Uh oh... this one's a little cliché

I love staring into my beautiful baby’s eyes. I love cuddling in the morning. I love playing with her every day. I especially love it when she falls asleep on my chest or shoulder. I love her smiles and her crazy facial expressions. I love spending every day home with her. It seems that most of my life I have been striving for materialistic things. I wanted a good career so that I could buy the things that I wanted. I measured my success by others opinions of me. I didn’t realize that I really was living my life for others not for myself. I wasn’t happy with this… I needed change.
Now I live in a place that is by no means impressive. I have a beautiful house but it is by no means grand or magnificent. My job isn’t impressive. I’m 23 years old and I’m still in school. I married young at 20 and had a baby at age 23, which some would call crazy.
My life is by no means where I thought it would be, yet I couldn’t be happier. I’m working towards my career, not for money, but to make a difference. As silly as it sounds I am scared to start my program at school. Seeing the hospital beds and the instruments I’m going to have to use makes me nervous. A mistake at work will have far worse consequences than many other careers. I’m afraid for the few people who may not make it through the surgery. It doesn’t happen often, but it happens. Not every heart attack victim can be saved in the Cath Lab, but then I think about all of the people who are saved in there. Like my dad, twice… and who knows how many others. My job right now isn’t the most important one, but I enjoy it. I work for the community, and I’m involved in a lot of fun events. I get to be creative, and I know it’s only temporary. It’s stress free (most of the time) and the hours are low. I’m lucky to only have to work one day a week because it gives me more time at home where I want to be. I always thought being a stay at home mom would be boring and unfulfilling but I was extremely mistaken. There is nowhere else in the world that I would rather be than home with my Kayleigh. She brightens my day. She makes me want to live everyday to the fullest. It’s amazing how much she makes me feel loved and needed. All it takes is a look from her and my heart melts. I don’t know what I did without her. I can’t remember life without her. It’s amazing. She’s amazing.
I hate how corny this all sounds but sometimes I need to break down and admit that my family is so important to me. My life with Shaun and Kayleigh has given me more joy than I ever thought possible. I have a great house filled with great things, but the only things that really matter to me are the people inside my house. Sometimes I forget that, but I know that it’s true. If this is just the beginning then I can’t wait to experience the rest of the ride. In fact, I’m looking forward to it.

Ok Minnesota... we're going to give Summer a shot.

Shaun and I have been wanting to do some outdoor activities since the weather has warmed up. We both want to do something active and, well, we both need some sun to bronze our white bodies. This sounds like an easy task, right? In Utah we had many options, like hiking the Y or my absolute favorite, going rafting down the Provo River ( I thank Nate for introducing that to us). Well... I just happen to live in a crappy place called Becker, MN. The only river that we could take a raft on is the mighty Mississippi and that's a little too much of a raging river for a tiny two man inflatable raft. Okay, so hiking, that's an easy one right? Wrong... no mountains or even hills and forget hiking through any type of wooded area unless you want lime disease from my worst enemies in MN, TICKS (dun dun dunnnn). There goes my two favorite summertime activites. Lets see... swimming, of course! Perfect outside summertime fun...oh wait... no out door pools in MN. Hmmmm tanning outside would be relaxing.... wait, no.... way to many bugs (and I mean WAY to many). Any lake activities were out of the question because of little bugs that live in the lake that will crawl under your skin and the only thing you can do is let them stay there until they die. That sounds more like a nightmare to me, I don't know how people around here can handle it, but they do. We both were perplexed by our problem. I mean people around here LIVE outside in the summer because they have cabin fever from the long cold winters. They can handle the bugs, though, and I unfortunately have to draw the line at ticks and man eating flesh bugs.
Finally Shaun came up with a brilliant plan. BIKES!! We could buy bikes and go for rides. Lets see... outside activity, check...active, check...no bugs, check (maybe a few bugs hitting me in the face but we'll be moving fast enough to escape bites). Perfect! So off we went to buy some killer, stylin bikes. We even got a trailer for Kayleigh to ride in so she can join us. We got our bikes just in time for our trip "up north to the cabin" (Monica will get it). We are going up to Itaska State Park for fathers day and shaun's birthday. So summer... here we come (finally)

Detail on my bike

My killer bike with Kayleigh's trailer

Shaun excited on his bike (he was like a little kid it was so cute)

Shaun wanted to ride the bike with Kayleigh... I responded by giving him stink eye