Duluth, UP and back through WI.

We were so blessed to spend a lot of time out of town this summer. We got more than our fair share of time on beautiful lakes throughout the Midwest and spending time with some or our favorite people. Bowie started kindergarten mid-week so I had taken time off anyway and then Josh realized he could take the time off too. We decided to take one last family vacation before Bowie started kindergarten and it all came together to meet up with Josh's cousins and their families in Michigan. We went up through Duluth and home through Wisconsin and made some fantastic memories.

First time at Tobies.

We are HUGE fans of Duluth Grill and their HUGE pancakes.

We stopped at the Porcupine Mountains on our way through MI and did a gorgeous waterfall walk.

Lots of 4 wheeling with Nicole and Elias at the wheel.

Night fishing.

We brought the whole gang to the brewery in Houghton. Not an easy feat but we are pros.

The women escape to the Mosquito Inn.

We made sure to spend some time at Franconia on our way home through Wisconsin. Always a favorite.

Our Family 2019

We went for it and invested in family photos and I'm obsessed with them. We worked with Maria Lloyd and I wasn't sure what to expect because I was only going off the recommendation of a friend on her. My experience with family photos is that you only end up with 1-2 that everybody can agree they like so I was wildly surprised by how many stellar photos we ended up with. Maria was awesome! The morning of our photo shoot I was so crabby because I didn't plan my outfit in advance and I didn't love any of my clothes and I was scrambling to pick something out for the three of us. Then it started to get really windy and stormy. Finally, I had purposely planned to have our pictures taken at Mill City so that we could visit the farmer's market afterwards and make a morning of it but silly me the market is open Sundays but it was storming anyways and I felt so defeated. I called Maria to see if we should just reschedule and she explained that the weather would actually make for better photos and she totally calmed me down. Throughout the shoot she remained calm and got creative with shots. You can't even tell it was a messy day and we all ended up looking great and like we planned our outfits to sort of match. Anyways here are a BUNCH of our favorites. Seriously they are so many. I'm super glad we did this. 

Congrats Julie and Dan!

Last weekend we traveled to Roseau to celebrate Josh's mom's wedding. Bowie was the ring bearer and Josh and his sister walked Julie down the aisle. It was a whirlwind weekend. We drove up Friday morning and got there in time for a quick swim in the pool before the rehearsal and groom's dinner. Here you can see a double rainbow that blessed us before the groom's dinner.

On Saturday we got up early for photos and an 11 am wedding followed by a Thanksgiving themed lunch.

Ring bearer Bowie. He was SO DANG CUTE in that suit. 

Here is Bowie with Story the flower girl. 

Bowie's favorite part was getting to hang out with all 6 of the other little boys in the family. He especially loves Elias and Boden. And cupcakes.

Photo cred to Greg Peterson. Hopefully more are on the way from him.

We were able to visit Josh's dad after the wedding and had dinner at his place with Josh's sister and brother in law Matt and also found more time for Bowie to swim with his "cousins". Of course Bowie spent Saturday night awake barfing up all the cake and cupcakes he consumed. Other than that we hit the road early Sunday morning to return home. We look forward to seeing more photos from the professional photographer. Congrats to Julie and (Josh's new dad) Dan!

High Five 5 K

My friend Lauren is basically the best person ever and she decided to make her own 5 k on national high 5 day. Her and Lucy designed cute shirts and we all ran/walked/biked/meandered along the river road high 5ing each other and the strangers we met along the way. After the race there was hand sanitizer, donuts, coors light and a trip to Merlins Rest.

Our fearless leader giving us a pep talk.

Luke and his tunes-mobile.

Josh turns 35!

Josh's birthday is always before mine. That's a fact. This year his birthday fell on Record Store Day and we had another snow storm. Our main adventures were 1) having our family portrait painted by Lisa Luck and 2) finding out the rumors are true and getting into First Avenue for free with a free bottle of champagne for Transmission.

Life Lately

Josh and I have had lots of changes over the past 6 months. Most significantly we both took new jobs. These news jobs have meant different hours for both of us, a different daily schedule for Bowie, new insurance, changes to our finances and long term investments and, most notably, I don't work in a school any more so we need more help caring for Bowie on his days off. Josh loves his job at Studio On Fire and it seems like a perfect fit for him both personally and professionally. I'm adjusting to my new role at Cigna and despite some growing pains I feel it's been a positive change. I've enjoyed my new schedule because it allows me to avoid rush hour traffic and pick up Bowie and get to enjoy more of the evening. It's also provided more income, which we've enjoyed. Cube life is hard for me and the work itself is challenging. It's also led me to think a lot about my priorities in life. It would be great to find the perfect job that would support my perfect personal life but I'm not sure that's possible. It's been interesting to struggle with work and go home and feel more safe and relaxed than I ever have before. Since I took this job to allow me more freedom in my personal life it puts pressure on me to actually live my best life. I'm trying to focus on self care and building some fun into my work day. One effort to support self care is that I'm hoping to take advantage of working in front of screens all day by updating the blog more. It gets me in touch with the fun things I do in life and considering all that we've scheduled to look forward to this summer I think there should be a lot to blog about. The above picture of me in my cube accurately depicts my feelings about my work space. Anyways, I think it will be good for my brain to back off of social media and instead post here. More to come, including updates related to turning 35 in a couple of weeks which feels like a total adult milestone.