Idahooooo

My mom just left after spending the week with us. It was so much fun! Having her here reminded me that I never blogged about my Idaho trip this summer! After Austin, Rosie and I headed up to Idaho. We were planning on only being there for a week and a half, but since Trev still had a few weeks left of his internship, I decided to stay in Idaho 2 extra weeks! Since I was super pregnant with a 2-year-old it made more sense to stay where I had extra help. Plus I'm too much of a scaredy-cat to live by myself... Rosie fit in well to farm life and I loved sharing parts of my childhood with her.

Whenever we needed to release the wiggles (for a toddler that's every other 5 minutes), we'd head to the pasture. There were cows to moo at, dogs to chase, and rocks to stomp on. She particularly loved the rocks.

Rosie's in there somewhere.

I found one of my old coloring books, and Rosie went through and fixed some of the pictures...I guess I used to sign my coloring pictures? The red eyes were Rosie's contribution.

Although Rosie and I both missed Trevor like crazy, it was so nice to have my mom and Jim take care of us both for 3 straight weeks! Thank you!!!!

BONUS! We also made a quick stop to Utah and got to briefly see some family and friends!

Hello Virginia

We did it. We survived. We moved across the country to Williamsburg, Virginia!!! WOAH!

Moving does not get more fun as you get older, but luckily we had a lot of moving options. We decided that the easiest and cheapest option would be for Rosie and me to fly, rent a moving container, and have Trev drive the car. I would have loved to do a fun cross country trip with Trevor, but there was no way we were going to drive cross country with Rosie under 5 weeks. So Trevor's good friend Spencer flew out and helped us pack and then drove the car out with Trevor. They drove straight through from Idaho to Virginia in under 2 days!! So fast! And they even were able to squeeze in a Cardinals game in Missouri. I don't know how they did it.

Anyway, we decided to get rid of most of our furniture. Everything we owned was from Craigslist, yardsales, and thrift stores, so it wasn't too hard to leave them behind. We were able to sell some of it and donated the rest. We then squeezed everything else into a tiny, little moving container! Trevor kept teasing me about all of our junk saying I wasn't a true minimalist! In truth, I'm not, but how many other people can squeeze all of their belongings in a little container? As you can see, we used EVERY inch in that container.

She hugged each pole.

The last time I flew with Rosie, Trevor was there and she was only 6-months-old and slept the whole trip. With her being 16-months-old, I was pretty sure she was NOT going to be easy this time. On the actual flights, she was pretty good! It was during the long layover in the airport that was rough. She REFUSED to sit still and kept running into all of the people that were rushing through the airport. I kind of felt like she was little Simba and she was about to get crushed by stampeding wildebeests! It was so stressful.

But now we're here and are finally starting to feel settled. There are still a few boxes here and there but I'm OK with that. We've got time :)

Vacay pt 1: Rupert pt 2

This afternoon needed a post all on its own. Partly because it was so much fun and partly because I had WAY too many pictures to share. It was a hot, sunny day so Bubba filled up the kiddie pool with ice cold water. It was really cold.

Atlas - decided it was best to only get his feet wet. So he just stood in the pool the whole time squirting squirting guns.

Urban - didn't care one bit that the water was freezing. She was up, down, belly flopping, splashing. I think she could have stayed out there all night.

Rosie - she desperately wanted to be with the big kids but was still wobbly on her feet, so she happily sat in the pool sucking on the squirt guns. But since she wasn't moving her body her teeth started chattering and her lips turned blue.

Vaca pt 1: Rupert

Oh my goodness, the last 18 days were SO GREAT! It was non-stop family! The first half was spent in good ol' Rupert with my mom and step dad.

We played with chalk - what a mess! But Atlas drew a bunch of Rockets, Urban colored rocks, and Rosie walked around with her bucket. Just look at that hair.

Had a bonfire with my Aunt and cousin.

Ate way too many strawberries. Atlas and Urban were useless when it came to picking the berries. Atlas would only pick the ones that were perfect - big and bright red, and Urban didn't pick any and just ate 1 berry out of the bowl for every 2 I picked. Can't say I blame her because they were delicious.

We also tried to be JUST like our cousins. Rosie loved them. She followed them back and forth and back and forth. She's the runt of the group and got pushed around a bit, but that didn't slow her down one bit. It was just the BEST having us all together! And this was just the first 7 days of our trip! After Rupert, Ariel went up to Oregon and my clan went back to Boise for 2 days to recuperate before we made the trek to Oregon...more to come!

Five-Day Weekend

We spent most of last week up in Moscow, Idaho, for the Idaho Republican State Convention. Trevor's been planning it for almost a year and then spent the last month working 24/7 on it. We were lucky if we got to see Trevor for dinner. Rosie and I both really missed him. So, even though we knew he was going to be busy at the convention and wouldn't have time for us, we decided it'd be worth it to go just to be able to spend time with him on the 5.5 hr drive up. Which just so happens to be one of the prettiest drives out there. Idaho's a gem.

We were there Wednesday-Sunday, which gave Rosie and me more than enough time to know every detail about our hotel. I became buds with the hotel staff AND the construction team working on the hotel. I don't mind moseying around a hotel room, but Rosie didn't want to mosey. All she wanted to do was climb up and down the staircases. I think she has an unhealthy obsession with stairs. She could seriously climb stairs all day long.



I had some heavy things to unload from the car, so I asked Cindy, the woman in red, to hold Rosie for me. Governor Mike Huckabee was there and she made sure to get Rosie in a pic with him! Funny thing - since I had given Rosie to HER to watch, she didn't feel comfortable having Rosie be out of her arms, which is why Gov Huckabee and Cindy are BOTH holding her. Ha!



Then the next night I got to meet and get a pic with Senator Rand Paul! He even shared a photo collage with a pic of us on his Facebook page! Rosie's pouting because we won't let her play on the stairs. No joke.

Even though I could have worked while up in Moscow, I decided to take the 3 days off from work and it was JUST what I needed. I haven't had a vacation from work for a REALLY long time. Even when we travel I'm usually connected to work in some way, but I was totally off this time. I didn't answer ONE email. So for 3 days + the weekend, I had no work obligations and no housework obligations and I was able to totally zone in on Rosie and we were able to have some really sweet moments that I'll remember forever!

Thorpe Saturdays

A family that bikes together stays together! That's our new motto. I think we've spent 6 of the last 8 Saturdays biking. We bought Rosie a bike seat 2 months ago and now all we want to do is bike. She loves it which makes us love it. Whenever we pull out our helmets she lights up because she know what's coming.

Boise is a GREAT place to bike. It's in the top 30 biking friendly city's, or something like that. We like to bike the Green Belt which runs right next to the river and goes through multiple shady/grassy parks, a wave park for kayakers & surfers, a pond, BSU, a golf course, a bmx park (which Trevor totally ate it on - so funny), baseball fields, the zoo, restaurants...and probably a lot more. I've written about the Green Belt in the past HERE. So we bike and people watch on the Green Belt for an hour or two, have a picnic, then head home and nap.

So far there's only one thing I don't like about our biking excursions - the ride home. It's UP HILL. It's not a steep hill, but it's enough to make me groan the whole ride home. Sometimes I make Trevor switch me and bike Rosie up, which is hilarious since his legs are so long he has to bike with his knees out to the side :) It should be getting easier and easier, but Rosie just keeps getting heavier and heavier...oh well.

Two Hikes One Post

I can't believe these pictures are from last month! Where'd the warmth and sunshine go?!

We finally hiked the hills behind our home. It's a fairly popular destination. I see people up there 24/7, even in this cold weather!

On the way down Rosie pulled her arms into the carrier, tucked her head down, sucked on her fingers and fell asleep. What a sweet lil' babe. We had such a nice time as a family doing this simple, free activity.

This wasn't Rosie's first hike though. A week before she was born we went on a hike - aka - I carried her in my belly. That was the longest hike of my life! Not because I was uncomfortable or that it wasn't fun, but because it was literally a long hike since we had to stop every 3 minutes for me to catch my breath! So when we went on the hike last month, I told Trevor it was HIS turn to carry her up the hill.

These are shots from our hike in March. I meant to blog about it right after it happened...but I ended up having a baby before I got a chance :)

We were trying to re-create the shot found HERE, but it doesn't look as scary.

Halloween!!!

We had such a good time this Halloween. We enjoy Halloween every year, but everything's just better with Rosie. We dressed up as E.T. characters. Trev - Elliot, Rosie - E.T. Me - Gertie. It was Trevor's idea. I love dressing up for Halloween, but I just wasn't in the mood for it this year, just seemed like too much work. But Trevor really wanted to do it, so I figured why not. We wore it to our Ward Halloween party last weekend and it was a hit. Everyone kept taking pictures. Mainly of Rosie. We then walked around through the trick or treating rooms, which were dimly lit, and some of the youth thought Rosie was some sort of fake alien doll. So when she MOVED it freaked them out. I kept hearing, "is that real?" Yes. My baby is real.

The day of Halloween we dressed up and hit the town. First stop - Chipotle. They had the $3-BOO-rito-if-you-wear-a-costume deal. We've gone the last three years. You can see those trips here and here. We joked how Chipotle on Halloween is now a family tradition and our kids are going to grow up thinking that they can't go trick-or-treating until after we stop at Chipotle.

She seriously loved sitting in this basket. I now want to bring it every where we go now because she'll happily sit in it all night.

After dinner, we hit up Harrison Blvd, the same street I talked about in the last blog post. This street goes ALL OUT on Halloween! All of the houses were decked out and everyone in Boise showed up for it. It was like a carnival. One house had fire dancers on their yard, another house had a fun little back drop so you could take pictures with, one corner had cops with their car lights flashing handing out candy from their trunks, there were multiple news crews up and down the street, smoke machines, it was so much fun!

I also liked seeing all of the cute costumes and all of the excited kids. It made me excited to take our own kids trick-or-treating in the future. We got stopped a couple times so people could take pictures of Rosie. I'm just glad people got the costume. At Chipotle, one girl asked if Rosie was supposed to be the baby Jesus in a manger. Hm.

I tried to get pictures to show you all how cool this street was, but it was too dark for my phone, so I found these photos online.

credit: Idaho Statesman

credit: Idaho Statesman

Hope everyone's Halloween was merry and bright!