My fourth year celebrating Mother's Day (as a mom)! Our Mother's day tradition continues, except I got a bit lazy this year and didn't find matching outfits for all of us.

What does being a mom mean to me?

• Being the last person to eat
• Eating cold meals
• Spending all my money on cute kid stuff
• Sitting in the car while my child naps
• Sniffing butts and analyzing poop
• Constantly looking at pictures of my kid(s)
• Always wearing dirty clothes
• Wiping snot. All.The.Time.
• Getting overjoyed when I get to spend time away from the kids, but then miss and want to see them like crazy
• Showing unconditional love
• Sacrificing
• Eating snacks in secret so I don't have to share
• Believing I can cut my kid's hair and then do a terrible job, but my kid thinks it looks fantastic
• Getting really into kids shows like "Sophia the First" and googling it so I can catch up
• Constantly stepping on little toys (darn those shopkins!)
• Losing all my hair and sporting awkward baby hair
• Sleeping late is 10pm and sleeping in is 7am.  
• Striving to becoming a better version of myself for my kids/family

I'm continually learning/changing, and I'm so grateful I get to experience it all. I love my crazy girls. Happy Mother's Day!

Colorado

We took a 4 day family trip to Colorado a few weeks ago. I've never been and since we had a handful of friends over there, we thought it'd be a nice little trip to take.

• They call Denver the mile high city. Did not know that. 
• It often snows in April. Did not know that. 
• It can get very windy. Did not know that. 

I'd like to start off my stating that I did not pack correctly. It snowed about 2 of the 4 days we were there and the wind was insane. Not having packed enough clothes, we couldn't stay outdoors for too long. The kids just stayed covered up in the stroller. But...we did manage to stop by a few key spots:

• Manitou Cliff Dwellings
• Garden of the Gods
• Air Force Academy
• Capital Hill in Downtown

As for food, tons of breakfast/brunch places to choose from, but not so much lunch and/or dinner. We had some decent sushi one night but the highlight of the trip was definitely our morning meals. I highly recommend One Fold (get the Vietnamese iced coffee and breakfast burrito) and Snooze (the Benny Duo and Cinnamon Roll Pancake is a must). Apparently they opened up a Snooze here in orange county. Definitely got to check it out. Oh and ice cream at Sweet Cow is super yummy!

Overall the trip turned out well. It's always hard traveling with young ones. There's the packing of a million things, making sure they're well napped, well fed, well entertained, etc. I often ask myself why we even attempt to travel with the girls when they most likely won't remember any of it. There's also all that extra suffering. But, I see how much joy Erin has whenever we board a plane and how excited she gets when she sees we get to share a bed, it just puts a huge smile on my face. The girl seriously enjoys traveling. We may suffer, but there are tons of benefits to traveling with kids and I think its good for the girls. The trip was harder for little Ava. She did well on the flight to CO considering we dragged her out of bed at 5am. She was a bit cranky each day, but she had fun walking around and exploring. We slept at a different place each night, so sleep was our biggest challenge with her.

Unfortunately, our trip didn't end on the best note. Ava ended up screaming the last 30 minutes of the flight, thrashing around trying to jump out of my arms. We still aren't sure if it had to with the ear pressure from the trip/flight or whether she was just dang tired of being on the plane. We were that family with that kid. Sorry folks of Southwest Flight 700. We owe you.