31AUG15

We were able to enjoy most of the month of August with the kids out of school spending time as a family and with our family and friends in AZ before Travis had to head to El Paso for work.  These are random and in no order but too cute for me to not put out in the blog world. ;)

 

 

Building!

Hugs all around!

Isn't this how everyone loves to read?

Pool time with my mini-me and bestie.

More sewing with grandma Kerry!

Twins!  David put these on at Theresa's and then Lincoln ran around to find his matching ones!

Time with the homemade cousins. :)

You know your best friend loves you (ok your kids) when she picks them up from my in-laws while Trav and I were out of town to take them to do something fun.  And not just once but TWICE!

Addison love!

Cousin movie time.

Breakfast and taking silly pictures!

HAHA David!

Movie time with the theater all to ourselves!

They made her Tori take this picture and text it to me saying they NEEDED this bear! :)

Matching with the cousins!!

Sleepovers!

Showing the cousins the iPad games.

24AUG15

Since our house wasn't going to be ready for a couple months and school was starting everything (it actually started the end of July in the school district we were moving into) we went back and forth on what was going to be best to do for the kids.  We talked about staying in a hotel but that is rough for 2 months!  We finally decided to enroll the kids in Mesa.  The best part was they were going to get to go to school with their cousins!  Franklin is a great school but it was a bit ahead of where my girls were when we left Hawaii so I knew it was going to be a bit of a struggle but I also knew I had 2 smart little girls!  We were right.  They struggled a little bit at first but got into the swing of things and when we finally did get to El Paso they had no problems adjusting!  I feel like we made a good decision and these military kids adjusted to both schools amazingly well.  I get emotional thinking about what fantastic kids I have!!  I am also thankful for WONDERFUL teachers!  Both of my girls have had some pretty dang great teachers and I am so thankful for those willing to teach!

 

 

Lexi going to 5th grade Ms. Donaldson (followed up at her new school in El paso Ms. Marquez) Also they have middle school here so this is Alexis's last year in elementary. I'm officially OLD! ;)

Our sweet 2nd grader.  Mr. McClay (probably one of Ryan's all time favorite teachers and not just because they had the same first name and the same birthday!) Followed by Mr. Rodriquez who she also really likes!

My sweet kids!

Daddy was even able to take them to their first day which doesn't happen very often!

David also got to go to Preschool with his cousin 2 days a week and he absolutely LOVED going and loved his teacher Ms. Melissa!!!

Is it just me or does he look ready for Kindergarten??

First day of preschool and the silly girl in the middle is JoJo (he LOVES Jo!)

22AUG15

Well no one thought I would be in AZ for a couple months and not run a couple races right??  I found this one and I honestly just loved the medal because it had AZ on it and I thought it was really cool looking so I 100% did this race for the medal!!  Since I had been in vacation mode for quite a few weeks I was pretty impressed with my time and it was actually not far off from my PR!  The only not so fun part was doing it all alone!  Even if I don't stay with my running partner I always went with a friend to a race so it was a bit lonely but I'll get used to it!! :)

 

 

15AUG15

If it hasn't been made clear yet I, Monica McBride, have fallen completely and totally in love.  With football, with the AZ Cardinals, with everything having to do with the NFL.  I can tell you where I believe it began...  2 years ago Travis came home for R&R from Afghanistan and it happened to be football season.  During R&R we did a LOT of things but for those 2 Sundays we laid around the house snuggled up and he watched football.  Now football has been on before and I have glanced at it but I've never really WATCHED.  Well ya I just loved it.  I grew up as a Suns fan.  My dad loved basketball and I still like it but football has taken over as my favorite sport to watch (professional, of course, my real fave is anything the kids are playing. :) )  I will root for any Arizona team all day long but the Cardinals have my heart (with the PHX Suns as a close second.)  HAHA.  So being in AZ during the beginning of football season (pre-season actually) we knew we had to hit up a game with some other hard core fans Bryatt and Theresa!  We had the BEST time!!!  Perfect date night!! :)

 

 

Showed up to Theresa's and knew it was going to be a good night because 2 of my faves were MATCHING!! You all know how much I love matching!

Bryatt and Trav left before us because T had to work.

Everything had Cardinals on it so I took a pic in front of everything. HA!

Theresa got us these tickets and the seats were AMAZING (even if they were on the visitors side.)

3 of my favorite people all around me!

Travis and Bry had different seats so I sat with T during the first half and Trav during the second.

Yep I wasn't about to leave these awesome seats!

I would 100% drive this car.

Seriously can't wait to go to another game!!!

07AUG16

The first thing we had to figure out getting back to the "mainland" was where we were going to live in El Paso!  We knew we wanted to try to buy and needed to get that situated before we started our down time in AZ.  First we had to rent a car to drive to California to pick up Travis's truck.  Then we headed to El Paso (so nice to be able to drive there and leave the kids with family!)  It was actually a lot of fun road tripping with just Travis and looking for a house!  This post and the pictures are pretty random but I want to remember this trip and that's why I keep the blog!! So we were in El Paso for 3 days and found the PERFECT house!  The only problem was it wasn't going to be available as early as we wanted but we decided it would be worth the wait.  We finished the road trip at a hotel/casino in Tucson and they even upgraded us (no idea why) to the skylevel!! Trav planned the whole thing and it was so dang much fun!!! 

Random road trip pics!

The dunes in Yuma on the way to pick up the truck!  So many memories from quad riding in high school with my family!

More memories from childhood!  We passed the Thing on the I10 every time we went to my grandmas house and it was something we looked forward to (probably because they had DQ!)

Heading into El Paso!

The view from our hotel room!

Beautiful room!

Trav even let me order room service for breakfast and yes I took a picture of it. :)