august in pictures.

i'm working on a blog about my trip back to indiana, which really means i'm thinking about maybe trying to possibly write a blog about my trip back to indiana, but in the mean time i figured i should at least blog something.

i'm sure i could blog about each of these things individually, but who has time for that.

so without further ado, august.

(top to bottom, left to right)

1. driving the boys all the places, all the time.

2. snuggles at the doctor's office.

3. 4. 5. 6. a visit to muir woods

7. finally got a pair of white hightop converse.

8. told the boys to go get in the car. little punks.

9. jake fell asleep in the car. a modern day miracle.

1. happy hour with tate. hot chocolate for me and juice for him.

2. the best way to spend an afternoon.

3. road trip to oregon

4. driving through redding, ca.

5. driving through weed, ca. 

6. made it 7 hours on the trip without starbucks.

7. woke up with a toddler in my bed. didn't hate it.

8. looking out over the garden in oregon.

9. fresh berries.

1. oregon goats.

2. snuggles with tate.

3. oregon country.

4. stepped on a rusty nail and had to go to town for a shot.

5. gathered some fresh eggs with a cute little girl.

6. oh, oregon.

7. oregon sunset.

8. the new shoes.

9. voodoo donut in portland. didn't live up to the hype. but i do love a donut.

1. silver falls state park.

2. night ride.

3. driving off into the sunset.

4. goofing around with tate.

5. jake keeping himself entertained on the drive home.

6. driving through redding again.

7. the kids school books arrived. lots of fun with boxes.

8. the boys got a haircut.

9. i was sad.

1. tate chickened out on the escalator after jake and i got on. happily rode down with a stranger. notice they're holding hands.

2. packing for indiana.

3. birthday packages.

4. first day back with the boys.

5. hot harvest nights farmers market.

6. off to the park with the boys.

7. california sunset.

8. beautiful clouds on a brutiful day

9. happy boy after a nap.

1. 2. 3. spending the day at a new beach. san gregorio.

4. gallery walls forever and ever amen.

5. visited my nana. she put out all the stops.

6. wasn't much help packing her house.

7. nana.

8. aunt suie.

9. so glad to see them both.

1. the kids found a baby squirrel. named him grayson.

2. we took him to a rescue shelter.

3. i'm pretty sure he died.

4. but i was happy to hold him. a dream come true.

5. typical trip to target.

6. we do this a lot.

7. great end to a terrible day.

8. the boy loves selfies.

9. went to the farmers market alone. sat on a bench and enjoyed this treat.

1. no of course i didn't pose them this way. they always swing like that.

2. blurry babe.

3. took them to the park. they watched the lawnmower instead of playing.

4. we take a loooot of selfies.

5. we love them!

this sums up our days pretty well. target. park. starbucks. selfies. beach. snuggle. repeat.

happy saturday.

ko.

the drive out west || sedona to palo alto (part 2)

so where were we? is everyone bored yet? no? good, we've got more road to cover. literally!

after waving goodbye to new mexico, i journeyed onto arizona. like new mexico, i had never been to arizona. it is hot there. too hot. over 110 degrees hot. i'm not sure i can go back. unless i can go to sedona. which is where this story starts!

less than a week before my trip, i was texting my precious and dear friend mary. i met her freshman year at school waiting in line for FNL. at least that is my first memory of her. i thought she was a couple years ahead of me, why, i do not know. we lived in the same building sophomore year and had a class together. it was a memorable class for me since i started SOBBING on the first day when a friends of ours asked me how my break was. (break was fine. but i'd just said goodbye to the bff 5 minutes earlier.)  the only thing i can remember about junior year is that we went to rebash together. but senior year? boy that was our year. i was weirdly excited to see her at the beginning of the year, not really sure why exactly because we weren't close friends. and then we got scheduled together for a weekly shift at mcconn. we'd always leave the shift together and go get stir fry. it was the best. i loved that semester. i even got to stay late to see her graduate. 

i am not sure why i am telling you all of this except to say that i love this girl with all of my whole heart. she has the best hair AND the best heart. the perfect combo if you ask me. 

so, we figured out when we were texting that she was going to be in sedona when i was driving through. being the good and flexible friend that i am, i changed my plans around so i could see her. best decision ever. thank you Jesus for arranging this. we know you did it, you are the man.

mar was on vacation with her whole family. they come to this magical place in sedona every year. i think i am going to try and join them every year because it is beautiful and relaxing and perfect and her family is incredible. 

mary showed me around the place they were staying and we got to spend time in the creek, see the private orchards, walk over the bridge that is apparently always closed and very bouncy, swing on the biggest rope swing, talk and talk and talk and of course spend time with her family. it was so so good. i miss my friends from school a lot, so to be able to spend time with a school friend, and one of my favorites at that, was just so good. 

 

i mean just look at that family! i felt so lucky to be able to spend time with them. and how cute are mary's nephews? 

after saying another stupid goodbye, i drove south to phoenix. the temperature rose at least 30 degrees. #blessed. i stopped to see my friends dick and donna who i worked with in alaska 3 years ago. unfortunately, donna had gotten back from the hospital after a knee surgery just an hour before i got there. talk about bad timing! so i only stayed to chat with them for a bit. annnnnd i didn't get a picture which is a real bummer.

next, i drove all the way across phoenix to see my friend KC. we met at the influence conference 2 years ago. pretty much all i remember about that entire weekend is spending time with KC and 3 other seriously lovely ladies. it was kind of the best. i had suuuch a good time with them. this past march, i got to see all 4 of them together again at hope spoken. it was great. they're all great. anyway, KC is moving from seattle to texas. talk. about. a. weather. change. so she was visiting her parents in phoenix in the middle of her crazy month long move. her parents, who were so sweet, let me stay with them for a night even though they were already hosting KC's family too. 

as soon as i got there, i changed into something acceptable for a luau and headed to their country club for hawaiian night! i got to meet her parents, husband and adorable kids. but mostly we ignored them and chatted with each other the whole time. it was fabulous. 

KC is so easy to talk to. i want to say that she "just gets me" but that will make me feel cheesy. but come on! she gets me! she is so fun and sweet and kind and tan. so many qualities i aspire to have! i love that our paths were literally crossing on this trip. please Jesus let them cross again soon.

her children all begged me not to go, but i had to leave right after breakfast so i could drive allllll the way to the LA area. but first, i made a pit stop at a mormon temple. i read a few mormon blogs and find it all very interesting, so i thought i may as well stop and see a temple since there are so many in arizona to be seen. i am a tad bit disappointed that i didn't drive a little bit further out of my way so i could see the bigger temple in gilbert, but i guess i'll have to see that one next time. i am contemplating flying to indiana next year when they open a new temple so i can see the inside before they consecrate it. i'm not mormon, but i think that they have a few really good values that would be great for anyone to learn from. i don't think it has ever hurt someone to learn from people who are a little different than them, just like it has never hurt anyone to eat salt water taffy in bed at midnight. ahem. 

WHY AM I SO STRANGE? i don't know guys. i took a selfie with the temple. i sent it to my sister. pretend its all very normal. maybe i will visit all the temples all over the world and take selfies with them. i won't do that, but its fun to dream.

once i finally got on the road (after being told by a gas station attendant "that we don't have a public bathroom" what is this? nyc?) i pinky promised myself that i would not miss the california state line sign. i missed lit.tra.lee. every other state sign and was pretty desperate to get a picture with the california one. for instagram, obviously. it was about twelve thousand degrees where i took that picture as i am pretty sure i was standing on the actual sun. why do they keep it so hot there? why was no one passing out bottled water and sunblock? i will never know.  

pretend like this next picture is somewhere in california. in reality it could be from anywhere. i just don't know.

once i made it through the boring part of southern california where i was blessed to see approximately 300 million windmills, i got just outside of LA and nearly died. california traffic. oh em gee. where is everyone going and why are they driving so fast. until this point my drive had been great. relaxing even. the relaxing part was long gone and i was gripping the steering wheel like my life depended on it. because apparently, it did. miraculously, i made it to kara's house. 

kara is one of the people who i can without a doubt say i met on instagram. what is the 21st century. we meet people on the internet. i commented on someone else's picture saying i liked her (kara's) sweater. we've been friends ever since. we met IRL (in real life) at hope spoken, but didn't actually get to hang much. kara was nice enough to leave her cute kids at home for the night and take me to newport beach. we laid by the water, walked on the pier, ate delicious mexican food and got matching tank tops. i'd say that makes up for not hanging out at hope spoken.

you should probably go stay at her house as soon as you can because she will make you the cutest little treat basket. i already burned the entire candle she gave me and bought another just like it. 

after breakfast, i left kara's, got starbucks (duh) and started out on my last leg of the trip. it was uneventful and i was so (not) glad to save the most boring part of the entire drive for the last day. a glorious 5 hours on the 5.  b o r i n g. 

however, all of that quickly faded into my memory as soon as i pulled up to the house. i actually couldn't find it at first, which was funny. but the palm tree and the pool and the hot tub made the long drive worth it. and the cute kids of course. now it all seems like so long ago, probably because it took me three weeks to get this up.

i don't know an exciting way to end a post like this, so i will end it with this picture proving that at some point i drove on route 66. i don't know what state i was in. i don't know what day it was. all i know is i drove for a whole mile on the famous rode just to get sonic. 

God bless america.

ko.

ze beach.

in a perfect world everything would be posted on this here blog chronologically. but how boring would that be. plus it is one thousand times more fun to blog about THE BEACH than it is to blog about anything else. normally i would be posting these pictures with a tinge of sadness because deep down i would know my next visit to the beach wasn't any time soon. i think that was a run on sentence, but who cares because the only thing i know deep down is that we're going to the beach again tomorrow (yesterday by the time you read this). different beach. different day. same story. 

i love the ocean.

without further ado, a zillion pictures from the beach from 3 different trips! and you can meet the children! it's your luckiest day.

jake the puppy/ professional sand licker and ellie the birthday girl. on this beach day at least.

your one and only chance to see cael is happening right now. blue shorts on the left. he's not really into letting me take his picture every 5 minutes. cannot figure out why. cory is also in this picture but since he is an adult he does not get to be introduced since i only said you could meet the children. rules are rules. jodi also snuck in here in that picture riiiight up there.

puppy jake again. and tate. he loves the camera, that boy.

hello, ava! working so very hard on her sand creation.

hello again ellie and hello sand castle complete with a seaweed palm tree.

 i love this boy. he sings we will rock you and let it go all.day.long.

below you will see a magical comparison between a cloudy day at the beach and a sunny day at the beach. the magic that you will not see is the 32943849328 people i edited out of the cloudy picture.

on another day at the beach jake and tate spent a solid 10 minutes running towards the water, sitting down, getting up and running back to us and yelling "ta-da!" i laughed every time. they're reasonably cute, i guess. 

and excellent at getting sand all over their bodies i might add.

we also saw a bunch (like hundreds) of these strange little creatures wash up on shore. i mean they were everywhere. you could see them floating in way out on the water. i did some googling around and determined that they were baby portuguese man of wars which is a type of jellyfish. which is totally normal, i'm sure. we think they were dead. i hope they were dead because the adult ones grow tentacles up to 30 feet long. no, i am not ever getting in the water again.

and now for the black and white series. i'm sure somewhere there is a rule stating that you may not turn beach pictures black and white because hello you're at the beach, but these are just so pretty b+w. i'm not even sorry. 

i only made ellie retake this picture 23 times. its fine. and little worker bees working away on a trench that they promptly destroyed.

i was also generous enough to allow ellie to retake these boogie boarding pictures 47 times. and by that i mean i made her do it. again and again and again and again.

it was worth it, wouldn't you say? framers for sure.

i purchased one (or two) one piece swimsuits so that i can boogie board next time. all i had were "sleeveless" swimsuits (as ellie likes to call them) and believe me, sleeveless swimsuits are no good in the waves. no good at all. 

see you tomorrow, beach. 

xoxo,

ko.

the drive out west || kansas to albuquerque (part 1)

so, i was going to just do this in one post, but its way too many pictures for just one. so two it is. i also know that most people may not be interested in reading a long stop by stop account of my trip, but i had such a good time on this adventure and don't want to forget one single thing about it. plus my mom wants to read it. 

i left kansas on july 6th and headed to um, kansas. it was only a little over 2 hours to jess's house, which made it a perfect stop for lunch. i've been reading jess's blog for over 3 years, and i was able to finally meet her in person at hope spoken, but boy was i still nervous pulling up to her house. 

obviously, i had nothing to worry about. jess is so sweet and meeting her family was so fun. it is funny to read about people on a blog for several years and then meet them. especially when its not the person writing the blog. but her husband and two (now three!) boys were the sweetest. the even took me to the farm and levi gave me the grand tour. he told me the name of every single tractor. silly me thought they were all just called tractors, but it turns out they each have a name. jess had her baby less than 2 weeks after i stopped by, but i'm sure i'll get to meet the sweet guy when i drive home. a girl can dream can't she?

excuse this really low quality picture of me and the boys. i took a screenshot from jess's instagram. not the best way to do it. :)

next i headed to tulsa, which is in fact the opposite direction of west. originally i was going to go straight to texas from jess's house, but who can resist a stop at lesley's house? lesley and her family had just gotten home from a big roadtrip to montana, but they were still willing to have me for dinner. lesley is quite the cook and her husband is a pretty great griller. so obviously dinner was delicious. and they had a whole plate of homegrown tomatoes from their yard. i thought i had died and gone to heaven. their two little girls are about the cutest things ever. i asked the older one what her favorite food was and she said bacon. i wish i could agree with her. 

lesley is such a nice lady. and so funny too! i was so grateful to get to meet her at hope spoken after following her on instagram and her blog for a year or two. she is full of spunk and knows how to dream big dreams. also she has chickens. so fun.

lesley sent me on my way to ft worth with a bag of the most delicious cookies i've ever had. i rationed them all the way to arizona. i ended up driving past midnight to ft worth, so i enjoyed quite a few of those cookies on the way. at one point i was so sleepy that i had to pull into mcdonalds and get an ice cream cone. i'd never done that to keep myself awake before, but you can bet your bottom dollar that it won't be the last time. 

when i finally got to ft worth, i didn't think i could possibly be any happier to see my bed. that was, of course, until i saw this little package waiting for me. 

kimber has a super cute etsy shop and was sweet enough to gift me a few prints. she also wrote me a sweet card AND stayed up waiting for me. she's a keeper, that one.

kimber knows how to make a girl feel welcome. the next morning, we had cinnamon rolls with her cutie patootie daughter, then went to shipley's and had the best donut i had eaten in months. after lunch at panera (all we did was eat) we met up with anna, and i got to meet her family. i met both of these girls at hope spoken and am so very glad that i did. we probably only got to talk for an hour over the course of the weekend, but we clicked and we're rooming together next year! visiting these girls felt like visiting old friends i've known forever. we get along so well and all enjoy similar things. including shopping and food. which is what our day revolved around. anthropologie, because duh. anna even made her first anthro clothing purchase.

they took me to velvet taco, where i proceeded to eat one of the best tacos i have ever had. i mean really, it was incredible. i am still thinking about it and would like 5 more please.

you could say it was taco heaven. 

then we went home and watched american blogger because what else would you do with friends you met at a blogging conference. kimber's husband joined us too. i think he paid the most attention to it since kimber and i couldn't stop chatting.

i was really sad to leave ft worth. these two are sweet friends and i'm counting down the days til i get to see them again. but it was off to the next place! a fews hours west landed me in midland to see wynne. i also met her at hope spoken (are you sensing a theme?) and she is about the cutest texan you'll ever meet. i've never seen her in an outfit i didn't like and she got the prettiest hair. but more than that she has a heart of gold and never stops adventuring. she's been to africa 8 or 9 times in the last three years and is such an advocator of those in need. after hearing her story at hope spoken, hanging out in her home and meeting her sweet kids was so fun. she was also kind enough to have me for lunch even though she had just returned from a 19 day road trip out east, 12 of which it was just her and the kids. she was home for 3 days before she headed rwanda for 10 days. this girl has got a love for travel. i love that about her.

after i said goodbye to wynne and found a much needed ipod charger, i waved goodbye to beloved texas and started off towards new mexico. i've never been to new mexico, so i was excited to see a new state, but i was also excited to see the two cute little girls that were waiting for me.

this stretch, despite being over 6 hours, was actually my favorite part of the whole entire drive. i probably saw less than 10 cars going the same direction as me. it was so green and beautiful. i seriously did not want it to end. buuuut the babies were calling my name.  boy was it good to finally see their faces. (and their mom and dad of course.)

after a good night of sleep with all twelve thousand of annika's stuffed animals, we spent the day at the botanical gardens, the aquarium, and well, shopping of course. 46 pictures for your viewing pleasure.

the gardens were sort of magical but also sort of really stinking hot if you weren't in the shade. although in kansas it is just hot everywhere. shade or not you're sweating your buns off. but it was worth the heat to spend time with these cutie pies. i taught isabella how to do this trick with her tongue when she was literally just hours old. i'm sure it was just a reflex or something, but i made this face at her and she made it right back. also i would like to take a moment to talk about how she is going to be in 5TH GRADE this year. stop the time people. its all happening to fast.

jocilyn bought me a sweater at anthro. bless her heart. and annika gave me some stuffed animal company while i tried things on. that girl loves her stuffed animals.

after some delicious pizza, a viewing of frozen and a full nights sleep, i had to say goodbye. but i didn't have far to go. just a quick drive across town for an impromptu stop at ruth's house. i commented on her instagram the day before saying i was driving through and wished i could see her. well what do you know, she was free the next morning and was sweet enough to let me bring her some coffee. i obviously loved all of my stops, but this one was such a fun surprise. i met her 6 boys, who were some of the most polite little boys i have ever met, and got to see her cute house. best of all, i just got to sit and chat with her for an hour. we met at hope spoken, but probably only talked for 5 minutes. so to spend a bit longer with her was a treat. she is such a gracious and wise woman and is an incredible mom. i took lots of mental notes while i was there. her boys are lucky to have such a great mom. she is speaking at hope spoken this year, and i am s t o k e d to hear her share.

part 2 coming sooooooon. scout's honor. for now i leave you with this picture from somewhere in america. your guess is as good as mine. 

ko.