Rowley Family

This summer we got to have a Rowley Family reunion at my parents house! 40 people in one house...it was AWESOME. 

I love these people so so much! 

Here's the whole clan! (Except We were missing Jason though 😭 we were so sad he couldn't be there! )

2 Grandparents

7 siblings 

6 (w/out Jason 😔) spouses 

11 Grand-daughters

14 Grand-sons

Of course we did silly pics too :) 

My siblings and parents. 💕

And then there's us....

(Kimi, Christine, Eric, Jen, Annette, Jana and Me!) 

Grandma and Grandpa Rowley with their 25 grandchildren! 

The awesome in laws! We love them ALL!!!! (Wish Jason could have been there! We should have done a cardboard cutout ;) 

And me and my mom and dad! 

They are seriously the best parents in the world.

A beautiful idea

An idea is percolating in my little head...

My hubby is my pilot and together we love adventure....

While on our adventures, I'm the documenter of the beauties we discover...

I'm the artist and my pilot helps me find the best shots....

I'm seeing a way of life coming together....

That just might change me.

Camping, School, Work and everything in between!

I need a million extra hours in the day. What in the world. I'm sure you know the feeling.  There's just never enough time in the day for everything you have to do and everything you want to do.

Like blogging. :)

Bryce and I recently went on two AMAZING trips and I'm dying to blog about them and post my zillions of pics. We flew to California for our 6 year anniversary, rented a Camero Convertible and drove Highway 101 down the coast from San Fransisco to San Diego. Then for our summer trip and Rowley Family Reunion, we got all our gear ready and made a camping road trip out of it. We started from home here in Texas, drove to Palao Duro Canyon and camped. Next day we drove up through Santa Fe and almost to Durango, and found an amazing spot up in the mountains and camped. The next day, Sunday we got up and got ready for church, headed down the mountain and went to church in Durango and then headed up to Telluride, CO. We camped that night up at Alta Lakes, CO. It was seriously the most beautiful place!!! We were going to stay a second night but had troubles with the truck so we left the next evening and camped in Moab, UT. The following day we drove to Heber  City and stayed at my sisters house and saw her family and Eric's family. Then headed into Logan and saw some old friends. Then went to Bear Lake and met up with my family for our family reunion!! It was so fun and awesome to see everyone. (Except Jana's family :( but at least I saw her back in March for Kimi's shower in VA!) Once it was over we drove super fast back to Texas......PHFEW!!!! It was a crazy but totally awesome trip. I can't wait to post pics!!!

In the meantime I can do a wordy post about what's going on with us these days.

I'm learning more about blogging. As you can see up top, I've added PAGES. I was crazy excited (like total nerd excited) when I found out I could add that feature. I'm so behind the times but ... that's ok. I also added LABELS. I've seen them on blogs alot in the past and never felt like I needed them but in the last year or so, I get so many hits from women looking up info on IVF or quilting or my Art or whatever....I figured it was time. :)

Bryce: oh man, he's kickin butt in school. He's getting so close to finishing. We can taste it! Last week he was turned over from his normal instructor to a more advanced pilot for some fine-tuning and then just yesterday he was turned over to the chief pilot. They went on a two-hour flight and the chief pilot just sat back and let Bryce 'teach' him. He was telling me last night about the flight and all the awesome maneuvers he did and how one of them he did it 'passably' but wasn't amazing so he asked for some tips so the chief pilot demonstrated and talked him through and then let Bryce do it.....and it was perfect! He was super happy. Bryce loves perfecting his flying. :)
So when they landed, he told Bryce he'll be more than happy to hire him when they have a slot open up (and after he actually takes his tests!) The school is expanding so they're expecting to need more pilots in the next few months so we're hopeful that he'll be hired on as a Helicopter Flight Instructor once he finishes here in 2-3 months. (hopefully less).
So I'm really proud of him. These tests are seriously intense and he's doing fabulously.

My art business is picking up - which is awesome. I just have to find the time to do it all!! I have several orders to fill (2 acrylic paintings, curtains, two possible quilts and nursery decor). I love the variety! I'm feeling more and more hope that this will continue to grow so that down the road, I can stop working outside the home and be able to focus solely on my Art/Sewing/Crafting business....and hopefully babies, of course.

Work is the same for me. Still driving 45 mins to work every day and draining my gas tank way too fast.

I'm still working with the YW in our ward. I'm the first counselor so I'm over the Mia-Maids. Right now we only have two active mia-maids so we combine with the Beehives. But we're considering making a couple changes so that my girls can feel like they are their own class still. .... it's a work in progress.

Three of our YW asked if I could help them make their own quilts. So we went to JoAnn's....twice and picked out their fabric. At first they were worried they'd choose similar fabric and they didn't want that to happen but once we got there, they all had TOTALLY different taste. One is doing bright colors, one is doing grey, yellow and teal and the other is doing a grey, mauvey pink and maroon quilt. They're all going to turn out adorable. Morgan is working on sewing her squares together and Hailee and Michelle are still cutting our their squares. Cutting is definitely the worst part, It takes forever and can be difficult at first to get everything perfectly square. The rotary cutter and big cutting mat is definitely a life-saver but it's still slow going when you need 80+ squares. :)

Art lessons have been fun. I'm still teaching Sheridyn once a week and teaching Maddi once a week as well. They're several years apart in age so I don't teach them at the same time. We've had fun this summer, painting outside and trying new things. That's my favorite part of teaching, is introducing them to new experiences and new mediums. I didn't paint on site until I was in college so I love giving them the opportunity to do it when they're so young.

I read DIVERGENT last month. Yup, I finally jumped on the bandwagon. I really enjoyed it. It was more violent than I had expected but overall I really did love it. I got it for $6 at Walmart....can't really go wrong with that price. So I'm excited to read INSURGENT next.

And that's all for the moment. But I'll be giving an update about ADOPTION soon. :)

Utah trip

So in September Bryce and I were able to finally go back to Utah to visit.

We flew standby. Let me say, I am very grateful we can do this but... it can also be so so stressful. I don't want to go into all the details but let's just say how amazing Bryce is for getting us out there. We weren't able to fly right to SLC so he spent 3 hours searching and found us a flight to CO and a rental car to drive from there to SLC. Bless him. He knew how much I needed the trip.

Now, I knew all I wanted to do when I was out there was to hang out with Jennifer and just be there. I knew Bryce would get bored so we kept the rental car for the first day and he left on his own and just did his own trip. He's been dying to drive in the mountains for ages so he mapped out his own road trip (seen below) and saw a couple friends on the way  but mostly just drove and had a day to himself. 

Here's our awesome rental car! :) Super fun! 

So it was fabulous to know he was doing what made him happy while I did what made me happy. 

PS- normally we do EVERYTHING together. We're both kinda clingy...yes, even after 5 years. But ever once in a while we know what we each need and time on our own is very nice.... every once in a while. :D

Here's what I got to do!!

I had a whole Have To do list for while I was there: 

Taelyn wanted to get her ears pierced while I was there so we did that.

Here she is waiting for her turn....

 Checking to make sure the drawn dots were gonna be good.

And she did it!

She was excited until she sat in the chair and then she kept asking how much it would hurt and what if it hurt too much. We assured her it would be ok and similar to an insulin shot like she does all the time. So she got brave and did it. :)

Bryce stopped at our temple a took a few pictures while he was gone. :) he's so tender.

Then we went to Jaren and Tanner's football games. 

And the kids did their own dog pile.

I got to see one of my BFFs! Amanda and I hadn't seen eachother since before Jake was born so I got to meet him too! He was uber cute and it was soooo good to see her!

Traci came to see me too and I'm so sad I didn't get a picture of us together! It was fabulous to see her as well and we made all kinds of plans to live close to eachother one day.

That night Jen and I left the kids with Jazz (bless him!) and went to see Austenland.

Oh my gosh, we laughed so hard. It was such a fabulous sister's night! Perfect movie to see with a sister! Plus we went without ever seeing a preview or knowing hardly anything about it so it made it 100 times better. It was awesome and couldn't stop talking about it the rest of my visit. 

On Sunday during sacrament meeting at church the boys passed me a fortune teller they had made recently and I had to clamp my hand over my mouth to keep from laughing out loud. I love boys. 

We spent a lot of time outside. It was SO NICE outside the whole visit. We played tackle and football and crack the egg and every other trampoline game you can think of. 

Here's us being cute.

Here's cutie pie Jake before they left on Sunday. 

This picture is one of my faves. 

Bryce and Jen just throw jabs back and forth constantly and try to one up the other but they love eachother deep down. So this picture kinda says it all. Sarcasm and attitude. :) 

Another To Do on my list while we were there was to eat a CAFE RIO.

And oh, did we eat that cafe rio....it was so freaking amazing. We miss it so bad being in Texas!

The picture below is us trying to get all of us in the same frame at once. You can't really tell but Bryce is so dang tall and Jen is so dang short. It was practically impossible to get us all in when taking a selfie!

And here's the picture Jen took of us on her phone and it's one of my faves of the two of us now. How can she make us look good just with her phone? She's amazeballs.

I'm uber in love with this man. Can you tell? He always just stands with his hands in his pockets and looks out the window. I just think he's so darn cute.

Here's Tae when we were working on her homework. 

If you read previous posts, this is when she made her comments on how I want a baby more than her. :)

My cousins Sara and Amanda came with their hunnies and baby and preggo belly but I didn't get pics of them but Jen did!  So when I get those I'll post them! :) I have the best cousins ever! I loved seeing them!!!!! Jen also took pics of me with the kiddos so I'll post those too eventually. 

Then on Monday night, Maddie babysat while Jen, Jazz, Bryce and I went to RUMBI for dinner. This was our other Have To while we were there. Again, so fabulous!

My dear bro in law: 

We think we're pretty cute.

And... aaaww!!! It's us again! :)

And again, cracking up at how little I look compared to my man.

Me and Jennifer!

OK, now my last Have To of our trip was one of THE MOST IMPORTANT.

Making No Bake Cookies. 

And the rule is that I have to make them.

When I lived with her for two summers in college we would make a batch a couple times a week and eat them ALL in one night. And Jen always convinced me to make them by saying I make them so much better than her. She's a liar but I like compliments so I do it anyway. 

Arizona trip!

Last month Bryce and I took a trip to Flagstaff to see my parents and because Bryce has just been dying to go to the Overland Expo for the last two years. So we finally made plans and went.

I was stoked to go because it had been over a year since I had been there.

We like driving through the night so we left at 8pm and headed west. Honestly, I slept most of the time while Bryce drove. He's awesome.

I woke up in the middle of the night (3am) to realize we were in a neighborhood and not on the highway like I had expected. Turns out Bryce had found directions to the Lubbock Temple and took a small detour so that I could see it! It's one of the smaller temples and shares a parking lot with one of the LDS church buildings there. :)

We pulled over around 6am and slept for 1 1/2 hours to recharge and then I hopped in the drivers seat for a few hours. By 10am we were in AZ!

I love Flagstaff so much. The mountains are gorgeous! Only problem is that they come into view like an hour and a half before you get into town so it feels like you're SO CLOSE but ... not so much. :)

Coming into my parents neighborhood. I love the pine trees so much because as soon as you step out of the car, the pine trees are all you smell.....it's seriously intoxicating. I always know I'm home when I can smell the Flagstaff air. :)

All the pics of mom and dad are on my cell phone and I haven't downloaded them yet so I'll have to do another post of those later. 

But while we were there Bryce and Dad got talking about his work so we ended up going in for the evening print run so Bryce could see how it all works. I had taken tours of dad's work several times when I was in elementary school for school field trips etc. But this time we got the in depth tour and they showed us how the printing press works and all the work they have to put into getting the ink colors to lay exactly right. It was actually really cool! :)

This pic is where the printing ink is stored. See that huge black container I'm pointing to? That's the black ink cartridge. :) Yeah huge. The colors are in the barrels on the left.

Below shows the ginormous rolls of newspaper paper. :)

And this baby is just half of the printing press. :) 

So like I said earlier, half of the reason for our trip was so Bryce could go to the Overland Expo out at Mormon Lake Lodge in Flagstaff. He went the first day by himself so he could drool as long as he wanted and then the second day I went with him so he could show me everything he had found that was extra cool.

Below is the view on the way to Mormon Lake. It was a perfect day! 

These kinds of things are what Bryce is so excited about. They're roof top tents and trailers and they have everything you could possibly need to live out of it for weeks and even months on end. 

Many of them are custom built and very unique. There was tons to look at. 

There was an off-road driving course you could drive for free. Bryce did it both days and I did it the day I went with him. It was pretty sweet.

While we were there I got to see some of my high school friends! Bethi and Derrick had us all over for Sunday lunch outside. It was so nice and so fun to see all of them!

The drive home was loooooong but at least the clouds were pretty. :)

We stayed in a hotel on the way home and this was in front of the hotel. :) Props to the owner!!

Of course we had to stop at Cadillac Ranch and take lots of pics.