Scrapbook retreat

It's become an annual tradition. For four days and three nights I pack up all my junk (scrapbooking junk) and go on a girls trip with my girlfriends. It's a glorious four days of uninterrupted time to get caught up on scrapbooking. I am so so behind. Going into the trip I was a year and a half behind and now I'm just 10 months behind!

I started out having a scrapbook for each year of my kids' lives but I quickly learned that I can't keep up with that. So Nolan has the first 4 years in separate albums, Campbell has the first two years and poor Landry Kate is just going to have her first year. After that I'm going to family albums. I figure that they can fight over them later or just make digital copies of them. More than likely, my boys will not even care about them so maybe they'll all go to Landry.

We went to the McKinney location this time at Memory Lane Inn. Here is our adorable room.

The whole house is dedicated to a scrapbooking retreat with a crop room right next to the house.

I think we might be the messiest scrappers ever.

And this picture I can explain. One of my friend's husbands jokes that we're all lying and we just say that we're "scrapbooking". He finds it hard to believe that this many girls actually want to do this for four days in a row. So he hacked into his wife's email and said, "Hey guys I wanted to bring along a guy from work and his name is John." He wanted to see how we would react.

So we couldn't resist when the owner's husband came to take a look at the air conditioning to have him pose for a picture as our "John".

It was glorious having time away without changing any dirty diapers, making meals or bottles for a short while. I missed my little ones so much that I scrapbooked them the whole time!

Gulf Shores

I was in denial about the trip coming up. Don't get me wrong, I was excited about seeing family and getting away but not so much the part of being in the car with 3 children ages 6 and younger for 2 days and a total of 12-13 hours.

So we decided to pack up a lot of movies coloring books, and toys, and make the best of it. Nolan was set with his reading material and glasses for our road trip.

We drove a big chunk at night which seemed to be good for Landry. She is the easiest baby ever…except the car. Suddenly my sweet angelic baby becomes possessed with something evil and shrieks so loud you're pretty sure that glass could break.

Day 1 of the trip went smoothly and we even made a pit stop in Vicksburg, Mississippi to the Civil War battlefield. I had never been to Mississippi and I gotta say that I was pleasantly surprised with how pretty it was. And the boys loved the battlefield.

We finally arrived in Gulf Shores after another full day of traveling. 

I remember taking each of my children to the beach as babies, and every time I took them, I remember thinking, I'm not taking a baby to the beach again! It's so much work. They want to eat the sand, there is sand EVERYWHERE and swim diapers…need I say more?

But here I find myself just three years after our last beach trip with Campbell taking sweet Landry Kate. She did pretty good, minus when she got wiped out by a wave while trying to take a picture.

She even fell asleep! I call that somewhat of a relaxing day at the beach!

My sweet niece broke her arm just a few weeks before our beach trip and had to wear a lobster- looking hand while we were at the beach but she was the best sport about it.

Every day our children slept HARD. That beach wore them out!

Probably my favorite part of the entire trip was that the cousins got to spend so much time playing with each other. It makes me wish that we didn't live over 900 miles away. But I love that they just pick right up where they left off. 

 

While we were in Gulf Shores, we were only about 30 minutes from Florida and I have never been, so we made a day of it and went to the children's museum in Pensacola. Now I added three more states to my list after this trip! Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida were all new ones. 

Our oldest niece, Dory, is seriously the best babsitter ever at the ripe old age of 8. It was so wonderful to have someone offer to play with her so I could actually chew my food and help in the kitchen or even take a shower! I can't wait for her to be old enough to come down to Texas to visit. 

 

You could say that Landry got spoiled. After nine months, I started weaning Landry. There were too many teeth involved and honestly, she was just over it and it was like wrestling an alligator just to nurse her. So it was glorious to have a break from feeding her for the first time ever. 

We were at the beach a few weeks before Campbell's 4th birthday and so we celebrated early with the family.  

 

One of the days that we were there we rented kayaks. I took Campbell out once…talk about an arm workout! 

 

And it wouldn't be a family vacation without a little forced family photo shoots on the beach! My in-laws celebrated their 43rd wedding anniversary while we were in Gulf Shores.

And this is the best family shot we could get with Campbell. Guess he thought that the photo needed a little attitude.

Even though I swore that I would never take a baby to the beach, I'm glad I did. I'll treasure these beach memories forever. Even all the work that they took.

Back to reality

You know that feeling when you come back from vacation and you're already sad that it's over and wishing that it would just last a little longer? Yeah, that's where my head is today. Some girlfriends of mine booked a scrapbooking weekend a year ago because this place was booked until then. And now I can see why…talk about deluxe. I've been on scrapbooking trips before and they were so much fun, but this one just had it all.

Let me first say, that the day before I left for my girls trip was terrible. I'm talking about one of those oh-my-goodness-I-can't-make-it days with the kids. I felt like I screamed at them ALL.DAY.LONG. I hate those days. Besides them exhausting me, they make me feel like such a terrible mom. I even texted Justin one of those "Hey are you coming home early?" texts. So, this getaway could not have come at a more perfect time.

We headed to McKinney, TX pretty much in the boonies to Memory Lane Inn. I was as excited about this as a little girl going to camp because that's totally what it felt like. It was so quaint and the perfect set up. We had views of horses, bunnies and even a few goats. Do you see the little cottontail bunny in the bottom left?

We ran through the house like it was our own version of Extreme Home Makeover…like we owned the place or something.  There's room to sleep 12 and there were 6 six in our group. Here was our Lofty Ladies room.

And our bathroom.

And that's when completely lost our minds like we were at Disneyland. We jumped and laughed so hard because Angi hit the fan with her hands.

Angi's been my best friend since we were in 5th grade and we've definiely had about a million sleepovers at each others' houses. But this hands down, was our funnest sleepover ever.

After we took our Retalin, we checked out more of the house.

We checked out the work room and you couldn't wipe the smiles off our faces. We had everything we needed for four days.

So we got to work…fast.

And watched chick flick after chick flick including Glee: Season 1. My addiction has begun.

Battle wounds didn't even slow us down.

Oh, and did I mention that we had a chef come and cook our meals? And that they served and cleaned up every meal too? I think I gained 10 lbs. It was a good thing I wore elastic pajama bottoms all weekend.

We stayed up late every night. I'm talking 2-3 a.m. each night. It's like we were on scrap crack. You lose all track of time and it's just so much fun that you don't want to sleep to miss any of it. We laughed so hard about stories of our husbands and children. Normally when I do these trips, I'm up and ready to go home early Sunday, but we stayed every possible second we could this weekend. It was hard to say goodbye and I can't wait til we get to go again.

Family Vacation

All year you yearn for the summer getaway where you can get away from schedules, your home, your familiarity with just your family. Growing up we never went on trips much. My parents just couldn't afford it. I want our kids to have that experience and those memories of traveling. I figure one of these days, traveling will finally become easier. Although this time, it was worlds better than anything we've ever experienced before, especially with our luck of traveling.

The plan this year was to meet Justin's side of the family in Gulf Shores, Alabama. Then this tiny little thing called a massive oil spill happened and there went that idea. Bummer. So Plan B was to meet in Missouri for a lake trip. I must say that I was pleasantly surprised that it was great.

For any of you living in the central part of the US, you know how much rain we got the first week or two of July. Thankful for the rain but was seriously feeling like I lived in Seattle with all the rain. We loaded up the boys and road tripped it to Oklahoma. You know it's a bad sign when you leave your house for a 9 hour trip and it looks like a monsoon and you're already stuck in traffic. The boys (thank goodness) were fabulous (compliments of the handy dandy DVD player) and the only stress was the downpour and getting lost in Oklahoma for an hour.

Justin's brother and sister-in-law have two girls and they are so close in age with our boys. There were hours of swimming, coloring, baking, cooking and playing Wii in the "wee" hours of the night had by all. I love this quality family time that we get to have and with our extended family.

 

 My mother-in-law, Julie and my sister-in-law, Melissa

I love how we all just pick up right where we left off even if we live over 900 miles away from each other.