Summer time... and the living is easy.

As summer was rapidly approaching I found myself in fear. I'd have my kids how long?... what do you mean ALL day???? What's the big idea?  I didn't approve of these so called summer breaks. 
As a kid I remember summers as the highlight of my childhood: swimming pools, family vacations, playing outside, riding bikes, and eating fast food. I failed to think about my mother and how did these activities affected her.  She was always waiting with a Popsicle, and a smile.  I figured I was just a worse parent than her, but then I started thinking... She would say things like "go play outside" or "how about you ride your bikes".  I understand the code now, "go outside and play" means, get the "H" out of my kitchen before I lock you in your room. And she gave us popsicles because we would hound her for them from the moment we woke up.  I think we must have eaten out more because my mom was sick of making 3 meals a day (and she really did make 3 meals a day!)
We're only officially 1 week into summer and I'm happy to report that so far that my kids have played outside, swam every day, ridden their bikes, gone on a family vacation, eaten popsicles, and had fast food for lunch. Wow, I'm a supermom! I achieved an entire summer in one week, does that mean I get the rest off?
I suppose I should report our fun and fantastic week so far!

Alright somebody call the School Board, I pulled my kids out of School early!  Shocking I know.  Although I do feel bad. Here is my excuse:  We had vacation plans and they couldn't be changed.  See, my best friend from High School was getting Married in NM and I was going to be at the wedding. But we can't go to NM for a few days and not visit family! So we decided to make a trip out of it.

Vacation Pt. 1 - No Family (it was great! he he, no it really was, but not because of the lack of family. Okay, the no kids part was great.)  It was seriously the best wedding I've ever been too.  It was not traditional, it was silly and totally fantastic. The grandparents and cousins took turns entertaining our kids because we didn't think the boys would really enjoy themselves during all of the wedding festivities. And believe me, the wedding actives took up the whole weekend. 

While we were watching this... Congrats to Dave and Lara!

Someone even spotted a super old couple!

 

The day after the wedding we went hiking with the bride and groom and some other friends

Our kids were really missing us, can't you tell.

Vacation Pt. 2 - Family Time!

Matt wanted to do two things in NM. 1) Eat breakfast burritos at Violas. (Seriously if you read my blog and are not familiar with New Mexican food, you are missing out).  New Mexican food is different then Mexican food. It's different than Tex-Mex and Baja, it's transcendent! Ahhh.......  Anyway, we ate at Violas and it was amazing!

2) He also wanted to hike East Fork.  We were going to do it whether we had people coming with us or not. Luckily everyone wanted to come (both sides of the family)! Kids and adults alike had a blast! We took so many pictures, and believe me I narrowed it down, but there were so many good ones! Sorry for the overload of pics.  Everywhere you turned there was something funny, precious or beautiful to look at! A fine day indeed.

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Em and I left early so we could go to her weights class, but before that we decided to do a spin class first! Nothing like working out for 2 hours after a hike while functioning on next-to-no sleep.  My sis is an amazing instructor. Although I got a kick out of disrupting her class, I guess I'll  always be a little sister! We rounded the day off with a BBQ with the whole family (both sides) together again.  I wish I had thought to bring out the camera because we started to do stupid human tricks and it was a blast to see everyone doing silly things! Even the Cannon cousins were showing off! We were all laughing so hard!

We made our way back to Texas in record time and the boys even got to go to their last day of school.  Then on Sunday I had another Tri.  I was so tired through the whole thing.  I don't know if it was from all the travel, the sleep deprivation, or if I just wasn't mentally prepared to "jump" right in, but it wasn't pretty.  I'm glad it's over.

Yep, I even smiled the whole painful run!