Travel Log

I'm sorry to have to tell all of you this but, I have the best husband ever! It has long been in the plans and has become an annual tradition that McCall and Landry spend most of June and July with my parents in California and their dad and other family in Utah. Last year Mike and I got married on june 18th so we spent our honeymoon in Italy while the children had a blast playing with Cookie and Poppie and their dad. It is a nice way to travel guilt-free knowing they are having so much fun. This year Mike and I had talked casually about taking an eastcoast driving trip which sounded nice. We were planning to fly into NYC spend a few days and rent a fun car and drive up the coast stopping in Boston and a few spots in Maine. Well, as plans sometimes do they changed when we started to cost our the trip and realize how much it was going to cost with gas prices and the cost of hotels in Manhattan. So when Mike said to me, " Jen this is going to cost so much to do this trip. Do we really want to do this?" my heart sank a little, but only for a moment because then he followed up that question with, " Why don't we just go to Hawaii instead?" Well, of course there was no hesitation on my part since I have a secret belief that I must have some South Pacific blood in me because of the way I love summer and the beach and especially Hawaii. It turned out that we had enough frequent flyer miles to get there for free and we found a good deal on a hotel package that just turned out to be a wonderful and very relaxing vacation for us. It is hard not to love Hawaii but this trip was a very welcome one especially for Mike as work has been so stressful for him and since it will be our last chance for this kind of a trip for awhile since we have a little one joining us this Fall. While we were there we were talking with a man about how much we loved to travel together and I realized that for us, travel has always been a vital part of our relationship and such a time for us to renew and revive our relationship away from the day to day stuff. I feel very blessed that we have the opportunity to do this. It couldn't be done without my wonderful parents and their love for my children and of course Mike's hard work that provides a comfortable lifestyle for us. I can't possible forget to thank another really important person in our lives, our Kerrie, whom I have grown very dependent on. Kerrie is our amazing "Mary Poppins" helping us maintian our fairly regular date nights by entertaining the boys and cares for our home and our beloved Jackson, whenever we are away. She is fabulous and we just love her! Before meeting up with Mike in Hawaii, I spent a week with the boys and my parents in California and we had a great time. We were able to celebrate my dad's birthday and Father's Day together which was really nice. My dad is going through some stressful changes with his chiropractic practice which is hard to watch, feeling useless to help, but I was glad to be there to offer my support if nothing else. Our family went in together to help buy him a new banjo-his new love. He has always been interested in music and plays acoustic and electric guitar. It is so fun to see him visibly relax when the music starts to flow. Can't wait to hear our banjo-playing Poppie! Here are a few picks from the trip but you can always see the full albums at my Sumgmug site. The rest of our summer will be full of swimming lessons and t-ball so we plan to be close to home. I will be updating more often (I know, I know, I have said that before!) and I should have exciting news about the gender of our mystery baby on July 24th! Can't wait to share the news and start taking suggestions for names!
Aloha!