Have I mentioned that I have the best husband ever?

Pretty sure I wrote a post about it a few years ago.

When we got back from AZ Ty says to me, "I have a few 4 day weekends coming up. You should go on vacation again." (I went to AZ for the last one.)

My initial response was negative. I didn't really want to go anywhere alone, and I didn't want to spend a lot of money because we don't have a job once April gets here.

And then this past week happened.

Both boys have been sick.

There's been a lot of neediness,

A lot of barf clean-up,

A whole lot of laundry,

And very little personal space/time. (Which this momma definitely needs.)

So I decided to run away for a day.

Ty dropped me off at a Motel 6 not 5 miles from our house.

(And we told Leo I was going to spend the night driving a submarine in the bay, just because we're mean and we knew he would be jealous.)

It was awesome.

Seriously.

 I got caught up on all my journal writing (which I was pathetically behind on).

I read an entire book, without any interruptions.

I walked around Walmart for an hour.

I stopped by the gas station and got a Diet Coke on the way back to my room.

I gave myself a facial,

took a long bath,

and watched Hoarders on TLC.

I loved it.

And then today when I left the hotel I walked down to the beach and chilled there until Ty and the boys picked me up again.

It was exactly what I needed.

One of my goals for this year is to let go of things that don't matter.

I spend way too much time worrying about things that ultimately have no real affect on my day-to-day life.

So I started off by making a pretty huge decision.

I let Leo use my crayons.

 This may not seem like a big deal to most of you,

but I'm a little bit anal about my crayons. 

I like them to stay nice, and sharp, and organized.

I've had these crayons for over four years and, until now,

Leo has never been allowed to touch them.

But I realized that a box of crayons should probably not last for four years. 

I mean, they're meant to be colored with, right?

They don't want to spend their lives in a box never being touched.

So even though it gives me serious anxiety to find them like this:

 and this:

and broken in bits after being stepped on and thrown around,

nothing bad has come about as a result of them being Leo's.

Hooray for letting go!

(Hopefully the next one's a little easier.)

Some of you may recognize this monstrosity:

I've had this baby since I was in junior high.

And yes, thanks for asking, I did paint it myself.

I decided about two years ago that I was going to re-finish this bad boy.

When we got back from AZ a few weeks ago I told Ty,

"I really need to get that thing re-finished."

To which he replied,

"Why don't you just admit that you're never going to do it?"

So, of course, I started on it the very next day.

And now it looks like this: 

Here's an interesting little tidbit:

This is not at all the look I was going for.

I was hoping for a "country cottage" feel.

Instead I got more of a "haunted mansion"

or a

"Hey, remember how I told you I had an old dresser you could use?

Well it turns out that there's been a pipe leaking water on it for the past two years and we just now noticed.

No, it will totally still work as long as you don't mind the smell."

But I'm keeping it any way,

because I am way too cheap and lazy to start over again.

The end.

Thanksgiving

This is the only picture I took of Thanksgiving, but it pretty much sums up the day.

There was lots of food and lots of fun time with both sides of our family.

Jay especially liked the pie.

Disneyland

I swore that this was going to be the time that I actually blogged while I was in AZ for 7 weeks.

Oops.

It all started when I discovered it was going to be slightly inconvenient to get pictures from my camera to the computer.

Then I found out that I was getting a new camera for Christmas and I stopped taking pictures all together.

So now I'm going to attempt to catch up on some of what happened while we were gone.

We started off with the best trip to Disneyland I've ever taken.

Seriously, it was magical.

It was warm and sunny the entire time we were there.

The lines were short.

(Some were only 5 minutes long, and the longest was 20 minutes.)

The boys did so great.

Even Jay Alvin.

And I didn't get a decent picture the entire day.

Seriously, prepare to be underwhelmed by the photos.

We started off by taking the train to the back side of the park.

Jay would have been happy to do nothing else the entire day.

 Then we rode "It's a Small World" and he would have been happy to do nothing else all day.

Then came "Nemo". . .

Yeah, he would have done that all day too.

The funny thing is that his face looked like this all day long:

 I would say, "Jay, is this fun?"

And he would say, without even looking at me, "Yes."

And that was that.

The only time we got a bigger reaction than that was during "Pirates of the Caribbean."

He actually grabbed my hand during that one and told me he was scared,

then he got over it.

 We had lunch around 3:00 and the boys were getting a little sluggish.

Did we let that stop us?

Nope.

I just gave them Diet Coke to perk them back up.

(And the "Mother of the Year" award goes to. . .)

 And finally, I wouldn't have put this picture in except for the fact that it was my last attempt to get a good shot. It was ruined because Jay Alvin has an innate distrust of people with beards and the guy standing next to us in line had a pretty sweet one. Jay wouldn't take his eyes off of it.

So, even though the pictures are lame, the day was awesome and so worth it.

And Jay spent the entire night and most of the next day throwing up,

so we couldn't have timed it better.