Zavoral Villa!

When we moved here 2.5 years ago, we made a goal to be much less busy than we were in Huntington Beach. We've been doing a really good job at it, with the exception of this past September. (But even then, it is nothing compared to how busy we were in HB, of which I am glad!) We knew it would be a rough month, so we planned ahead as best we could and tried to take one day at a time. Tanner started preschool, I started rehearsals for Into the Woods at the community college, and I started teaching/working 10 hours a week. Oh yeah, and Jeremy and I went to Guatemala for a week.  Here are some pictures of our last calm day enjoying a warm rainstorm before all the craziness began. Playing in the rain!! Labor Day was spent helping a family from church with replacing the siding on their home. Dallin fell asleep while we worked. I set up a bed for him in the back of our car. The next day was Tanner's first day of preschool!! I thought it was cute how Tanner wanted me to include Dallin i...

One perk of living in the Midwest, or at least in Minnesota, is that there are tons of parks and playgrounds everywhere you go, even in the smallest of towns. Our town of 24,000 people has at least 15 parks (not including school parks) that I know of, each with huge areas to run and explore, and each with playgrounds that have swings, jungle gyms, and other cool stuff like rock walls and merry-go-rounds. In HB, to find the kind of parks we have in MN, you had to drive at least 20 minutes, and they were always so crowded it was hardly worth going. During our last week of summer (Aug 31-Sept 4), I decided to make it special by going to various parks every day. We made it to 7 parks and one museum! It was my last hurrah with the boys before Tanner started preschool and I started teaching music classes 3 days a week (6 hrs total of teaching a week). It was so fun to see Dallin getting really good at climbing. I didn't think the day would come so soon when Dallin not only would make it ...