Well, the time has come to say goodbye to Alaska.  We are excited to get home and see our dog (who we haven’t seen in like 10 days)!  We are excited to get back to our bed!  We are excited to get back to our beach and weather!

But, we are sad to see the end of vacation.  Sad to say goodbye to all of our family again (still haven’t convinced them all to become Californians yet).  Sad to see me get beat out of the Spades tournament yet again.  Sad that Jessi Girl won’t get to see her aunts, uncles and grandparents for a while.  Sad that I won’t get to see my brother for several months.  Sad that my wife and sisters won’t get to hang out and have girl time (whatever that really is).  Especially sad that I have to use Delta again.

It has been an amazing trip.  I think I have gotten to do everything I wanted to do (except for a few things that need a different time of year).  Alaska is beautiful and fun, but my family is way better.  I can’t wait until family vacation next year!  The location isn’t quite as pretty but it will be hot and there is a lake and boat involved!  I’ll have to teach the little one how to wakeboard (15 months old isn’t too early for wakeboarding is it?).

But for now it is back to our real lives.  We are flying back to Orange County today so please pray for safety and a happy baby (she doesn’t like the descending part).  Family, I love you all.  Thank you so much for another amazing vacation!  Mom and dad, thank you so  very much for everything.  We absolutely couldn’t have done this without you!  Love you guys!

Every year for as long as I can remember, my family has taken a vacation together.  And for as long as I can remember we have taken that vacation with a few other families, recently dubbed the Family Fun Network.  We have been to the mountains, the beach, the lake and many other random places in between.  We board, ski, hike, climb, camp, cook, play Spades, play Hearts, play ladder golf, hang out, make fun of each other and love each other.  Not bad if you ask me.

I didn’t know that this wasn’t normal until college when I started meeting people whose families had never done anything like that before.  I didn’t know how blessed I was to have such a large family around me that would sacrifice time and money in order to get together like that every year.  I’m so thankful that we do since we don’t live near them anymore and don’t get to see them very often.  The families are growing larger and larger and we can barely fit everyone together under one roof, but it seems the more the merrier!

This year in Alaska has been no different than years past.  We are only halfway through our trip and it has been amazing.  I think that if God could pick the model for family community, this would be it.  Totally loving and supporting.  Take some time today to thank God for the family He has placed around you and pray for them.  If you don’t have family around you, pray that He will help you find it.

So I haven’t been married that long and so I am not really up on what anniversaries you are supposed to celebrate and which ones you just remember and say, “oh by the way, _____ happened today ______ ago.”  I’m just not sure.  But today falls into one of those categories and since I don’t know which category it is, I’m gonna split the difference and write a blog about it.  How does that sound, people?

Two years ago this past weekend I talked my then girlfriend into coming on family vacation with us.  This was a big deal because our family vacations consist of 3-4 families with several kids and so we are already packed into whatever it is we are vacationing in trying to make the trip as cheap as possible.  So they parents decided on a rule that no girl/boyfriends are allowed to come for anyone.  They must be at least engaged if not married.  That was hurdle number one.  Hurdle number two was actually getting her to the vacationing spot.  So long story short, I convinced the family it was ok to do so because we were planning on being married and just didn’t have a ring yet and she got the privilege of riding around 16 hours in the cars with my family!  (Ha.  I flew.)

So hurdles were jumped and we were both on my family vacation in Cuchara Valley, Colorado.  One of the things we had planned for the trip was getting some cool backgrounds (that just fill my mom up) for taking some engagement pictures…even though we were not technically engaged.  So a couple days in we started wandering around the mountains and taking pictures.  In the midst of that I decided not to go with the scoreboard at the next OU/OSU game or baking it into a cake and whip out the ring that I actually did already have and pop the question!  And of course I was super smooth.  I rambled of some stuff about love and the price of the ring and she “got something in her eye” and her eyes watered and then she took the ring from me.  I’m pretty sure she said yes in there somewhere too, but it was all a whirlwind.

Ok, so maybe it wasn’t quite like that, but still.  Two years ago today, the love of my life was tricked into saying she wanted to spend the rest of her life with me!  I’m so glad she did and I can’t believe we waited seven more months to get married!  That was insane!  But I love her so much and she puts up with all my crap.  I couldn’t ask for anything more!  The is everything I ever wanted and so much more!  I can’t imagine how awesome the rest of our lives will be together!  Love you, baby!

Ok.  No more sappy love stuff.