Wandering Browns

Celebrating Austin and Owen's birthdays... very late! Just because we are THAT crazy and love traveling THAT much, we visited my family in California for two weeks on our way back to Chicago, then made it to Denver for Christmas . At this point, we had a few pieces of fall clothing from our fall in Korea, but most of the clothing we had with us was not suitable for the weather in Chicago or Denver. So, as soon as we landed in Chicago, we headed over to our storage unit to go "shopping" for the things we needed in Denver. Because we were so tired of flying, we decided to DRIVE to Denver. We spent one night in Chicago, loaded up our stuff, and rolled out toward Denver around noon the next day. Owen took an epic nap, we met up with our old BYU swimming pal Zach for dinner in Lincoln, Nebraska, where we had planned on stopping and resting for the night. We decided to continue driving, though, so the boys would not have to spend another full day in the car. I drove durin...

We spent a significant portion of our time in California getting over jet lag and doing all of the things that we miss when we're traveling- baking, cooking, eating awesome American and Mexican food, and spending tons of time with family. I am so happy that we were able to introduce Landon to some of my favorite family traditions. Landon and I made lemony sugar cookies with different colors of buttercream frosting. Landon helped by taking way too many tastes and manning the decoration/sprinkles station.  Our time in California flew by and was filled with tons of activities! Turns out my parents are pretty busy even with just one kid at home. Austin and I celebrated our anniversary with dinner at McClintock's in Pismo Beach- a cowboy-type steak house overlooking the ocean, and outdoor mineral springs hot tub. It was a very relaxing date! We attended Claire's piano recital (with my piano teacher from high school!) and band concert. We did some temple work for my ma...