 hours. We rock! When it got pretty dark we also played with Aaron's fancy camera. Here are the pictures. Enjoy!

Fire!!!

Note the tin foil dinners inexpertly put in the fire. Good thing we used precooked ham.

Late night camera fun 

Not super interesting arrangement of photos but at least it's posted.

Arizona Picture and Video Extravaganza

Videos!

Miles just doesn't want to wake up.

This one is on Jaela singing me 'all the pretty little horses' lullaby that my mom sang to us as kids. She get's distracted but it's still adorable.

And there is this gem of Benji laughing. I can't get enough of that dimple!

And some more pictures!

She plays racquetball in TWO pairs of heels.

Arizona Love

Love his accidental smile

I just caught up reading my mom's blog and figured I should catch up writing in mine.

On April 30th I went to AZ to stay with my sister Geneva for a month and help with a her new baby. Sweet baby Miles came on May 2nd. Many of you probably know I've got some health issues that make getting pregnant a challenge. As any one who has struggled with infertility knows it kinda messes with you head. Thoughts like this start to freak you out: "Maybe I can't have a baby because Heavenly Father knows I'll be a terrible mom." or perhaps "I need so much sleep I wouldn't be able to cope with having a kid and that's why I can't get pregnant." You know all of those things that Satan puts into your head when you're unsure about life.

Well thanks to my lovely sister I got to play mommy for a few weeks. And it was AWESOME. I mean I already knew I loved kids but it was so fun. Granted, I didn't have to wake up with baby Miles every hour or two but I got to play with J all day and cuddle a squishy new born. It was fun to play in the sprinklers outside and dance to Aristocats. And a beautiful little two year saying "I love you Eena?" What more do I need in life? An amazing shopping trip with Alicia? Check. Time with Ellie and Benji? Check. I briefly got to see my brothers and their families which was lots of fun. Another high point was being able to get together with my childhood best friends for Vanessa's birthday. It's amazing how easy it is to connect with old friends.

By week two I was starting to miss my husband and he was missing me. If I could have convinced him to come visit I probably would have lasted the whole month but Aaron hates AZ in May so I came back home early.

I Love Baby Miles

And not-so-baby Benji

Jae showing off her presents from Baby Miles

I have more pictures and a few videos I'll post later. It was seriously a blast.

Stay-cation

Remember how I went to Hawaii for my birthday last year and never posted about it? Yeah me too. Maybe someday but probably not. While we were there I asked Aaron what his ideal vacation would be. After some thought he came up with something like this

"It would be all the good stuff of going on vacation but at home. You know like eating out as much as you want but sleeping in your own bed and just doing whatever you want."


Thus the Staycation was born.

Aaron took off Thursday and Friday from work with the plan of staying home all weekend doing whatever he felt like guilt free. Stay up till 2am playing video games? Sure, you on staycation! Only eat take out or delivery? Uh that's mandatory for a good staycation. Watch ridiculous amounts of TV? Again pretty much the whole point. And at the end of each night sleep in your own bed. Perfection!

I wanted to make it more fun than just hang out at home all day, everyday for 4 days so I decided on a surprise. And to make sure I actually did it I told Aaron about weeks in advance (we really like to anticipate events around here). He asked me about it constantly, because as many of you may know, I'm not the best at keeping presents a surprise. I'm proud to say that he had no idea until he opened it.

I rearranged all the furniture in our bedroom, got a new duvet cover and a new shower curtain. I got him a hotel room at home!

There are no before shots but oh well.

And I'm not the best at taking pictures

It was fun and made the staycation more vacation-y.

Portlandia

Another road trip post!

Aaron has a friend from AZ that I named Friend Brad so I wouldn't get confused when he was talking about Boss Brad. Well I accidentally called Friend Brad that to his face and he thought it was great. He liked it so much he bought a few url's on the spot. Anyways, Friend Brad moved to Portland so we decided to go visit him.

By Train.

For reals we took a train, it was a really fun adventure.

We walked around downtown, went to a book store called Powell's that is almost a city block. It's got 4-5 different wings, new and used books, it was pretty much amazing. Mom, you would LOVE it.

There was something called Saturday Market which is like a big craft fair.

We also went to this famous doughnut shop called Voodoo Doughnuts. Dad you would LOVE this place :)

We actually waited in line for 45 minutes to get these doughnuts but it was worth it!

That is an ODB it is a raised doughnut with chocolate icing, crushed up Oreos and drizzled with peanut butter. Sooooo goooooood.

Again there are pictures we took with Aaron's phone that I don't know how to access yet so there will be a follow up post on this one hopefully later this week or early next week.

Goonies, cheese and icecream

What do all of these things have in common? We got them on our road trip! Aaron and I both decided we should go on a road trip, mostly because we love snacks. Really that is our favorite part. So we loaded up on high sugar, high salt and high fat food stuffs and headed out on the open road.

We decided to drive down the coast and enjoy the scenery. At one look out spot I saw this and pretty much had a mini freak out.

THAT IS THE ROCK FROM GOONIES!!!!!!!

It turns out that we totally drove through Astoria, OR where Goonies was filmed. So exciting!

This is my super handsome husband closer to the cool haystack rock.

Besides snacks and discovering we drove through Goonies, we had pretty much amazing grilled cheese sandwiches and ice cream at the Tillamook Factory.

There are more pictures on Aaron's phone but I'm not sure where they update to so maybe in a weeks there will be a post with random pictures.

Anyways, we had a great time spending the day together and also listening to a great book called Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson. It was excellent.