Mother's Day

For Mother's Day I wanted to wake up with no dark circles under my eyes after having slept for two weeks straight (preferrably in Hawaii).

Instead I woke up to homemade waffles with raspberries and whipped cream and the three most wonderful boys in the whole world.

And I realized that sleep and Hawaii weren't what I really wanted after all.

Flashback: 2006

As part of my weekly project series, I've been going through and rearchiving my old digital pictures. Yesterday I worked on 2006. I had two thoughts: 1) I now have a much better camera and 2) "wow, remember that?" There was so much I had forgotten! That was the year we went to St. Louis to see Todd and Brooke, had the family taco eating contest (anyone else still grossed out by that?!), did a lot of work repainting and fixing up the house that we no longer own, had a family reunion for Christmas, celebrated our first wedding anniversary and so much more. I didn't have a blog back then so most of those things were never documented, but I wanted to post some pictures from our biggest adventure that year: our trip to China.

B went to Beijing for work (he was in pallets back then; from pallets to landscaping... man, we have had some glamorous jobs!) and we decided that I was going to tag along. We only had enough time to see a few big things, but we thoroughly enjoyed them.

Forbidden City. Awesome.

Tienanmen Square. Equally awesome, but in a different way.

We walked around the hutong district (old town). It was fun to see a different side of Beijing.

The Great Wall was on my Top 5 bucket list. It did not disappoint.

And our favorite part of the trip: the Summer Palace.

Looking at all these pictures is enough to make me want to go back!

Easter Pictures, Delayed

I don't even want to talk about how many shots we had to take before we got one where we are all looking at the camera (even though we didn't manage to get one with all of us smiling!), but at least we finally have a family picture that doesn't involve me wearing a hospital gown. Or anyone crying. Or picking their nose. Or... you get the idea.