One of our favorite trips of the year! We are so blessed to have years of week long memories in San Clemente boogie boarding, hitting up the farmers market, sunset walks, morning coffee walks, and anything to do with relaxing! We look forward to this moment every year!

The one thing that was different this year was that we decided to surprise the boys and take them to Disneyland! We didn’t plan on coming up with a big story to throw the boys off, but it turn out to be really fun…for Jeremy and me, ha! We woke the boys up really early and told them that we needed to go and help Jeremy’s long lost cousin from Norway move into a new apartment…and that he had really heavy furniture…and that he was a heavy smoker…and he had really big dogs that might bite us…the story kept getting better, and it’s really surprising the boys didn’t know what was going on because Jeremy and I were laughing the entire time we were coming up with the story on the fly, ha! Needless to say, they were stoked when they saw the Disneyland signs! I’m pretty sure this is a day none of us will forget!

Out of all the months, this one is notoriously the busiest. Full of fun and memories.

Donuts with Dad at the boys’ school!  Dad was so sweet to rearrange work to be with the boys, and allow me to help setup!

Beck was insistent in helping our PTSO board :).

Dad’s little board gamin’ buddy! These two are the ones who figure all games out for us, then invite us to play along :).

Shopping and sushi date with my boi!

Asher had a soccer game in Maricopa, so Dad and Grandpa hung out there for the day and had some fun together!

While Beck tore up the field too :).

Sooo many beautiful sunsets!

Beck did a hard thing today and said, “Look Mom, even the chips are cheering for me!” He’s so cute!

Rocket by Beck.

Asher was studying Egyptian gods, and was assigned Osiris. His “god” was nothing to aspire to, but he did his best focusing on the good parts of his character, and made a killer agricultural video that was cracking his whole class and his teacher up!

We have a picture slideshow that plays in our kitchen, and when pictures of the boys when they were little pop up it stops us in our tracks. Time is moving so quickly. We’re so thankful for them. They’ve grown so much.

Asher turned 12 in October. We love taking pictures of the boys on the night before their birthday. Asher’s last night of being 11 years old.

Asher wanted to have some of his buddies over for Fortnite, pizza, and the park. It was such a blast hanging with the kids, and it was a total hit, so I can see this happening again for birthdays :)! It was also so cute to see how Beck just fit right in with all of the boys! Happy Birthday, Asher!

Asher had a soccer game on the day of his birthday, and Auntie and Grandma took him to his game where he scored his first club soccer goal! On. His. Birthday! Such a fun gift from God! Proud of all your hard work, Asher!!! Also, we cannot believe you’re going to be a teen next year!!

At the same time, we had a big collection for a school that we had at our church, so Beck hung out with me and was such a huge help!

Halloween – the boys had a fun day at school with a parade and parties, and then that night we walked over to the other side of our neighbordhood for one of the most fun, family friendly Halloween nights around! It’s seriously so much fun! Asher was quite the hit with his costume, and took no less then 30 selfies with random people. Jeremy and I couldn’t believe how people just flocked to Asher and wanted to dance with the big bear and get a picture with him. Asher loved it so much he’s keeping his costume to wear for next year, ha! Here’s Sumo Beck, and Asher the Big Bear.

Fun times in September!

Well, moostly fun. We had some rounds of sickness in September…but it’s hard to argue with extra cuddles.

We got to go to the season opening to see the Cardinals and Kyler Murray’s first NFL game. We had a great time!

Beck was still recovering and took a little snooze during the game even with all the cheering :).

Happy Birthday, Auntie Dana!

Well, that’s one way to keep the noise out while doing chores :).

Asher’s 6th Grade Science Trip! What an awesome weekend! Asher was really blessed to be able to go with his class to the mountains to a nice camp, and I was super blessed to be able to go with him!

Asher’s sweet teachers gave me a private cabin to stay in so that Asher could sneak away and do treatments in private. It was such a blessing!

Rock wall climbing to zip lining!

Every cabin put together a skit to share on the last night, and Asher and Carter played the role of ESPN sportscasters. They did awesome!

It was so fun watching Asher and his teachers and 6th grade class dance and sing together! What a fun way to end the trip!

A really cool town park opened up a couple of miles from our house!

The limbo in CVS. The boys definitely add a lot of fun wherever they go :).

August was a little more low-key for us, mostly because we were tired from our July, ha!

Jeremy and Grandpa took the boys for a one night backpacking trip to a really beautiful location that has quickly become a favorite.

This Star Wars game is epically nerdy, and the boys love playing it together!

Sweetness.

Beck made me the cutest name badge. I’m honored to be known as, “Beck’s mom”.

The boys loved having their cutout from the walk this year…and that lastest about 30 minutes in the house, haha!

So fun stopping in and seeing the boys at school!

We had a little Gigi spend the night with us, and she was so great running errands and going to soccer games and bringing a lot of girl to our family for a couple of days :).

Carter’s Birthday Party!

Beck is trying to teach Rocket how to play videogames, ha!

Enjoying Grandma’s pool!

Getting ready for tie-dye day at school!

He was so happy.

It’s fun to keep track of what they boys write on our white board :).

We celebrated the 4th of July watching fireworks on our roof! It was awesome! We had the best panoramic view and enjoyed several different light shows!

Praying one day the boys’ time off of school will not be slammed with important appointments.

This will without a doubt always be one of our favorite pictures. There’s a lot going on here, but mostly Asher’s love and care for Beck. Beck had a hard time going through his bloodwork, and Asher was telling him how proud he was of him. We can tell, even now, that Beck will always let Asher’s voice ring loudly in his heart. He loves his older brother so much…and the feeling is quite mutual.

Dr. Mia. Literally the best.

So much sweetness.

Dad’s love and appreciation for board games has been a blessing to us all. We love making memories together!

Rocket sleeps a lot, and he’s cute, ha!

Grandma Necas came to be here for the boys’ first day of school, and allowed Jeremy and I to sneak away to our church’s Marriage Retreat. We’re very thankful for her and our time together! As tradition goes, on the night before the boys begin their new grade we like to get together and interview the boys to have a keepsake of their thoughts, likes and dislikes at this time in their lives. Here is where they are in July 2019 :).

Auntie Dana’s nursing home chose to host a Casino Night to help raise funds for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation! So very cool and thankful for people we don’t even know helping to find a cure for our whole community! Of course they had a couple of cute faces to draw people in :). Thank you Auntie!!!

We had our first big family road trip in July! We drove 2,000 miles through the state of Colorado and visited four National Parks! We are so thankful for our time together, all of the memories we made and all of our family photos!

Our first stop was at Moles Lake, we camped here for two nights. We had a beautiful campground to walk around, and a cute little mining town, Silverton, to spend the day in. It was a great way to kickoff our trip!

It was wet and freezing in the mine, so we needed hot chocolate afterwards!

They were pretty excited to pop popcorn in the woods :).

Our first National Park! The Black Canyon of the Gunnison!

For the parks we visited we always went first to the Visitor Center and learned about the park before we explored. They all had videos talking about the history of the parks, which was fascinating and a highlight for all of us.

We had to cut our picnic short and got caught up in a rainstorm!

The next day we made our trek to Rocky Moundation National Park and stayed the night in a really cute lodge in Granby. We had a little suite, took showers, made a microwave pizza, watched some game shows together and relaxed for the night. This was the funniest moment to remember…and illustrates how Dad handles anything to do with teeth. He turned his back and couldn’t watch as Asher pulled out a wiggly tooth, ha! 

The next day we headed into Rocky Mountain National Park! Absolutely breathtaking.

We weren’t in the park for more than 10 minutes and there was major commotion and a Mama and Baby Moose sighting!

So cool that we saw snow and the Continental Divide!

We drove on a very narrow, windy road to make it above the Alpine trees. One of the most gorgeous sights we’ve ever seen.

This would be a good ad for our van. So thankful for this van and the smooth, trouble-free trip it gave us!

Clouds rolled in again and we had another rainy picnic and stroll!

They walked around performing this for people, ha!

We had a beautiful drive to our campsite. Albeit, a little scary. We drove on a gravel road for many many miles. This normally wouldn’t have been a big deal, except memories of the last time we drove on a gravel road on Beck’s Birthday camping trip a few years ago came flooding back. We really did not want to get stranded in the middle of nowhere again. Thank you God for guiding us through.

This will for sure go down as one of our all-time favorite vidoes of the boys. Here they are adventuring while Jeremy and I setup our campside. I can’t even. It’s so precious.

Recap and campground.

Dad’s yummy camping dinners were unbeatable! Also, you guys ditched me!

The next day we didn’t plan too well. We started on a hike that turned out to be way longer and intense than any of us expected, and once we were knee-deep in it we didn’t want to turn back. Props to the boys for hanging in there because it was a solid medium to hard hike for 5 miles. We definitely earned a big lunch after this hike! It was sure beautiful though and we all felt like we really accomplished something worth noting.

We ended up booking a room for the night in Denver at a hotel that was a total dive. We all have some funny memories from this experience! When we upgraded big time to a really nice hotel, Beck embraced the robe life, ha!

Water World! We were so excited to take Asher and Beck to the largest water park in the U.S! My Grandpa brought me here when I was about 8 years old and it’s always been one of my favorite memories. Jeremy was so kind to reroute our trip so we can spend the day here with the boys. We had one of the most fun days together as a family!

Our next National Park was the Great Sand Dunes! So beautiful!

We spend the night in Pagosa Springs and enjoyed taking in the cute little town. We weren’t impressed with the sulfur smell of the springs, but it was fun to experience and beautiful to look at…just not to smell :).

We went to a cute restaurant with live music. Jeremy paid this nice man a huge tip to replay a song we all enjoyed and recorded it.

Proud of us all for not allowing cystic fibrosis to stand in the way of our trip and making these memories together.

The next day we headed out to check out beautiful Durango. We spent the day up on Purgatory Mountain riding the Alpine Slides, playing mini-golf and a few fun activities, and having lunch together. We ended at a nice hotel with a pool that the boys loved splashing around in, and a great restaurant with yummy food and the game show network for entertainment :).

Our last National Park stop was Mesa Verde! It was really cute to us how excited Asher was to see this site in person. He had studied it in school, and out of all the National Parks we were planning to see, this was the one he was most excited about…and this is the one that was his favorite out of them all.

Then we headed home with a quiver full of memories, dirty laundry, and plans for our road trip for next Summer :).

Well June was pretty full! We had some fun times at home, before we packed up the house to travel to MN for our Summer at the Lake :).

Asher found a pretty bird in the bushes in our front yard. We thought it was hurt, but it just needed a little attention :).

Beck made a Noah’s Ark shirt 🙂

Lance and Sarah and the boys stopped by for a few days before their Cali trip. It was great to see them, and let the boys get time together!

Beck got to see some of his Eduprize buddies!

The CFF was given a suite for one of the Diamonback games, and they took the time before the game to tell the 65 Roses story from the jumbotron! We were thankful for the opportunity to be there!

We were on Bunny duty for our friends the Pratchards. They let us swim in their pool while we babysat :).

We made it to the lake! We love being able to go every year! This year the weather was really cold and rainy, but we seized each day and created lots of memories together! Thanks Grandma and Grandpa Necas for having us! It feels impossible to organize all the memories, so here’s a complete photo dump of fun times!

Soooo many games of crochet. It’s such a fun family game that we can all play together.

Grandma and Grandpa bought Beck his first motorcycle. Ohhhhh the hours of fun! We were all a little surprised how quickly he jumped on and took off!

The boys were excited to be flipping again :).

The boys worked hard helping Grandpa and I with the wood pile. Grandpa had them keep time cards and he paid them for their hard work!

Swimming in the rain!

We admired “Chippy” all summer! Beck was so patient to wait for him to come and eat out of his hands. I couldn’t believe he did it!

Asher flips Beck all the time. It was fun to be able to let him get the feeling of being flipped too!

We had a fireworks show several nights, but this one was exra special because it was Grandma and Grandpa’s anniversary. We bought some big huge fireworks for this night :).

Beck was running a little frog zoo this Summer. He ended up having Billy #1, Billy #2, and Billy #3 and setup little atrariums for them :).

We shoveled out a lot of debris and brought a couple of truck fulls to a neighbors dumpsite. Asher was beside himself excited to be able to drive the truck. I can’t believe he’s big enough to reach the peddles! 

The boys were asked to be a part of the video the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation put together in honor of the anniversary of the 65 Roses Story.

Here are their clips along with a few bloopers :).

The boys are so blessed to have Jeremy as their dad. He had two trips planned with each of the boys to enjoy the mountains. First up was time with Beck, and Auntie Dana joined the fun too! They clearly had a great time, and found a beautiful spot that even had a little snow to play in!

While Dad and Beck were gone Asher and I got to have some alone time too. We went to the gym, had dinner at a Teppanyaki restaurant, and cuddled up and watched Rudy together.

We don’t have a lot of pictures of Asher’s time with Jeremy, but the stories were keepers for sure! Asher had the privilege to join a camping trip that Jeremy planned for about 20 guys at our church. He enjoyed chopping down trees, climbing out of a huge cavaran, and being Jeremy’s sous chef as they cooked for all the guys. They had a great time together!

Beck and I loved our special date time too. We enjoyed DQ, we went to Build-A-Bear and “Scientist Beck” became a part of our family, we stocked Beck up with some more Boxcar Children books, and finished the night at the arcade playing games together.

Beck’s end of the year party with his class. He had such a great year, and is going to miss Ms. Beazer so much!

We had a few days of crazy wind here, so we had to go and fly some kites!

Asher and Carter weren’t crazy about the idea of their end of the year field trip so Krista and I let them ditch school for the day and instead we spent the day with our boys. We went to Detective Pikachu, checked out a cool Sushi spot, and had a great time at an indoor fun-zone.

The boys did have an awesome last day of school! It’s tradition that the 6th Graders play kickball against all the teachers on the last day. The school brings in snow cones and the rest of the school get to enjoy the game. One of Asher’s friends had a last day of school party at their house with a few boys from his class. It was a hard year for Asher, so it was such a blessing to be able to end the year with some smiles. And, can I just make mention of how cute it is that the entire school is out on the field and I look over and see that Beck has found his brother and chose to sit next to him instead of his classmates on the last day of school…and Asher has happily welcomed his little brother into his circle. It just warms our hearts watching their friendship continue to grow.

Last day of school!

Mother’s Day!

Asher started Club Soccer this month. They had a fun night with the adult FC Arizona team playing a soccer game and a time for the kids to meet each other. Beck spent $20 of his own money to buy and FC Arizona hat to support his brother :).

Random memories to have and to hold.

Even in the dentist’s office. Those chairs are tight, but they stand no match for these brothers :).

April was a doozie! Full of many memories we’re thankful God has blessed us with! Before we dig into the month, I wanted to post this pic of your Dad because the Foundation shared it from him speaking last month and I don’t want to lose it. Here’s your dad fighting for you.

The End Game was a big deal for us this month. Beck, you really didn’t want to see it in the theaters, which we totally understood. So we had a movie night with Auntie when it came out to rent and we could watch it at home. And for the record, you watched the entire movie and really enjoyed it :).

You had a pretty cool opportunity of being the cute faces on United Healthcare’s calendar for 2020. We’re excited to see it! Not sure what photos they will use or how much you will be in the calendar, but we were thankful to have these photos as cute keepsakes regardless.

Beck and his buddy, Isaac. They have so much fun together!

Another beautiful AZ sunset!

We enjoyed our backyard this month and watching everything bloom and grow!

Seriously. You both are so blessed to have Dr. Mia caring for you! We spend a lot of hours at the hospital, and she’s so great to help throw some fun into it :).

Easter 2019! It was SO fun being able to serve with you both in the little 3 year olds class! You had been looking forward to this for quite awhile. Of course, Asher, you wanted the babies, but we sure had a lot of fun with these little tikes!

You wanted in on the snack time too, hahaha!

The Easter Bunny decoding glasses! Oh my gosh I sure hope we don’t lose these, because there’s no way possible you would be able to decode Dad’s clues for his epic Easter Egg Basket Scavenger Hunt :). We all look forward to it!

We had a fun Easter Egg Hunt and dinner with our friends the Osbornes and Grandpa Olimb! It was a great way to end a celebatory weekend!

I don’t even know how to recap this event! I hope you two remember this night. You received the opportunity to have a special tour of the world famous Batcave where Bruce Wayne stores all of his bat gear to fight off the evils powers of the world! And, you got to invite the special people in your lives. It was such a cool night which started with being escorted by a limo to the secret batcave, and ended with them giving you both keys to the batmobile! When you turn 16 they’ve invited you back to take the batmobile for a test drive!

TEAMASHER+BECK 2019! We’re just so thankful for everyone who donated and joined us in walking this year! You are very loved, Asher and Beck! Your team raised almost 13K this year!

Random sweetness :).

Closing out the month with our feet up :).

Asher had a whole afternoon celebrating his buddy Caden’s birthday, and he also got to hang out with so many of his friends from his previous school. Asher, Caden and Avery will be life long friends!

Beck got to have a little breakfast date with his sweet Kindergarten teacher. He really misses having her as his teacher!

Thanks to Grandma and Grandpa Olimb watching the boys, we were able to march on Capitol Hill again this year to advocate for our boys and our community. We’re blessed to be given a platform to speak on their behalf.

More soccer fun!

We had a really fun day white water rafting down the salt river! Record level high waters made for a really memorable trip and we made some new friends!

Daddy and Pastor Brian had the opportunity to lead a group from our church to Israel! We’re so thankful he was able to go and experience so many stories in the Bible, and walk in Jesus’ footsteps!

We enjoyed reading along in the Bible about all the places Daddy was visiting!

Asher and Beck, you are so blessed to have your Daddy in countless different ways. Here’s just one of them. Thought you would always love to have the note that Daddy left for you in the Wailing Wall.

While Daddy was in Israel, Grandma Necas flew down and we took a trip to San Diego to celebrate Beck turning 7 years old! It’s hard to believe our little Punkie Bear is 7 years old!!! We all had a lot of fun making him feel special :).

Breakfast in our cute little place…with bad parking…but so cute :).

We took the boys to Sea World!

Our wet navigator.

Coronado Island!

Dada wishing Beck a Happy Birthday from Israel!

Fun dinner and arcade night with Grandma and Grandpa Olimb!

Jeremy was invited by the CFF to speak at the National Leadership Conference this year! It was a pretty incredible experience and opportunity! I was so proud of Jeremy, and I know Asher and Beck will watch this video one day and feel so loved knowing that their Daddy fought hard for a cure and for affordable healthcare for both of them! We were able to have another tour of the Vertex lab and speak with the scientists who are currently working on meds for the boys. It was a bit surreal being there!

He seperated his rocks and shells :).

Oh Asher. We love you so much. We have to make mention of this…although I don’t think Dad or I will ever forget how clutzy you are with food, ha! Dropping food, spilling food on your shirt…it’s become hysterical and we’ve just embrassed laughing about it and so have you :).

This is the sweetest thing. Beck wanted Rocket to be a part of the measuring board. So he marked his height and said, “This is Rock It” 🙂

Random keepsakes.