California Trip - Sunday through Tuesday, Family Photos and More

The Sunday of our trip, we attended church in my parents' ward and then went back to their house for lunch. (But by the time it was ready, it was really dinner.) On Monday morning, the whole family met for family photos. We decided to do it in a studio as a way to manage all the kids, but I definitely prefer a more natural environment. Still, it's nice to have updated photos since our last family photos were nearly six years ago and there were a lot less grandkids. 

The Hayman clan.

Just the Malones.

Here's my parents with all their grandkids. Benjamin was clearly not feeling that excited by this point.

 All the girl cousins. I guess I never realized that Adelaide is the youngest girl. The other girls are all pretty close in age.

And now all the boys. The boys were struggled by this point, so we added the fathers into the mix to help them. 

After the picture taking, we headed back to my parents' house and we went back to their community pool to play together. My parents wanted to do a grandkid sleepover that night (because they're crazy but bless them) so after getting them bathed and changed after the pool, David and I escaped for our first date night in a very long time. 

Sleepover time.

We went back to our hotel and ate our leftover Mexican food (because good Mexican food is a sad thing to waste) and then went to see Wonder Woman which I absolutely wanted to see on the big screen. I had very high expectations for the movie and I would say I was only underwhelmed because of how high those expectations were. I thought it was a great movie overall. 

After the movie, we stopped at a grocery store to pick up some ice cream because every good date should involve dessert. 

My dad putting Benjamin--and himself--to sleep.

The next morning, David and I went to the San Diego temple for a session and then stopped at Panera for a quick lunch before picking up the kids from my parents'. (I also stopped at a See's Candy to buy a pound of chocolates because I have my priorities and they don't have any stores in the East.) 

The kids had had a great time with all their cousins and the grandparents. After leaving my parents' house, we planned to drive out to see my grandmother to have a little one-on-one time with her. But when we were halfway there, Zara threw up in the car. (David's quick cat-like reflexes produced a bag almost out of thin air and he caught nearly all the vomit. Thank goodness. I wouldn't want to have to clean that out of a rental car.) 

Since there had been some sickness going around, we decided to just turn around and go back to our hotel so as not to infect my grandmother. (But Zara quickly recovered so I'm pretty sure it was just car sickness.) After getting the kids to bed, though, I drove back out to see my grandma and we had a great chat for a few hours just the two of us. It's always lovely to talk to my grandma. 

She told me a lot about her family, her step-mother (who she didn't get along with), her step-brothers, how she would have married my grandfather all over again, and about our favorite books and TV shows. After my visit, I stopped at In-N-Out on my way home because I was suddenly starving and because I had promised myself I'd eat as much of it as I could. Mission accomplished. 

New Things on my Walls

So back in October we had family photos taken. This was our first time having professional family photos taken and I wanted them to be perfect. I obsessed over what we were going to wear and spent countless hours pouring over online catalogs and shopping in stores looking for just the right looks for each person. In the end, I think we look pretty great although I like my outfit the least. The kids looked adorable though. I'm especially fond of Benjamin's vest and pink bow tie.

We got the professional photos back very quickly and then I spent another few weeks agonizing over what photos to have printed, what size, and what method to use (print vs. canvas). Once I figured that out, it took me another week or two to decide what companies to use (Costco, Shutterfly, MPix, Nations, etc.) to have them printed and another week or so to decide what frames to buy. In the end, I bought like 10 different frames from Ikea, Hobby Lobby, and Michaels and ended up returning the majority of them. I overthought every aspect of this whole endeavor and stressed myself out over it which was just plain silly but it's done now and we finally hung our new photos on the walls. And I love it. 

In our living room, we wanted to keep our collage wall so I had to try to balance the photos that were already hanging up there with the new family photos. In the end, I removed some of our wedding photos and put them in the hallway and condensed the kids' photos into two collage frames (white frames from Ikea). 

For the big family photo, I went with a 16x24 print (from Nations because it was much cheaper than Shutterfly) in a grey frame from Michaels. I tried out so many different frames but I liked the simplicity of this one. It won out over more ornate and elaborate ones. 

We also had a 12x16 canvas print done of the kids (from Costco) which looks fabulous. I didn't like their prints (I thought the color was over saturated) but their canvases look wonderful. 

But I wasn't done there. One of my absolute favorite photos was the large wide shoot of the entire mill. You can't see our family very well but I just adore the weathered look of the wood building coupled with the bright greens of the tree with the sun shining through. So I had that photo done on canvas (again from Costco) in a 18x24 size.

I paired it with four 8x8 prints (again from Nations) in driftwood frames from Hobby Lobby which complement the wood of the mill nicely. David liked the kissing photo which is why these ended up in our room above our bed. And also because we were running out of wall space.
 

And because I loved this 11x14 frame from Hobby Lobby so much, I had this photo of Adelaide and Bhaer printed as well because I just adore it. (This print is from Costco because I wanted a brighter, more saturated look for this one. I had one printed from Nations too and it was too dark.) 

Now my walls are full of pictures and I can stopped stressing over total first world problems for now.