a summery Spring and second babymoon

Here's another catchup post! It's part 'life lately' and part 'mini travel diary'. 

Here's what we've been up to:

Beau is ALL about playing outside these days so we've been spending lots of our evenings outside (thank you, DST!!!). We split time between the backyard and the front yard. Beau likes to 'mow', blow bubbles, drive his train, and color with chalk. He especially loves his wagon and push bike when daddy is willing to take him on walks!

After checking out the Dallas Zoo with Ellie, we discovered that we loved it and planned another trip with my sister and niece Audrey. Beau is OBSESSED with Audrey and they had so much fun running around the zoo together. It was another good day!

sweet big boy naps. :) 

another evening spent outside. trying to document lots of time at home since our days are numbered!

I wanted to remember how he loves to play up here with his cars and look out the window! My sweet boy!

Beau wanted to play outside so I set him up with some water, bowls, and kitchen utensils while I waited on an appointment inside. He had a blast...

...a little TOO much fun! He doused himself a couple times, asked for more water, and dumped it all again. It was still fun!

excuse the underbelly, but bump updates are rare around here! Here I am at 28 weeks. Hair freshly straightened and boxes ready to be packed!

So, Mark and I had booked a little getaway to Vail for our babymoon a couple of months ago. We were so excited to visit Colorado in the off season and I had found a great deal on a really nice hotel overlooking the river. Our friend that works for an airline was going to let us use his buddy passes (which we've done twice before - he's so generous!) and it was all set. 

A week before we were supposed to leave, our friend let us know that their was a big change coming up at the airline and they had been asked to not use buddy passes for a range of days, including the days that we were supposed to travel. Our hotel was non-refundable so Mark and I hurriedly tried to find last minute flights. On a whim, we decided to wait a day to book our flights and check with our hotel first. I had been looking for recent review and pictures of the hotel to get a feel for what the weather/scenery was like in May and noticed that there weren't many reviews and that most of the recent reviews spoke about how the hotel had to cancel because they were under construction.

I put a call into the hotel and asked whether they would be open for our stay or not. The hotel had recently been sold and had been undergoing major renovations since the winter. They were slated to open on May 15, our day of check-in. However, they were behind schedule and were planning on calling us that week to cancel our trip. Typically, I would have been LIVID (cancelling less than a week before a scheduled trip!?) since we would have had non-refundable flights but in the moment, I was so grateful that our flight had fallen through and we could get out of our hotel reservation. Despite their late notice, they were very gracious and apologetic and of course, refunded our trip. They also gave us a 3 night voucher so we can visit the hotel when it is finished. So, crisis averted and a free trip, all in one! 

Mark and I still wanted to get away, so I booked a last minute trip to a Hyatt resort outside of Austin. Ever since my trip to the Marriott a couple of years ago, I've wanted to take Mark to a nice resort in Texas for some R&R. So that's what we did! Prices were higher than in Vail, so we just stayed for 2 nights, but it was a great trip. We loved the hill country feel and resort amenities. I scheduled a tee time for Mark and we just hung out by the pool the rest of the time. It was great!