Road Trippin’ Right Into 2020!

Happy 2020, y’all! It’s that time of year when everyone likes to make goals, set new resolutions, basically get a fresh start. Nick and I did something new this year (thanks to a million hour road trip!) by filling out Jennie Allen’s Dream Guide. It’s an outline of different aspects of your life and prompts you to reflect on growth in your life from this past year and then asks any dreams/goals you have for this coming year. It was a really fun way to chat about all the things together and really look forward to the new year! (Just visit her website to check it out if you’re interested in that kind of thing.) With my sweet baby just turning one, his first year of life is what really sums up my 2019. So now that we are coming out of that season, I feel like I’m able to get back to some of the more regular rhythms of my life (like this blog!). I’m an enneagram 9 (with 2 being a very close second) so I tend to focus on others and their needs far more than my own. Throw in a brand new baby and obviously my priorities are WAY different. I’ve loved this past year but I’m also excited to see what 2020 has in store! I would love to hear what resolutions/goals/dreams any of you have for the upcoming year!!

Before I totally move on to this new year, I want to give a quick snippet of that million hour road trip.

We headed to Texas! And the boys actually did remarkable in the car for the two day trip. And no, Lukey Bear did not ride in my lap even though he would have absolutely preferred that.

He hammed it up at every stop we took, basically making friends with every restaurant where we ate. It’s so unfortunate that he’s not a happy child.

We made it to Houston and we all still loved each other! Success!

The next morning, we had a family birthday party for our two December babies. Dylan was our Batman and Luke was our Robin!

The rest of us were merely background superheroes.

We decided that it was probably a very confusing party for Luke because everyone kept calling him Robin. I’m sure babies think we are all so weird.

The next day we headed to Galveston with Mimi and G-Daddy to hang out overnight in some of our favorite island spots. We headed to the Strand and the kids got candy at La King’s Confectionary. What’s better than kids in a candy shop? Kids in a candy shop where they throw free candy at you!

We ate at The Spot where Luke pretty much ate most of my shrimp. With a view of the ocean (and the big kids sitting at their own table), it was hard to get mad.

We then headed to the Festival of Lights along with the rest of the island. The littles could have done without it (because bedtime), but the big kids loved it.

The next morning, we rose to a beautiful sunrise. I sure do love living near the gorgeous mountains, but the ocean will forever have my heart.

We drove by the house where my dad grew up and totally kooked out the owners by taking pictures on the front steps. (Kidding, we did introduce ourselves.)

It was a fun little night in Galveston!! I often go back to Texas but never really to where I actually grew up so I loved that we were able to do that on this trip. And memories are made when 10 people squish into a hotel room to open Christmas presents, amiright?!

The next day was Christmas Eve and our kiddos were ready! Caleb and Maddie attended their first Christmas Eve service and managed to not burn themselves! Well pretty much anyway. Our family also had a dress attire theme if you can’t tell…

We then partied with the whole family that evening! We certainly missed Nana but it was so sweet to all celebrate together. These poor kids did not have fun at all.

Our dress theme continued to the pajama portion of the evening with buffalo check jams as well! We were clearly made for some kind of Old Navy commercial… except that we clearly can’t take anything serious.

Christmas morning came and the kiddos were ecstatic!!! Ensue all chaos here.

We put on more festive gear before we headed north for the next portion of our trip.

We spent Christmas Day with JoJo and JJ and apparently this was the portion of the trip where I quit taking photos for days. I would like to say that it’s because I intentionally chose to unplug and be in the present. However, I do believe it was more of a result of exhaustion and hours in the car with small children. Either way, no documentation.

We spent the next few days at my sister’s family’s house and Caleb and Luke had LOTS of cousin time. Even though we have added Dylan and Luke to the mix, the best friendship between the two bigs still runs deep. I’m pretty sure at one point Maddie was about to trade in Dylan for Caleb. Ahh, being a little brother.

The last night we were in town, it was date night at Billy Bob’s for the Aaron Watson concert! We put on our boots and were ready to head over for some Mexican food and then head to the world’s biggest honky-tonk. Fort Worth is the city that Nick and I met, fell in love, & got married. It will forever have our heart and I loved spending a few hours there. We need to make a trip just to Fort Worth to see all the people that we love and miss!

It was a fun date night with my sis & bro-in-law and cousin & cousin-in-law (is that a thing?!). It’s not often that we get to hang out sans kids jumping all over us and interrupting us so it was great having an adults only night!

Getting home at 12:30 am is not totally my jam these days so getting up & on the road the next day was a little rough! Thankfully we had DJ C-Sizzle on the beats in the backseat to keep us awake. (We did let him take his headphones and play it out loud a few times…)

One of my awesome friends moved to Amarillo a little over a year ago so that definitely makes that stop more exciting! Seeing all our kiddos together sure does make my heart happy. I’ve known her since her big kids were littles and now they could babysit my littles! (Except for that whole 6 hour commute.) Caleb made fast friends and was definitely sad to leave.

Then we finally had our very last day of driving!!! It really is incredible how well the kids did, but it was pretty safe to say that we were all WAY done with the car, people, each other, etc etc etc. We pretty much vegged for the next few days at home and recuperated from our busy trip. I think we ended up totaling about 35 hours in the car over the whole trip. The fact that the boys don’t scream when we get in the car now is a miracle in itself.

This guy literally fell asleep 5 minutes before we pulled into our driveway. And then cried when he realized we were home because he had SO MUCH FUN and just wants to move in with his cousins. I guess we will count that a successful trip!

Now on to many more fun memories in 2020!!! Happy New Years, y’all!!

***I definitely feel like I can’t post this without acknowledging my sweet Nana. She was always one of my biggest supporters of my blog and it certainly hurts knowing this is my first post to write without her here reading it. I sure do love you Nana and won’t ever be able to write a blog post without thinking of you!***