JACKSON HOLE VIDEO

JENNY LAKE + YELLOWSTONE

After the fourth of July we caravanned our way up to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, with my entire family. We we're there for 5 days & it was so much fun. We rarely get to be together with all of us, so when we are it is really cool. Surprisingly, we didn't spent a lot of time in actual Jackson Hole. We stayed a few minutes out of Jackson in Teton Village & our days ended up being so packed that we only went into Jackson two times for dinner! The day we got there we went to a chuckwagon dinner where we rode in covered wagons to dinner where they had a live band & a few cowboys & indians riding around putting a show on for the kids. The dinner was pretty fun & the music was great, but my favorite part was watching Cedar with all of his cousins going wild, playing & dancing with them. He has 6 older cousins only my side of the family & is constantly asking for them & following them everywhere when we are all together, I think it's adorable but I'm sure it drives the cousins a little crazy sometimes, haha.

The next day we went to Jenny Lake where we took a boat across the lake & hiked to a couple different waterfalls & then back around to the parking lot. The hike was beautiful & the lake was gorgeous, the water was so, so blue & so, so cold. When getting ready for the hike we had been mislead & told that it would only be 1.5 miles, & I don't know why we didn't question that in the first place but, it ended up being closer to 5 miles! Before starting the hike Austin & I went back & forth on whether we should take the hiking pack for Cedar or let him walk, but luckily we decided to take the hiking pack to carry Cedar in, otherwise it would have been pretty bad.

While we we're there we drove to Yellowstone & I was SO excited, I had been wanting to go to Yellowstone for years & was so happy to finally go! We woke up bright & early to try & beat the crowds at old faithful where we then drove through the park stopping at the artist pots & to yellowstone falls. It was all so pretty, I was seriously loving it & hope we can go back soon, hopefully with less crowds :).

REAL TALK // LIFE, MAN

I've been failing majorly in the blog world as of lately. Whenever I get a moment to myself to write a new post I end up taking a nap, or reading, or folding laundry, or a baby starts to cry, or I just don't know what to write about, there is always something that seems to pull me away from blogging & it totally bums me out. I love this little space of mine & I need to get back on track of writing more often! Now that that's out of the way, here is a life update.

If I'm being totally honest, I feel like my little family has been in limbo for the past couple of months, always waiting for something or other. When we moved back to the U.S. we moved in with my mom to save money until Milo was born with the hopes of moving to Santa Monica where Austin got a job. A couple months after starting his job he learned that his office might be moving from Santa Monica to Burbank, so we decided we would keep living at my moms until we knew for sure where his office would be, because it would be so unfortunate to move somewhere for his job only to have the office move in a totally different area! On top of that, he & a friend are in the process of starting up a company with each other, which even furthers our limbo status for a couple of reasons. First reason: we're not 100% it will work out or not, second reason: if it does work out, we aren't sure that we will be able to stay in California or need to move somewhere different, third reason: if it does not work out, Austin might look for a new job which we still wouldn't know where we would be. So, there are a lot of things up in the air right now. Luckily while we are figuring all of this out, my sweet mom is totally cool with us still being at her house, even though we told her we would only be there 6 months top when we moved in & now we're close to 8, haha.

In between all of this we have had a lot going on from my trip to China with Milo & Austin taking Cedar to Utah, then Cedar had two weeks of swimming lessons (it was so traumatic, then so fun, then so cute & traumatic again. kids have so many emotions!), endless beach & zoo days with friends. Austin went to Boston for a few days with his buddy to work on their company & then stayed a couple of days to visit his sister & her family who moved there earlier this summer, & I swear it was the hardest 4 days of motherhood I have experienced. Luckily I did have my mama there to help me out, otherwise I really don't know how I would have handled it! My brother decided for his birthday he wanted us to run a 10k with him & me being me, I let it creep up on me without training, thinking it wouldn't be a big deal. It was a bit bigger of a deal than I imagined because it was a trail run & at least 2 miles of it we're switch backs up a gigantic hill, haha, so it was pretty rough, but I finished it in an hour & a half which I thought was pretty good timing since I don't know when the last time I ran was... probably at my last half marathon, when I was pregnant with Cedar, haha. Since then we went to Utah & Wyoming & got home last Sunday & then came down to Orange County on Wednesday to watch my sisters three kids until Monday. It has been so fun watching them yet, so crazy with 5 kids! I'm starting to think I'm not cut out to mother 5 children.

I can't believe that we're already half way through July, this month has gone so fast, summer is almost over but I feel like it just began. Craziness. I'm excited for August & fall though, Austin & I have decided to embrace our semi-homeless situation & are planning a ton of camping trips in the upcoming weeks, so I'm really excited.

CHINA VIDEO


I finally got around to finishing up the video of our trip to China. It was so much fun going through all of the clips & reliving it all, I can't believe it's been over a month since we we're there! It feels like just yesterday that we we're exploring all the different cities. It was definitely one of my favorite trips.

FOURTH OF JULY IN UTAH

We went to Utah the Monday before the Fourth of July to spend some extra time with Austin's family. His parents were leaving for Boston to visit his sister on Wednesday & his brothers family were coming to town from Montana, so we decided to push up our trip so that we could see all of them & I am so glad we did, we had so much fun with his family. Monday night we had a bbq with the family & Tuesday we went boating & then that night went to dinner at PF Changs while Austin's parents were kind enough to watch the babies. It was really fun to be able to spend time with his family, we haven't had a lot of time to be able to since we moved back with everyone living in different places, so I was happy to get together with all of them. The next couple of days we're spent visiting friends, family, eating at all of the places we love & going on a lot of hikes before heading up to Jackson Hole.
 To celebrate the fourth we went to a park with all of my extended family, aunts, uncles, cousins & all to get together & celebrate over dinner & fireworks. Since we don't live by any of our extended it was really fun hanging out with them & sharing stories from growing up. After the park we went to our cousins house where they put on a pretty sweet firework show.