OHHHHH-klahoma!

*Disclaimer: If you are not a fan of old musicals, that title won't be amusing and may seem slightly inappropriate. Sorry about that. ;-)

We spent last weekend in Broken Bow, OK with some of our best friends and had a wonderful time. The weekend had ups and downs (because we were surrounded by young children! HA!) but overall, it was absolutely wonderful and I can't wait to do it again! Colin loves his best friends so much and getting to spend a whole weekend with them was such a blessing. Colin is a very lucky little boy and I still pinch myself over the fact that I have such wonderful people in my life!

Things started out rather...well...disastrous. We were scheduled to leave our house at 10am on Friday morning so that we could make the 4 hour trip and also stop for lunch along the way. Jer and I woke up and started off with a bang, getting everything loaded and ready to go. However, the morning had an excited energy to it and we were clearly about to do something major...and upsetting Colin's routine never goes well. He started acting nervous, fidgeting and refusing to take his pj's off. Suddenly he didn't want breakfast, didn't want to get in the car and basically started shutting down. We tried everything to get him into the car, but by the end, he was completely naked (from me holding him down and stripping him) and screaming and flailing on the floor. He was yelling that he didn't want to go and wanted to stay home with Enzo. It was insane. We finally had to go back into the house and drop it all together. We were at our breaking points, so we all scattered and tried to regroup. After about 30 more minutes of watching TV and waiting, he calmed down enough to get his clothes on and get in the car. It was a brutal morning that had us on edge from the beginning. We had to stop about an hour in for lunch and Colin was hanging on by a thread at this point...we took him to McDonald's to eat and play and got back on the road as soon as possible. THEN, he started crying and chanting from the backseat that he wanted to go home. This continued on and off for the remaining 3 hours of the trip. It was just brutal. I was close to a panic attack but I knew that if we got him there, he would be happy....and he WAS! The second we pulled into the cabins and he saw his friends he started yelling out their names and I couldn't get him out of the car fast enough! THANK GOD! Jer and I opened beers immediately and started to feel better ourselves. Gracious! Anyway, the cabins were stunning and we had a set-up with 3 cabins together on 2 acres of land that shared a fire pit and playgrounds. Two of the cabins had big hot tubs and they were all BEAUTIFUL homes! My amazing friend Kimberly set this whole weekend up and she could not have done a better job. It was like a fall dream come true! I am so glad that we stayed the course and went on to the cabin, despite our rough trek out there. It ended up being awesome!


One of the families arrived very late after spending several hours on the road with a sick child. They thought it was car sickness, but the next morning another one of the boys woke up vomiting. They are in the same preschool class, so we all knew immediately that they picked up a virus at school. That part was so unfortunate!! Luckily nobody else got sick, but it put a damper on the fun for sure. I felt so badly for my friends! Despite the illness, the weekend was a major success. On both nights, we all put the kids to bed and gathered outside around the giant fire pit to share wine, laughs and great food. We spent the day time watching the kiddos play together. Colin was beside himself to wake up with all of his best friends right there with him. I hope this will end up being a yearly tradition!! FANTASTIC!

Here are some of the billions of pictures, though not in order at all!

Pierce, Colin and Kimberly on our first night. Such a beautiful setting!



Our little family on Saturday afternoon. We were at Beavers Bend State Park.
Ryan, Greyson and Colin on Sunday morning. The boys all had SO much fun!
My two handsome boys!
Jer took these two...I love it!

Colin playing in the water at Beavers Bend...he loved that the water was so clear and he could wade in it. I got so many sweet pictures! This was such a beautiful place!

A Wonderful Visit from Nana and Papa!

October has gone by just a little too fast for my taste! Here we are on October 19th and Halloween is right around the corner. We have been so incredibly busy and I feel like I looked up and the month was over! Jer's parents from PA were here for the first week of October and then last weekend we made a family trip to Broken Bow, Oklahoma with lots of our friends. Between visitors, trips and trip preparation, I have gotten extremely behind on the blog...even more so than usual!

The visit from Jer's parents was absolutely wonderful and we miss them so much already. It was a leisurely visit with nothing major planned and a lot of time spent just hanging out (which is my favorite kind of visit!). We all went to the State Fair of Texas while they were here and I managed to throw every pretense of a diet out the window while consuming fried Frito pie, fried Snickers, and corn dogs. Oh, how I love my wonderful state! :-) Colin played his first fair game and won a giant neon green stuffed dog. He was SO excited when he won and it was so adorable. His favorite parts were the same as last year, the petting zoo and the Little Hands Farm. He asked to ride one of the small rides for little ones and that ended up being a disaster of gigantic proportion! We strapped him in, but could not ride with him, so he started screaming when the ride started up. There was absolutely nothing we could do and had to watch helplessly while he cried and begged us to stop it. I actually laughed over it...talk about your bad mommy decisions! I knew better than that! ;-) He was fine once the ride was over, but I would imagine that I set us back a few years as far as getting him to ride other things! Oops! We also had a big afternoon trip to the Fort Worth Botanic Gardens, which was beautiful, and ate a ton of good food over the week. Brenda (Jer's step-mom) literally kicked us out of the house that Thursday night so that we could have a date night. I don't remember the last time that I actually went out with Jer after dark! It was great! We had a peaceful dinner together at Mi Cocina and then had drinks and dessert at The Cheesecake Factory. It was so wonderful!! Brenda and Dean (Jer's dad) spent a great night with Colin and were actually making fun of us for getting home so early! 10:00pm was plenty late for this old girl! ;-)

Here we are on date night...please note how classy we are while our son poses with us almost naked. ;-)
Loving some corn dogs at the fair with Nana and Papa!

Dean takes great pictures...I love this one that he caught of us at the gardens.

By the grace of God, we didn't fall in. ;-)

Dean, Jer, Brenda and Colin feeding the fish