Father's Day weekend.

This past weekend was one of like three weekends this summer where we didn't have any major plans, and it was so nice! Friday night, we went on a bike ride, then got sno cones after. We got bikes last summer and weren't able to ride them very much since I was pregnant (and we were gone most of the summer anyway), so it has been nice to use them a bit more this year. Saturday morning we slept in, then drove up to Logan to put everything back on Carter's headstone. We hung out with the babies for a bit, then went to Summerfest and wandered around all the booths after getting some lunch. 

Yesterday we (okay, mostly me) slept in again; I was having some intense allergies that I'm assuming were from the bike ride Friday night, and I could not bring myself to get out of bed. Thankfully, Brandon was super patient, and laid with me until I was finally ready to get up. We went to Cabela's, then to Walmart, then went back home to just hang out, and ended up taking a two hour nap on the couch. It was glorious.

Overall, it was a very chill Father's Day. I felt bad not doing anything extravagant, but just like Mother's Day, it was not at all how we anticipated spending our first Father's day after the birth of our baby. Babies. It felt right to acknowledge the day, but thinking about celebrating it kind of hurt. I gave Brandon a little shoutout yesterday, but I have to put in a big plug for him here:

I got extremely lucky that Brandon chose me to be his wife, but our kids are even luckier that he is their dad. He does everything he can to keep their memories alive every single day, whether that is just thinking about them, talking about them, or buying something that will make us think about them every time we look at it. He puts so much effort into caring for them the best he can, even if that just means cleaning off the headstone and rearranging all of Carter's cars. He always makes sure the solar lights are still working, and in the winter, he carefully scraped off the snow and ice so that Carter's name was showing. He does whatever he can to make it known that we do have children. After we found out we were pregnant again, we got asked so many times if little bean was our first. It was the scariest question to be asked, but every single time he would respond proudly that it was our second. 

I've watched Brandon be a cat-dad for almost six years now, and I knew for a long time before we got pregnant that he would be an amazing dad. He denies that he loves the cats, but he totally does. You can see it when he talks to them, when he cuddles with them, and when he plays with them. It almost hurts to watch him interact with the cats now, because I know what it would be like to watch him with our babies. I can't wait for the day that I get to watch him interact with a child at home. 

Brandon is the strongest, kindest, sweetest, and caring man I've ever known, and I wouldn't trade him for the world. He's given me so many things in our almost six years of marriage, but our children easily come in at the top of the list. He is a father in the most difficult, non-traditional way, and to me that means he is the best dad of all.  Happy Father's Day B-rand. Thank you for loving our babies, fur-babies, and me. We love you!

 
 

Brandon's birthday week!

Brandon turned the big 2-9 on Thursday last week!! Sometimes it's weird to think about the fact that he was 23 when we got married, and is 29 now, because in my head I think he'll always be right around 26. But I guess we all have to get older sometime, right? We went and saw The Circle on Tuesday last week, which was pretty good. I liked it as much as I liked the book anyway. Wednesday, we went and got ice cream. Random question. Has anyone else ever had the banana ice cream from Coldstone? Not every location sells it anymore and it makes me so sad!! It's so good!! Anyway. Thursday, Brandon's actual birthday, he went out to lunch with a friend, and we saw Guardians of the Galaxy that night. Brandon loves popcorn, so getting to refill our giant bucket twice in one week was honestly probably the best birthday present I could give him haha. But I did give him a real present! He gets to drive a super fast car around an autocross track. It's not happening until July but he had so much fun driving in Amsterdam that I thought this would be even more fun for him!

Friday night we actually decided to be social and went to a new friends house for tacos! We met lots of new people, played games, and ate really good food. I was really happy we decided to not be homebodies for a night; it was nice to get out and do something different! We stayed until about ten, even though we probably could have stayed longer, because we wanted to make sure we got up early the next morning to head to Logan. 

We got to Logan around noon on Saturday (so no, our getting up early plan did not work), but it was such a nice day that we were able to sit with Carter for a long time and just chat with him and each other. Brandon picked out eclairs for his birthday treat, so we took those to the cemetery and shared them with our boy as much as we could. After our time with Carter, we went to Brandon's parents house for a family barbecue. We ate kabobs, had cake, and watched Brandon open his presents. It was nice to have some time with his family! We tried to leave before the rain came, but it was raining pretty hard when we stopped on our cemetery on our way out of town. Right as Brandon put the car in park, the rain lightened a little, so we were able to get out and say goodbye to Carter without getting soaked. 

Sunday was uneventful besides our nice little bike ride down by the river. We've been in Logan for out of town for so much of the weekends since we lost Carter that it's always nice to be home and have quality time with Brandon. And I'm stoked that it's finally staying warm enough that we can go play outside! In summary, I'm pretty sure Brandon had a good birthday week. He's most important, obviously, but even if he didn't have fun, I sure enjoyed all the time I got to spend with him!