A weekend in Montana

The Monday before labor day rolled around Casey informs me that the entire office has chosen to take off the Friday before Labor Day so he's forced to take it off to. In hopes of not wasting a 4 day weekend, we thought it a bright idea to invite ourselves up to Montana and visit Casey's two uncles and their families who love up there. Let me tell you, they are the most wonderful families, both having so many qualities that I want implement in my own family or even us as parents. We had such a fabulous time!

We drove up Thursday night arriving half past midnight. Since the boys essentially slept the whole 6 hours up there, getting them back to sleep was rough business! Ha. I don't think the twins truly fell asleep until like 2 and from what I heard from Casey, Max didn't fall asleep until like 3, even being caught eating a tube of toothpaste. That kid and sneaking the toothpaste! I don't get it!

Friday was wonderful, we just sat around and talked with the family in the morning, met their HUGE bunnies in the backyard, rode bikes in the front yard, played with squirt guns, a neighbor boy brought my boys tiny frogs to play with, walked Jacob and Chandler to school, went to a huge park that had a creek and big playground to play on (and someone had their ferret on a leash, weirdo, but the kids were overly entertained). The older kids got back from school and my boys were thoroughly happy and entertained. Lexi, Carissa, Chandler, and Jacob are such fantastic kids. How in the world do you raise such sweet, loving, kind, obedient children!?!?!?! sure they probably have their imperfections but overall those are for sure the cream of the crop. They were so sweet to my kids.

Friday night all the family in Montana came over including Janae and her baby. We played 9 square, ate delicious homemade lasagna, it was just a fabulous evening laughing and talking with them all. I can't even remember the conversations I just remember the feelings of all love and happiness coming from them all. Unfortunately the whole weekend we were there, the state of Montana was covered in fires so the skies were so smokey and outside even smelt like a campfire at times.

Saturday morning we woke up decently early and I went and took pictures of Lance and Malinda's family! Their pictures turned out so fabulous, if I do say so myself, and I think they were really happy with them. By the end of the photo shoot the kids were actually WANTING to take more pictures and saying how fun it was! How awesome is that!

Maxson learned how to ride their little motorcycle that fit him perfectly, it seriously brought tears to my eyes teaching my boy how to ride a motorcycle like his mama. Sharing a hobby that brings me so much joy with my child and seeing him enjoy it so much was just so so fabulous. Max would have ridden that motorcycle all day I tell ya; along with Chandler and Jacob he just kept following and following them endlessly! Casey and I also rode Lance's bike, it's a 150cc I think, and it was great to be back on the bike shifting gears up and down the street, racing Max, and even more, taking the twins on rides, who of course LOVED it. Quinn said he didn't like going fast but it was just such a stinking blast. I want more!!!!!

We did a quick but wonderful trip to the tempe with Lance and Malinda while their kids watched our kids. We did dealings and it was very special to be in the room together with them. Power couple right there most definitely.

Sunday we went to church, all the helping hands around us was wonderful. Sweet Malinda stayed in nursery with my kids and even took Easton the whole time. It was great to be edified! Quinn informed us after church that he hates nursery. It was the funniest moment. When we told him that in Primary next year you won't get snacks he said "I hate snacks!" He is the stinking cutest. Always telling us stuff he doesn't like lol.

After church we went over to Kert and Catherine's and hung out there all evening snacking on a delicious taco bar all night long. Catherine had the most darling display of pineapples all over her home, we went on a hunt counting and there was like 58 or something. So cute. Love that woman. The boys were in heaven playing with all the weapons, legos, and Connor's cars. Bless that boy for sharing, ha. Love learning from them all, old and young.

Monday we slept in, all super tired from the night before, had a delicious breakfast of pancakes and sausage, packed up the car and sweet Malinda began giving us so much of Jacobs stuff he no longer uses or fits. it was fantastic. Clothes galore, toys, a bike and best of all the beloved motorcycle! Max couldn't believe his eyes and was oh so so so happy! It was super sweet of them. We're lucky it fit in our car, ha! Them mini vans sure can hold a lot!

We met all the Christensens over at a little lake with kayaks galore and did a little kayaking trip with the kids, it was a perfect activity for us all and really really fun. I love that it doesn't seem as if these families are continually on their phones, they connect with each other and are genuinely interested in being with one another and caring for each others needs. Their positive, centered in the gospel, serve one another endlessly, honest in all their doings, and FUN to be around, but real people with imperfections. I hope to be like so many of them after getting to spend 4 days with their great families.

We left back for home stopping in Cody for a couple hours to visit Josh George and their family and then back home!

Montana, we will definitely come visit you again!

Southwest Airlines is the best!

Let's talk about Southwest airlines for a second.

They are just the best.

We love them so much, signing up for their Southwest Credit card has helped us tons, and we love earning points that go directly to flights to help us travel to see family more often!

2 free bags? Yes please.

Family boarding? Yes please?

Really nice flight attendants? Yep. I just can't say enough positive things about this company

This time coming home from our Christmas vacation we are cheap idiots and booked a flight to leave Saturday night at 11 pm and then drive through the night from Denver to Lincoln (our original plans were to be in Laramie, WY right after school for interviews and then fly out of Denver which is 1.5 hours away but interviews got cancelled because of bad roads but we still had to proceed forth with our flights, ha)

We arrive at the airport with 2 babies strapped onto us, Maxson running around (I forgot his ladybug leash backpack (man bug bag, thank you very much) at my mom's house much to our dismay, backpacks (1 on each of us), 4 luggage (one of those being a very heavy carryon full of computers, camera, and books), and 2 carseats. Ooh, we had so much stuff coming home from Christmas!!!!!

So we go check in and when we give them our confirmation numbers the agent say "Oh no, your flight goes out tomorrow night!" We couldn't believe it! AHHHHHHHH! In our minds we booked this flight for Saturday night so we could drive home Sunday morning and have a day to recover before Casey goes to school, we must have accidentally booked it on the wrong day when we were going back and forth between days of what to do. Oh man!!!!!

That kind woman goes and talks to a fellow Southwest gate agent, comes back and I hear her kinda yell back to the other woman "Ok, that's what I was thinking, it's the right thing to do." She then tells us she'll just move our flight to tonight for us. BLESS THAT WOMAN'S HEART!

She said there were 7 empty seats (in reality when we were on the plane there was 30 extra seats so it was really no big deal but still, they had no obligation to, but still did it for us which was SOOOOOOOO nice!)

Security went smooth (a million times faster than Denver's Security!), the babies were adorable in the airport waiting to get on the plane talking to all the strangers, we got stared at a ton from every stranger who couldn't believe we EACH had a baby strapped to the front of us (not small babies either I might add!) PLUS another kid with us, we were that circus. The babies slept on the flight, Quinn, who I had, went to sleep right away without a problem, Bryson chose to be awake quite a bit longer for poor Casey and after a tiny fit went to sleep in the baby whisperer's arms. Max somehow stayed awake the whole time watching a movie, he's crazy. Since it was a pretty empty flight we both had rows to ourselves which was the best!

A great thing I did this time around was hook the kids camelback's to a caribeaner onto the outside of my backpack and left them empty which made it all quick, easy, and not heavy. And then in one of my water bottles I filled it with milk for the babies.

We landed early, found our bags pretty easily. A great friend of mine in the Denver (hi Charley!) area did this tricky car situation for us and we walked out of baggage claim to our car there in pretty much the first parking spot at 1 am. IT WENT SO SMOOTHLY!

The kids all fell asleep immediately in the car, we stopped once to fill up with gas on the 6.5 hour drive. Casey drive the first 3.5 hours listening to the podcast Serial, I then drove the next 3 hours listening to what he had just heard. (we have SOOO enjoyed listening to it! can't wait to finish it! I was amazed at how easy the drive went for us all!

We got home at 8:45 am to our neighbors leaving for church. Our kids had just woken up and were going to be nowhere near letting us relax at home. But we were both surprisingly not that tired. So we packed up the crew and headed out to 9 am church getting there a bit late. We stayed in the hall the whole time not wanting to even THINK about struggling with out children inside the room our meeting was in which was good because they were all loud and needed time to roam.

I'm really glad we went to church. It's an important thing for us that our family go to church each week, we've been asked to keep the Sabbath Day holy and we're trying our hardest! Yeah, it was hard and it would have been SO much easier to stay home but that just didn't feel right. I've made covenants to keep the Sabbath Day Holy and bear His name, going to church is a very simple way I can show my love and gratitude towards my Father in Heaven!

Glad we are home!!!!!!!!!

PS- our original flight we accidentally scheduled for Sunday night ended up being delayed from 11 pm to 1:30 am!!!!!!!!!!! How awful would that have been for our little family! Tender mercy we were able to leave Saturday night!

Christmas (festivities) with the Woodruffs in AZ

Christmas reallywas great this year. We spent the first chunk with my family, and then Christmas Day afternoon we went down to Queen Creek to Casey's brother's house to spend almost a week with them while Casey's parents and other siblings were in town too. Then back to my parents for 2 days and then we left back home. 2 weeks REALLY does go fast when you're trying to cram a ton in. 

I have so many photos and we had so much fun that I honestly am not even going to try to blog it all. I've pretty much picked one pictures from each event to write about so it can be remembered but beyond that i just can't do it this year, ha. At least it will be blogged in some form!

We visited a close family friend's home where they had 10 day old puppies, it was just the sweetest and made my heart so happy! We then basked in their super wonderful backyard outfitted for an Arizonan king: play set, tramp, pool (we did not bask in that fun), huge open grass area for Maxson to RUN to his heart's content, and orange trees galore. It was a really great hour we spent there. Thanks, Walkers!

We bought POGO passes for Arizona last summer and since they last a year we tried our best to use those babies as much as possible and we sure had a freaking blast with them! This was the Idea Museum. My kids favorite part was building huge tower structures from these huge blocks (or in Maxson's case destroying everyone else's towers, sigh). Our nieces joined it and made it tons of fun. If I lived by Annalen and Phoebe I would honestly pay them a $1 a day to come play at my house/watch the twins because they do such a great job of it.

The POGO passes took us bowling to Fat Cats one night. Max was insanely eager to throw a ball down the lane CONSTANTLY, he is exhausting. My parents, Logan and Blair's family, and Kirk and Whitney joined us here.

POGO passes brought us to a huge bounce house place which Max absolutely ATE up. Actually both Max and Casey loved it. Casey was so sweaty after having so much fun with Maxson and our nieces there, I love that he sincerely enjoys fun kid activities like this. The babies loved going down the slides too, they were so cute to watch. I was surprised that there were pretty much no other parents at the place that really joined their kids on the bounce houses and played with them. Casey, my mom, and myself were constantly going in and out with the kids, it's so much fun to join them! (To Blair's credit she was pregnant or she would have too). We REALLY loved Pump it Up and can't wait to go again.

Went to the temple

The inside of the temple has a room full of nativity displays, they are truly so beautiful! We went with my mom.

Met little 2 week old Liesl! My brother Scott's baby. She was so super adorable and small. I wanted to just kiss on her little face tons and snuggle her constantly! This is the first baby in the family that's been born when I didn't have my own baby in a LONG time. So I was INSANELY happy to be cuddly a sweet little baby!

On Christmas Adam we had a little fire pit in the front yard while roasting marshmallows and drinking hot chocolate. My whole family was up for this and we had a great time with them all.

On Christmas Eve we played the annual unwrapping games! We love this game so so much! My mom takes a gift card and wraps it in TONS of layers of wrapping paper, duct tape, seran wrap, tape, etc. If you roll doubles with the dice you get to try and open the ball but with work gloves on your hands. it's hilarious how intense this all gets, especially towards the end when you feel like you're SO close to the end prize you just want it! Or when you FINALLy rolled doubles and as soon as you get the gloves on someone else rolls doubles so you don't even get to try opening it. It's one of the best and funniest traditions I think we have and we all enjoy it so much, it never gets old. This year Megan won it but it felt like Logan opened half of it with all the doubles he rolled. This was also the first year we had "rules" from previous years i.e. no teeth or other objects were allowed to be used, only your hands.

A new addition was that the kids had their own ball! This ball was all seran wrap but instead of just one prize at the end the layers with filled with candy and small toys so they all won something throughout the whole ball unwrapping. I think the kids had so much fun unwrapping their own ball after seeing their parents do it right before them. As soon as a kid would get candy they essentially put the ball down and focused on their candy ignoring the fact that they still had time to unwrap the ball! Those silly kids.

Christmas tree picture!

Look at all them cute grandkids!

We had a live nativity Christmas Eve. The children were SOOOOOOOOO proud of themselves dressed in their adorable nativity attire. Their faces were beaming as they walked in while my dad read through the Christmas story as told in the scriptures. It was seriously so sweet. We also exchanged sibling gifts that evening.

Christmas morning! Logan and Blair spent the night with us which made it special having Christmas morning with their family. They are so sweet to make all the effort to come up and be with us so much during our time in AZ, all my siblings are, truly, but L&B go beyond all hopes we have. Christmas is seriously so magical with these adorable little human beings, they are so excited over simple gifts, and their eyes are THRILLED to open a simple thing like BUBBLES! Oh how I love these children of mine!

Cool fact, Casey and shopped the Goodwill by my mom's house a few days before Christmas and scored with some AWESOME gifts for our kids for insanely low prices. Arizona Goodwills have such a great selection of all items, good prices, and a well organized store!

The rest of the family came up Christmas afternoon where we had lunch together and opened Granny and Papa gifts.  Max loved getting sweet cars from Papa and Granny.

After all that fun we drove to the church and played in the gym for awhile with some huge balloons my mom blew up. The kids, like always, went nuts over these balloons, even the adults had fun punching them around. it was a really great activity for a Christmas Day afternoon.

We had our annual stilly string fight on Christmas Day too. We've been doing this since like 1998 or 2000 I think, pretty crazy but stinking fun! Maxson and Tristan LOVED the silly string, most the nieces were still not fans of it all. I love love love doing this each year with my family!

When we came back around New Year's we lit off firecrackers in the backyard which scared us all half to death. None of us were truly ready for how loud they were and half the children ended up crying, poor things. BUT it was still fun. I wish we had gotten to go shooting with my brother and hid family New Year's Day but sadly it didn't work out.

 My mom bought a fun new game called pie face which everyone LOVED playing.

 We gathered for our traditional New Year's morning breakfast at IHOP! My children shoveled down way more food than I thought they possibly could (it was totally delicious, maybe that's why), I will admit I shoveled down some gloriously yummy stuffed french toast as well. We were a rowdy messy bunch there and after an hour of being there my children were chomping at the bit to get outside and run around, ha. Restaurants are still one of the hardest things for me, I don't enjoy them quite yet with my children.

 Our POGO passes to us to the Phoenix zoo which was so much fun! Logan and Blair's family and my mom joined us and we had a great time.

 Max was super adorable and walked around looking at his map the first 25 minutes.

 And I met up with some of my bff's for lunch and then a playdate with our families the next day too. I love these girls so much. They teach me a lot. PLUS look at how gorgeous they all are! Hopefully some of their beauty and fashion will rub off on me more.

A huge shout out to my mom for making all our activities in AZ possible with her extra set of hands and patience, and love, and accommodations!

traveling and visiting friends

After our wonderful time in Wyoming, we trekked through Utah making multiple, also very wonderful, stops on our way!

We met up with a bunch of my cousins in the Utah area. So wonderful to be with family I haven't seen in so long! Love these people very much! We got to work and made plans for an official Woodruff reunion for next year, it's been a few years getting the ball rolling again!

The kids had a blast in that stinking fun backyard.

The twins holding the twins! Sarah and Casey were seriously the best this evening. Once I got to the house Casey (not my husband Casey, cute little girl cousin Casey) literally swept a baby out of my hands without asking and was constantly playing with a baby all evening. She was the cutest. Once her baby began crying, she's give him back to me and quickly search for the other happy baby. Sarah and Casey were definitely a highlight of the evening.

All the kids on the tramp with Brigham

Serious business going down with the cousins.

Playing at our bff Jocelyn and Henry's house. When we walked in Henry said "Hi Max, I like your yellow hair". It was awesome. W called the boys tornado and volcano because seriously, they both are crazy, destructive, high energy (all those words are meant in a good way, right? ha).

We got to take Karlee down to St. George with us on our way to California for her to stay with friends. Poor girl was squished in the back of the van! Bless her heart for all the crying of children she endured.

But we were happy to be on our trip none the less!

We hung out with my brother Weston and his awesome family for a morning in Mapleton and met my sweet little niece Ella! Such a great group!

These little blonde boys had the same interest in everything, trains, bikes, toys, oh boy.

a. Does Weston even look like my brother? Not sure, but it's always fun to be with him, he is just so darn awesome and hilarious, everyone loves Weston.

Abby and Britton were great helpers with the twinsies (and their dog was heaven sent in cleaning up after the babies' messes!!!!)

cute baby Ella!

Visited Grandpa Woodruff in St George and got see Uncle David and Aunt Lynnae's wonderful family! (I'm telling you, we made all the rounds!)

Quinny

a. Loved coming up to the door of my friend Brooke and seeing this awesome note while her child was screaming inside, oh the irony.

b. a very grumpy trip to McDonalds for us all when every child was misbehaving immensely and were at a level 1 million noise wise. It's funny to look back on NOW

Visiting my bff Brooke in SLC! Man I love that girl so much it hurts. 

Then in Arizona I met up with the other 2 girls of our high school crew, Amy and Nicole, which was so much fun! This Christmas all 4 of us will be together for the first time since my wedding!!!!!! Someone is always missing!

Next was a meet up with these long time friends, Annie and Brandi. We went to ALL our years of schooling together (well I didn't get to go to high school with them but we still hung out a ton during those years). Funny enough all our children are within months of being born of each other, 7 kids under 3 years old, we are awesome. It's been so fun having other girlfriends in the exact same stage of life as myself and being able to laugh over dumb stuff and relate. So crazy we were once all wee little  2nd and 3rd graders together!

Of course the kids found different stick like objects to fight together with, eye roll, the fight-playing never stops and he's only TWO!

That's a wrap up of all the friend and family gatherings!