Spring Break

We headed to Houston for Spring Break this year.  Garrett unexpectedly got the week off a few months ago (he was originally scheduled to work nights that week), and it turns out that our break matched up with Emma's kids in Houston, so we decided to go for it!  At first we looked into flying, but we really aren't close to any major airports (and we need a major one if we're buying 5 tickets!).  Flying out of Atlanta was affordable, but even then we'd be driving 5.5 hours to the airport, parking for a week, renting a car for a week... it all sounded like a lot of work.  So, we drove.  Yep, we drove 15 hours one way.. and it was totally worth it.  (Correction: *I* drove all 15 hours, each way.  Garrett's back has been bugging him so he had to recline his seat a bit the whole way).  The drive actually wasn't too bad.  We left on a Thursday afternoon around 5pm, and drove straight to Birmingham without stopping (5 hours, but we got there at 9 since we changed time zones).  We stayed in an Embassy Suites, which was so nice because there were two rooms.  And yep we are totally the parents who have their 3 kids sleep on the [huge] pull-out couch in the main room, while we get our own queen beds in the bedroom.  Haha.  They loved it.

The next day we drove the 10 hours to Houston, and actually made really good time.  It said it would take us 10 house, and we made it in exactly 10 hours even with two brief stops (we packed lots of food and snacks so we never had to stop to buy food, just bathroom breaks and gas fill-ups).  The Odyssey is quite comfortable and the kids literally just watched movies the whole time.  I feel kinda bad about it, I probably should have done games and activities but honestly I just wanted some peace and quiet.  I bought some cheap new DVD's at Walmart (they have a lot right now for Easter baskets - Nanny McPhee 1 and 2 for $5 total, the new Cinderella, Babe, An American Tale (and the sequal), and a few others.  We took out one of the captain seats and put in the middle seat so that either Abbie or Ellie could sit next to Henry and keep him fed and entertained.  That worked great and he did wonderfully the whole time.

We got there Friday night and stayed until the following Saturday, 8 nights.  It was SO. FUN. and I'm so glad we did it.  It would have been really easy to just stay home and find things to do around here for the week.  It's hard to do things with 4 kids.  But, we would never do anything if we let that stop us. I'm trying to be a more adventurous mom, and really make some good memories with our kids.  This was a pretty high-impact / low-budget trip so it totally made sense to go for it.  Plus, my dad's health has declined pretty rapidly over the last 9 months or so, so we need to spend time with him while we can (my parents live in Houston during the winter).

Rather than write a huge long post about what we did, here's the video Garrett made.  We hung out at home, went to parks, walked on the path from Emma's house to Molly's house (where my parents also live), ate lots of yummy food, went to the Houston Rodeo, played games, and just had an all around great time.  It was fantastic.

And just a shout-out to Garrett for two things: first, he made this incredible video... over the last few months he's really stepped up his photography game now that he has more time to dedicate to his hobby.  I'll admit, I totally encourage him to buy any photography stuff he wants because then I get to benefit by having these awesome videos, which I cherish.  He recently got a drone, and a mirrorless Sony camera and a nice lens to go with it.  They really helped make this video awesome.  Second, a huge shout-out to him for having an awesome job with (lots of) flexible vacation time.  I love that when he was job hunting, schedule and family time was his number 1 priority.  We've been able to spend so much time together since he started this job and it's been a huge blessing for our family.

Here's the video he made.. enjoy! (I think you can also open it in Youtube if you want to make it bigger)

Valentine's Day Cookies

This year for Valentine's Day, I decided to be ambitious and volunteer to send in sugar cookies for Ellie's class party at school.  I'm sure her teacher didn't mean for me to make them (and honestly I have nothing against those thick, soft sugar cookies at the store... they are delicious), but I've been having the itch to use my creative side lately but haven't had much of an outlet.  So, I made my first real attempt at "fancy" sugar cookies.

First I did a "trial run" the weekend before Valentine's Day, making sure the actual cookies turned out well, and making sure I knew how to work the royal icing.  Here's my batch from the first attempt.  I think they turned out pretty well!  I made another large batch and let the kids and Garrett get in on the action next:

Garrett was actually really good!  He made these next two:

And then here was my final batch for the party.  They aren't perfect, but I'm still a beginner so there's that.  I'm sure those second graders really appreciated all my hard work (haha).  I don't usually go "above and beyond", especially for elementary parties, but this was really fun and I'm excited to make more sometime soon.  I just need to buy more cookie cutters!

When we lived in Florida, one of my friends in the ward started making these sugar cookies with royal icing, and she started having "cookie parties", basically a girls' night at her house where everyone would just decorate cookies and chat.  Sadly, I never made it to a party, but I'm totally going to steal the idea and attempt to have a cookie party at my house one of these days.  I really need to reach out and make some friends here.

Doe River Gorge

Something that's pretty fun about living around here is that there are a good number of hiking paths within about 30-40 minutes.  A few weeks ago, Garrett had a random day off during the week so we decided to check out a new trail.

This one is called Doe River Gorge, and it's a converted Rails to Trails.  It was a perfect day for walking/hiking - in the low 60s and sunny (but shady along the trail).  It wasn't my favorite trail -- the "rails" are still there so it was kind of awkward to walk.  At some parts there wasn't much space to walk on the outside of the tracks, so we were stuck walking between the rails which is always a little awkward because then you have to really watch where you are stepping so you don't trip on the ties.  So, I felt like I spent most of the hike looking down to see where I was walking (which wasn't easy since I was wearing Henry in front of me), instead of looking all around at the scenery. Which was okay, because it's winter and it wasn't all that gorgeous right now, mostly just a bunch of dead trees.  But I bet in the summer and fall it's just beautiful - I do want to go back for that.

There were some fun tunnels we walked through.  Olivia liked that.  I'm always fascinated walking along railroad tracks, imagining them being build by hand over 100 years ago.  I can't fathom how long it took them, and how much effort that had to go into grading the ground, blowing out rocks, digging out tunnels, building bridges.  It's pretty neat.

Olivia really liked throwing rocks at the icicles and knocking them down so they would shatter to the ground:

All in all, a really nice morning.  We stopped at a little hole-in-the-wall Mexican place near our house for lunch, we had never been there before.  It was pretty good, and we definitely want to go back!  It's pretty authentic so it was a little hard to order (no prices listed anywhere, most menu items didn't seem familiar to me), but the chips and salsa were great and that's what's most important to me at Mexican restaurants.

It sure is nice when Garrett gets those random days off!  We try to make the most of them.