Our first blog! We're so excited to introduce you to our family and our life in general because although it's crazy, it's crazy fun! I'm Lisa, known as "mom" around the house. I love a good sunset, watching my kiddos doing what they love, a good accessory, and my husband, Matt! He's amazing with business in every single way, and I love how much he loves his family. Matt and I started dating in high school when I was a sophomore, and he was a junior; I know how unlikely it would have been for us to stay together and get married, but we did! I was 22, and he was 23 when we got married, and we're celebrating 21 years of marriage on November 10th, mind-blowing isn't it? We're still so happy and love each other just as much (if not more) now, praise!

Then there's Cole, our beloved firstborn who's 18. Growing up, he was always our baseball kid, and we did so much travel for that season of our lives; in high school, he started to fall in love with football which was so fun for us to watch. Now that he's out of high school, he's super into golfing and has been heading to the course 3-4 times per week to work on his swing before college (I'm not going to lie, this kid has a great swing). He loves working and making his own money, his truck, and his girlfriend. He's trying to fit in all the fun summer things before he leaves for Grand Canyon University to study business (yes, his dad and I are ridiculously proud). Let's move on before I start getting something in my eye…

Next is Avery, who will be 15 in October; she's at the age where she loves hanging out with her friends, is involved with high school cheer, and is on the varsity team. She loves tumbling and gymnastics and is really good at it. Do you ever watch the videos of cheer competitions and think, hmm, I wonder if I could do that? Fun fact, you definitely can NOT; tumbling and cheering is hard work, and I'm so proud of her dedication to this sport; it's so fun to watch and pretend (in my head) that I probably could have done the same thing when I was in school! She's in her high school season for the next couple of years and wants to get a job (mainly to get her dream VW Bug) and live happily in this season with her family and friends. We're not sure what college will look like, so we're just enjoying these final moments with a kiddo in the house. 

I can't forget about our pets! We have two cats (a brother and a sister) who we adopted. We actually never wanted to have pets because we are so on the go all the time, but I grew up with cats and liked having them around. My friend rescued a whole litter of kittens and we ended up getting two of them, a girl (Callie) who is a calico and a boy (Boots) who is black and white. Callie loves being outside and hunting and is way more like Avery, carefree and wild. Boots is huge and likes to be in the house watching birds from the window; he's way more like Cole in that he's super cautious and super loving!

So, what makes our family special? Everything and nothing at the same time! We are so tight-knit, and every single one of our family members are all local to us! Literally, everyone is within a 5–10-minute drive. Matt has two brothers, and we all have lots in common with them; his parents live 5 minutes from us and are very involved with their grandkids (which is a feat because they are always traveling and still manage to make it to every event they have). My sister, brother, and their families are also 5-10 minutes from us! It's cool because everyone is so close that we can just go see them whenever we want, yet we're all far enough away to do our own thing when we want to do that too. 

Now that school is back, it's jam-packed around here (and no, we don't feel like any season of our lives ever slows down, it just feels extra busy now). One thing we always try to do is eat dinner early and together; sometimes it's just a few of us because of practices and sometimes it's just a few nights a week; but that's important to us. I've always loved that my kids like to do stuff together; Cole's girlfriend is friends with Avery, so they want to do things together a lot which to a mama's heart is so special. 

We love traveling to Havasu for full vacations or just a weekend getaway which is truly one of our happy places. We'll always snag our AirBNB (is there anything better than a really great house while vacationing?) to lay our heads so we can all be in the same house, enjoying each other. When I think of vacations I'll never forget, traveling to Aulani, a Disney Resort in Kapolei, Hawaii when our kids were little will always be at the top of that list; we had so much fun and seeing the excitement through your kids' eyes at that age is truly magical. This summer, we did the Dominican, which they absolutely loved (we did too), and man, it's just such a beautiful place. Deep Creek is also really close to us, so we love hopping in the car and heading that way too. 

This next chapter is going to be interesting to say the least, with Cole leaving for college and Avery being an only child at home. But I can tell you that we're closer than ever, and that our family story isn't even close to being over. Thank you for taking the time to get to know us a little bit better, and we can't wait for next week!