Photo Every Hour: July 21st

July's "Photo Every Hour" is brought to you by my wonderful parents and our family vacation to the Palmer Gulch Lodge in the Black Hills. It was a long day of travel to get out there on Thursday the 20th, but we made up for it with plenty of fun on the 21st!

 

Because of course my boys wouldn't sleep in on the first day of vacation #momlife

7:00 Although I guess I can't complain too much about being up early when this is my view

8:00 Silly boys

9:00 Second breakfast #myboysarehobbits #yeswearestillinpajamas #vacationlife

10:00 Story time with cousin Rose

11:00 When the big boys are away at a "real" golf course, the little boys will play putt-putt!

12:00 Lunch spread

1:00 Finally. Vacation time for Mommy

2:00 This kid. He spent at least two hours of the drive on Thursday coloring in this book, and before we left on Sunday he had the entire book colored. Suffice to say it was $5 well spent (and yes, he has his tongue out. Coloring requires the utmost concentration)

3:00 Pool Time!

4:00 More putt-putt. Having this (free!) course at the resort within walking distance of our cabin was probably the highlight of the trip for my boys

5:00 Waiting on the Fam Damily to head out for dinner

6:00 Sampling the local food and wine fare at Prairie Berry Winery

7:00 Thankfully there was entertainment for the boys, because apparently wining and dining eight adults and four children is a little bit of a long process

8:00 Story time with Grandma and Grandpa before bed

9:00 Bonfire time in the cool mountain evening? Yes please

10:00 More bonfire because #vacation

Bedtime!

And because I know I won't get around to typing up another post about our trip out to the Black Hills, I have to throw a few pictures on here from our Saturday adventure. We booked a trip on a 1880s train that took us from Hill City to Keystone and back again. It was fun for young and old(er) alike!

Okay, so obviously not a photo of the train ride, but I had to throw this family picture in as well!

A Day in the Life (in Photos)

I've always enjoyed "A Day in the Life" posts because they are ones that I tend to go back and look at to remember just what life was like during different times in our lives. However, I don't always do them as often as I would like (or as often as I think about doing them) because, well, I have an inability to be succinct and the posts always take me forever to write. So when I saw a different approach to a "Day in the Life" post, I was all over it. Without further rambling, welcome to our day (September 21st, 2016), told through a picture taken every hour.

7:00 A little quiet time to myself before the boys get up

8:00 Boys have eaten breakfast, dinner is in the crockpot, and we're ready to start the day!

9:00 A little reading/play time before we get ready to head out for the morning

 

10:00 Visited one of our favorite places, The Museum of Visual Materials, for an obstacle course they had set up--in addition to all the awesome toys they always have (I forgot my phone at home, so I stole this photo from the Facebook page. Don't look too closely for my boys because you won't find them!)

 

11:00 (more like 11:15) Lunch time for the boys. And yes, there are plates for two but only one is eating. Garrett is throwing a tantrum in the other room because, well, life is hard when you are 18 months old. He did eventually sit down and eat. Eventually.

12:00 Squeezing in a few minutes of play time before getting ready for naps (bonus points if you can spot the flying elephant!)

1:00 Boys are napping (or at least in their rooms) so lunch and Facebook for me (PS Have you heard of LuLaRoe? It's a little addicting. So far I've been doing a good job exercising self-restraint, but I'm afraid my resolve is getting weak and I just want to buy all the clothes)

2:00 After (finally) getting William to actually settle down and take a nap, I move on to tackling a few chores. Namely, cleaning the mess that is our kitchen.

3:00 Boys are up and (shocking!) they want to eat

4:00 (Part One) Off to another one of our favorite places, the Washington Pavilion. We went with some friends this time so it was extra special!

4:00 (Part Two) More playtime at the Pavilion

5:00 Remember that nice crockpot meal I put together this morning? Well, leave it to my family to make plans at 1:15 for all of us to meet at the Shriner's Mosque for dinner and bingo. Thankfully the soup we were making will make an excellent freezer meal, and a nice bonus of the plan was that we were able to walk to dinner from the Pavilion!

6:00 Bingo night at the Mosque (and yes, I took a picture of my bingo prize instead of my boys loving up on their cousin Jonathan. I'm sure the latter picture would have been much cuter, but I was super excited to have won!)

7:00 Heading home for bedtime

8:00 Remember that kitchen I was going to clean earlier? Well, Garrett woke up literally ten minutes after I took that picture, and I was not about to continue cleaning while he was awake (Darrell doesn't mind letting the boys "help" him wash dishes, but I don't really have the patience for that). So instead, it's back to cleaning the kitchen as soon as the boys are in bed

9:00 Nothing like a little yoga to end the day, although it probably would have been more enjoyable if I hadn't been interrupted a couple of times by a three year old who just didn't want to go to sleep

10:00 Wrapping up the night with a little NCIS and wine before bed!

10:42 Last picture before bed. And really, I only took this so I could moan about the temperature. Seventy degrees at almost 11:00!! Not acceptable weather for the middle of September

As much as I enjoyed taking the pictures for this post, I almost scrapped the idea about halfway through the day. When I was picking a day to do, I tried to pick a "normal" day since I feel that best represents the majority of days around here, and between the two outings we went on (normally we only do one) and the audible on dinner, it just wasn't shaping up to be very normal. But, I realized that part of that is our normal--the rolling with the punches and going with the flow that isn't always the easiest with two boys but we try to do it anyway!

Beach Weeks

So apparently having two kids and busy summers means I no longer get around to blogging about our beach trips with Darrell's family. And I'm fairly certain 90% of the reason I made a point to blog about our trip in 2014 is that we took some pictures on that trip to use in our announcement of my pregnancy with Garrett. But, rest assured, even though posts haven't happened, the trips (and the fun!) still have. And I decided that instead of racking my brain and trying to recap this year's trip (or, even worse, last year's trip), I'm just going to share a photo from each year I've been there. Darrell's been going since he was a wee one (minus a few years where he was away at college or working at summer camp), but my first trip was in 2007--we haven't missed one since.

A couple of babies in 2007!

No picture together this year, but Darrell did manage to snap this very artistic picture of a seashell

In 2009 we had some fun taking engagement photos on the beach (nothing professional, of course--just Darrell's sister with his camera!)

We were apparently burned out from wedding photos at the beach in 2010, because we didn't take a single picture together. I had to steal this photo with us in the background from Darrell's sister (and let's be honest, our nephew is way cuter than we are anyway)

A selfie off the pier in 2011!

Why take a picture of just the two of us when we can take one with our cute nephews?

First family photo at the beach in 2013

So this is the picture that almost wasn't... Darrell's sister and brother-in-law were helping us get the "perfect" photo to announce our second pregnancy, and I had them snap a family photo as well. What I didn't realize until months later (#pregnancybrain) was that Darrell's brother-in-law had actually taken the family photo on his phone, not our camera. I was in tears (#hormones) because I was convinced they wouldn't still have the photo and our tradition of getting a family photo on the beach was going to be ruined after just one year. But thankfully, here the picture is. In all its glory. (I should note that we do, in fact, have other pictures of the three of us from this year, but this was the only one of us on the actual beach. Which, for the sake of the "tradition" that I had convinced myself we were starting, mattered.)

Family of four in 2015!

LOVE!!

Of course, now that I've gone and done this post, I don't know what I'll do next year for my 10th anniversary of beach trips. Maybe I'll make the post in a timely manner and actually recap our week... But that seems pretty ambitious.