The Hines Family Love Here: August 2012

This summer has breezed by in the blink of an eye! And I have only one person (entity) to blame: Our first home! Yep. We've been slaving away to make our 'Short Sale'/perfect neighborhood/two story 'fixer-upper' an inviting and liveable place to call home. With no short of tremendous help from our friends and family who have helped paint, haul, move, clean, sweep, paint, rake, plant, and paint some more! Special shout out to my mother-in-law who has come help and been the main driving force in every paint job we have tackled. It's nice to know someone who not only LOVES to paint, but who is super knowledgeable and is the hardest worker in all aspects of life I've ever seen. But aside from the fact that we have worked a ton of projects around our house nothing really seems to be done? Well, that's not quite true... the paint does make a huge impact (I wish I had more before and after pictures!) but there are a trillion more things on the TO-DO list! It's amazing how a house can consume your life (in several very good ways!) and your every waking thought.... and any spare money in the budget. I'm not going to lie that I love working on the yard and spending my spare time on Pinterest and projects for the house :) It's given me a lot to do in my spare time!

So aside from that I am going to post a few (very few) pictures from our summer vacation. I apologize ahead of time because I took a million pictures, but have none to show for it. See, Drew went out and bought me a new camera for my birthday (that would be today! and gave it to me 3 months early because he was so excited that he couldn't keep it a secret for that long...). However, most of the pictures were taken in RAW format and I've had a really hard time accessing them.

Our vacation was supposed to be a short and sweet visit to Utah to celebrate our 6th wedding anniversary during the 4th of July. Fourth of July is my favorite holiday and is also nostalgic for Drew and I. We first held hands after the 4th of July Fireworks display at Thanksgiving Point and when we really started to date. We were married just a year after that in Salt Lake City Temple on July 1st (so we are always celebrating our anniversary about the same time as 4th of July festivities) and watched the Stadium of Fire Fireworks on our Honeymoon night in Provo from our Suite. Awesome, right? However our vacation turned quickly from short & sweet & everything nice to long & arduous & everything cramped. Right before planning the details of our Utah trip I spoke to my mom and found out that Vanessa was planning a similar long & arduous road trip (with four kids) from Mississippi to Colorado to Utah to Idaho to Colorado again & back to Mississippi (crazy right?). And on top of that Natasha and her two children were going to visit around that same time. I had no idea that a little mini-family reunion was sprouting. The hardest thing was to convince Drew to go along with "the plan". My reasoning was this: We were already going to be in Utah, just 7 hours away, why not go to Colorado too? Drew had the entire summer off so we were flexible and free as not many other families are who work full time. And lastly, I only get to see my family once a year since that's about how often we can afford to travel long distance. (The previous year we took little 7 week old Asher to Alabama, the year prior to that I went to Washington DC .... etc.etc.) But to be able to spend time with my entire family (minus Erika, Mike, Dan & Layne) was if we were to go to CO during the Fourth of July. I had fond memories of Fourth of July celebrations in CO, but it would mess up our plans a bit and we would have to delay going to Utah for another week. We considered me flying out with Asher and meeting up in Utah and several other scenarios, but going all together and driving was the cheapest and I wanted Drew there and he wanted to see my family too (deep down at least).

So we spent our anniversary in the car during a two day car trip to CO with a 13-month old toddler. Saturday we got off to a late start because Asher was just getting over being sick and we were debating delaying our trip, but he was doing much better so we left. The only downside is that Asher was used to a lot of attention at night and sleeping odd hours so he didn't sleep well in the hotel room or during most of our trip. Here are a few pictures after day 1 we stopped into a hotel near the Salt Lake City Airport. Asher was adorable as we checked in clutching and hugging his lion. Such a cutie- he made my heart melt and had all the staff loving him! That night was especially hard because hotel rooms are almost impossible to separate a sleeping space for Asher. He ended up waking up at 4 or 5am and wouldn't go back down so we left early the next morning. Day 1 was worse than Day 2 (our anniversary) and Asher did better in the car - possibly it was from a lack of sleeping at night and we were able to make some good time in the early morning while he slept in the car without any crying or aggressive entertainment tactics on our part. We were also able to stop in Little America which is an amazing stop because it's family oriented, the bathrooms are nice, there is a restaurant and gift shop, and even a playground outside for kids to get the wiggles out! Different from your average truck stop or disgusting rest areas.

Once in Colorado we were greeted by all my family. Natasha and her two children, Vanessa and her four, my brother and (Derek was there at times too), and my parents. And we were all sleeping in the SAME crazy house. It was wild and cramped. There really wasn't a place for Drew and I. I think we really messed up bed situations, but we were able to kick my brother out of his room for a few nights until Derek came. Then we kicked Natasha and her two girls out of my old room since it had the crib in there and would be away from others during naps. This is about the time that Asher developed a strong dislike for Derek's crib and did not sleep well. He had actually done better in the pack and play, but oh well. Drew and I could hardly sleep in the same room so we spent several nights on couches.

While in CO we went to an amazing water park and sports complex with the kids, celebrated Sonja, Vanessa, Tizita, Kimball, and just about every cousin birthday while we were there because everyone's birthday is in JULY! We were and played laser tag for a day which turned out to be super fun with my family even though we were mostly playing with kids and teenagers. It was Drew's favorite part of the trip anyhow. Thankfully my mom watched Asher and put him down for a nap so we could play, play, play! For the Fourth we went to the park and rode the train several times and strolled around the festivities (which are lacking in recent years apart from my childhood memories). Later that night we set up blankets and watched fireworks from the church house :) We kept Asher up late to see the firework display and he seemed to do great! I was afraid he might not like the noise, but he was just super tired after that. We also went to scrap metal-dinosaur park and of course we ate at Chipotle as often as possible! And we watched several Riff-trax with everyone which was fun!

There are no baby gates at my parent's split-level house so Asher learned to go up and down the stairs (he had only been doing one stair at our home) within instants of being there. All the cousins helped him learn to go down backwards- cute moments. Even though there were 8 children and 7 adults in one tiny house Colorado was actually several times more relaxing for me since I was with my own family for one and all the cousins entertained Asher nearly the entire time! I made sure I knew where he was, but he was so happy all the time to be with all those older kids. For the most part my mom's house was also baby proofed too which we didn't get in Utah so that was relaxing too. Derek is closest in age, but he wasn't there most times and then the next closest would be Kimball and he is 5! They were all very good around him. It was SO nice, but with the positives the negatives were there too!

We left for Utah on the following Saturday and the car trip went amazing! We only stopped once for Asher. He was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G. And the trip went fast and sweet. Once we got to Drew's sister's house Asher slept much much better overall and we let him have his own room and took over the living room (sorry!) in their little apartment. Drew slept on the couch and I got to sleep on the floor. That first night we met up with Vanessa and watched her kids while she went to a mission reunion. I don't know how she does it! In Utah Drew spared no time setting up a fishing trip with Jared while Lynette and I went to the gym and Allie and I got to do some shopping. Later that day we all meet up the the Fields family at the park and ate Cafe Rio and played. It was nice to see old friends if only briefly. I wish we could have seen them more. Summer is a busy time! Asher loves to swing, swing, and swing some more! At the park he just hung on to me and swung for quite a while. Now, we can't ever get him to leave the swing to go play on the slides or anything! He sure loves that feeling.

In Utah we also went up to Salt Lake to see the new fabulous mall across from Temple Square which was beautiful. First of all we stopped and went to the Aquarium, but it wasn't quite as amazing as I thought it was going to be. In Salt Lake we stopped in and ate at the Cheesecake Factory! Loved it! I can't remember the name of the cheesecake we were eating in the pic below, but it was the best I've ever had there. I wanted to go to Temple Square and spend some time near where Drew and I were married, but it was already a packed day and Asher really needed to get home to bed so we settled for staring at it from the sky walk in the mall. We stood there just for a moment and shared a few private moments realizing how crazy lucky we were to have found one another and be married! I am so grateful for Drew. Not only do you have to find the right person, but I think marriage does take a certain degree of luck- I mean there is so much I am still learning about Drew that I didn't know before we were married. I am so so lucky! Anyway, at this point in our trip we were really starting to feel the anguish for lack of a better word of not getting any time alone. I stared at the Temple and wished we had more time to visit the square and connect more to one another. During the entire trip we didn't go a single date alone even though we had plenty of family around to watch Asher. I don't know how we managed that. It was the one thing that really irked me since we didn't even celebrate our anniversary. Our trip was our anniversary, but it wasn't filled with connecting or doing a single thing alone together. Next time I will plan better.

We finished out our time in Utah by visiting BYU, a few parks, Nick's Pizzeria, and Bombay House! There is so many good restaurants that I miss! We had a blast, but it was plum out exhausting. The trip home was weary as well. We needed and good vacation from our vacation once we got home!

That was our big trip this summer, but we did take several trips down to Gardnerville as usual for special events and just to see Drew's side of the family so it was still busy busy :)