Summer Vacation Part 1: Rexburg

I don't even know where to begin....
I have been MIA because we were traveling all of June and a little bit of July. Our little family had driven 80+ hours this summer! And our boys did awesome, during all those hours, I'm sure having movies playing almost the whole time helped.
It's been a crazy summer but also a blast. We closed on our house (more on that later) moved and unpacked as much as we could and left two days later to Rexburg.
We just hung around in Idaho between reunions and a wedding so we got to spend a lot of time with my folks. It was great, and now that my mom has retired we got to spend even more time with her, the kids just loved hanging out with grandma. I also got to spend time with some old friends it was great.

While we were in Rexburg we were able to do a lot of fun things.

We went to our usuals; Taco Time was our first stop, and of course we had to go to Porter's, Pizza Pie Cafe, Millhollow, and my mom watched the kids while Dustin and I went to the temple, it was crazy busy.

 The Rexburg temple is so beautiful, I couldn't stop taking pictures. I miss being able to see a temple everyday. One night we took the kids to the temple grounds. Thomas loves the Rexburg temple he told us that's the temple he wants to be married in. He also said there were "so many churches" in Idaho, ha ha,

Walking on temple grounds.

We also bought a pass to ride the carousel while we were there,  so we did that several times, we went with some friends, and ran into some friends there. That's another thing I love about Rexburg, running into people all the time, even people we met when we lived in Orlando.
The kids loved going.

We also took the kids to the Gardens at BYU-Idaho.

We went to Smith Park a lot. Thomas went down the "big" slide by himself. I remember being terrified of that slide when I was a kid, I didn't blame Oliver when he didn't want to go by himself. It was fun seeing my kids playing at the same park I grew up playing in. So many memories...

And just hanging out at my parent's house:
We enjoyed the nice grass, building Lincoln logs with Grandpa West, playing in the basement with the huge Waffle blocks, making breakfast with grandma.

We also visit BYU-Idaho a couple of times. What a great place BYU-Idaho is. We were fortunate enough to be there the last week of school and Dustin and I were able to talk to most of our art professors! It was so great, we were probably there for four hours. Not too many colleges could you go back 4 and half years later and your professors still remember you. I could be bias, but art teachers are the best, they are so inspiring in so many ways, spiritually, artistic-ly, and in life in general.
We also took the boys, and got them all BYU-Idaho attire. 

Dustin went down to the library everyday to work, and sometimes he would bring Thomas. This picture is so deju vu to me, I would find Dustin at this exact spot working on art when we were in college doing the exact same thing, drawing.

And more pictures of the temple as we would pass by to get to my parents.

It was so good to be there. Rexburg is seriously the best and is good for the soul. I do miss it very much, but I do love Texas too... and now I have a house!

San Antonio Family Trip

This last week we had a little family trip to San Antonio. The kids had such a great time, and it was fun to just get out of our busy lives for a couple of days just as a family.  

Wednesday, after Thomas's swim lessons and Dustin's Dr. appointment (Dustin the day before really hurt his back, not good timing since we are about to move this coming week.) we headed to San Antonio and it took a lot longer between feeding breaks for Peter and hitting traffic but we finally made it. The boys were very excited to get out of the car. That night we let the boys "swim" in the huge bath tub since we were too tired to go to the swimming pool, then we let them stay up and we watched a movie and had popcorn on their bed, they thought that was the greatest thing.

Then the following day we went to SeaWorld. We ended up being there almost an hour early... we thought it was a longer drive than it was. Then we had to go rent one of those motor carts for Dustin, ha ha I couldn't stop laughing at him, poor guy, he was in a lot of pain, but he just looked silly in that since he looked like he was someone who could walk just fine but was just being lazy. But it turned out great for me because I got to ride some roller-coasters while he watched the kids.

First we let the boys play in the splash area until the Shamu show, and it was so fun to watch Oliver watch the whale jump out of the water he was super impressed and excited. Then we watched many shows and animals, and of course, we had to get caricatures done by some of Dustin's old co-workers. Also Thomas went on his first roller-coaster, well a kid roller-coaster, but still!  He was a little scared but he did it and he went again! But the carousel was the most popular between the two boys.

A little disclaimer: I'm probably being silly but why I'm wearing sleeveless is because I was wearing my swimming suit since we were planning on getting wet between the Shamu show and the splash pad and I didn't feel like wearing wet clothes all day.

Then Friday we took it easy, if it wasn't for Dustin's back we probably would have gone to the River Walk and the Alamo but instead we went to one of our favorite places, the Magnolia Pancake Haus. My brother was the one that told us about it when we lived here, it is so yummy! It's so good it's been on the Food Network and there is always a 45 minute wait or longer, but it's worth it. Then we went back to the hotel and went swimming and just hung out.

Then Saturday we headed home, but of course we had to stop at Round Rock to get the biggest donut!

I promise we don't eat out this much normally but you just can't pass up this yummy goodness, and I'm not even a donut fan. 

It was such a fun trip, it was hard to come back because we have so much to do now that we are home, but I'm so glad that we did this trip, and it was so good to have all five us hanging out with not having to worry about life. 

And thanks to Grandma and Grandpa Hayden for letting us use your time share to make this possible!