The Luckiest No Matter What!

Anyone in my life knows I haven't handled this pandemic very well.  It's a perfect cocktail of the extremely high expectations I put on myself + an incredible sense of responsibility for my children's education, mental health, and well being + wanting to do everything + wanting to do everything well + being an anxious worrier + little to no alone time or break from... well... anything = a sh*t storm for me.  My mom has been on the receiving end of teary phone calls from me more times than I can count.  My group chats have been on the receiving end of many pictures of dumpster fires to describe how it's going at my house on any given day.  And I have been on the receiving end of text messages from friends checking in to see how I am doing (thank you, profusely, by the way).  I sometimes find myself, after an occasional good cry in the shower (shower cries are just the BEST aren't they?! Such a good way to let things out), thinking there HAS to have be

On our trip out west to Montana, we ended up breaking up the drive a little on the way there and on the way home. The phrase is usually 'against our better judgement', but in this case it was 'against our worse judgement.' We had fully planned on driving straight through, about 24 hours not counting stops, to get TO Montana and ended up staying in Madison Wisconsin for a night. We stayed on Lake Monona- it was gorgeous. From what we were able to see of the city, we LOVED it and will be back for sure. Because we were trying to stay distant from people, we didn't explore much outside of the car and stayed close to our Airbnb. We then continued on our drive through Minnesota and North Dakota before getting to Montana.  Dinner with a view in Madison A little taste of Madison- we will be back! For the way home, we took a bit of a different route, this time driving a ton through Wyoming and South Dakota instead. We spent two nights in Custer, South Dakota an

I had heard Montana was beautiful, but it truly surpassed any and every expectation. When we weren't spending our days at Yellowstone National Park (read about that part of our trip here ), we stayed close to where we were staying in Emigrant, Montana and took in all the big sky country. Emigrant is located smack dab in Paradise Valley- an area between the Absaroka Mountain Range to the east and the Gallatin Mountain Range to the west. I know things are named for a reason- this place was as close to paradise as my eyes have ever seen. It was green, hilly, and mountainous. You could see for miles and miles and miles and the stars?! I've never seen them so bright. Out every single window at our Airnbn rental, there was a gorgeous view and it never ever got old. Why fold laundry inside when you can sit on a deck with this background? Because Emigrant is such a small town (not even 300 people), civilization was pretty far away and nature was our playground. There was so mu

The first thing I have to say is that our trip to Montana absolutely enchanted me. I don't know when or if we will be back, but this trip will stick with me... huge.  Sigh, the beauty NEVER got old. As we continued to explore, I would make Josh pull off the road (a lot) so I could try to photograph the scenery. It was just never good enough. I kept trying to preserve it, bottle it up, have something so I didn't forget. I'd look into the lens of my camera or the screen on my phone after taking a picture and I kept getting frustrated! What my eyes were seeing was too magical, too big, too vast to ever be conveyed appropriately in the confines of a photograph. Emigrant Peak Gibbon Falls We are all SO grateful that we were able to have a full week there to experience and soak in all the beauty that we could. During our trip to Montana, we visited Yellowstone National Park for three days. This was our first national park as a family! The north entrance to the par