In our family, your birthday day is all about you and what you like to do!  So, we started the day off with Austin's favorite breakfast--breakfast tacos. :)  I got up early and had them all set up for when eh woke up.

Oh my sweet little Adam!  You are definitely still our baby, but man do you want to keep up with your brothers.  Everything they do, you want to be right in the mix.  I'm seeing little glimpses more and more of the little boy you're growing into!  Sweet boy, you are fun and funny and opinionated and a busy little bee right now. I can't leave you alone for a second!  But the joy you bring to us is well worth it!!

We all slept in a little when we woke up in Sioux Falls and grabbed a little breakfast at our hotel before hitting the road.  We didn't have a firm plan for the rest of our trip home, but were tossing around ideas as we drove.  It's how we roll on road trips. :)  We stopped for lunch at one of the top rated places in Omaha, a little Italian restaurant.  It was good food, and super cheap, but a tad fancier than we were expecting, with out three young boys lol. But, we were all happy to be out of the car for a little while though!

The next morning we got  up, ate a quick breakfast from foods we had packed and headed up to the resort.  We were ready to have some fun!  We had bought all day passes for everyone and the plan was to just hang out until everyone crashed out.  Just kidding--kind of. :) 

As soon as we got there, the boys climbed by the sign and asked us to take their picture.  I sure do love these boys!  We are all excited for a fun day.

During our early years of marriage, Landon and I printed off some maps of the US, colored in the ones that we've already been to, and talked about how we wanted to visit all 50 states before we turned 40.  That seemed really far off at the time, ha. :)  

Then, almost years ago, on the Thursday before the 4th of July weekend, he called me on the way home and asked if I was up for an adventure.  I said sure, we packed some bags and started driving.  I had no idea where we were going, but he did...and we ended up driving through the night to visit our friends who had moved to Tennessee with 4 month old Austin and 3 year old Aedan.  It was a little crazy, but so fun.  

A year later, he emailed me a map with a route planned out, hitting something like 13 states throughout the southeast.  He asked if it was crazy.  I said yes, but let's do it!  So, the week after Aedan's 4th birthday party, we loaded up our 1 and 4 year olds into our minivan and set off for 2 weeks.  It was amazing and we got home ready to do it again!  

And that brings us to this trip.  We've always known that this trip would have to happen--our road trip to North Dakota and back.  This one, we talked about for months, trying to figure out how to do it.  We looked into renting an RV, but ultimately decided to just take our van.  We knew we had to do it during the summer, so we wouldn't drive in snow.  We talked and talked.  We also wanted to do it before Aedan started school.  And we ended up with a little window this last summer in July.  Landon was slower at work, which was perfect, and we had a 2 week window between Aedan's Meet Of Champoins with his swim team and my childhood friend Amanda coming to visit.  Almost at the last minute, though at the same time not last minute at all, we decided to go for it.  And I'm so glad we did!  It was a ton of driving, we still had to parent (lol) and 3 kids, with one of them being a baby, is definitely harder than 2 kids, both out of the baby phase, but oh my goodness was it fun.  We made so many memories, had so many good talks, took so many pictures, ate so much good food and drove so many miles.  And we'd both do it again in a heartbeat.  Somehow, in the busyness of life this summer, I never got to blog about it.  So, here we go.:)

The night before our trip, we were up until about 2am packing (how does this always happen??) and then Aedan and I were up at 6am because I was tent mom for his meet.  We had so much fun and I was so glad to be there with him.  He swam well and it was amazing to watch him and realize how far he'd come in just 2 months.  SO proud of our little guy!!  Landon stayed home with the little 2, while I texted him pictures and updates like a crazy person, and packed up the van.