long distance love & life

i've mentioned it before, but it bears mentioning again... i am married to the most amazing man on the planet. this past sunday was valentine's day. he spent it flying over who-knows-where and i spent it with my brother and my girls in colorado.  we've spent so many "big" days apart now, that these little ones just don't seem like that big of a deal anymore. rather than valentine's days we have deployment days and homecomings. these days are filled with their own special tendernesses that we would never have experienced had we not fallen head first into this life. (the picture above was taken the day before stan left on his last deployment.) 

this year for valentine's day i didn't get chocolate of flowers, which is a-ok with me. (i'm not a big flowers girl anyway, i could think of a lot of things i'd rather spend the $50 on!) instead of the traditional gifties, my amazing man wrote me (and both of the girls) a poem. one for each of us. they were sweet and thoughtful, way out of his comfort zone and practically perfect in every way. and man-o-man you can't beat that. 

anyway, i did up a few digital pages for an ella publishing and sweet shoppe designs product review. check out the other pages here along with a freebie download from sweet shoppe! 

 

like i said, we spent valentine's day with my brother in colorado. the girls had a long weekend with president's day, so it worked out perfectly. we went skiing in breckenridge for a couple days where we were hooked up with 12 inches of fresh powder during our trip. this being our third time skiing (ever) it was our first time on fresh powder. wow, is it ever nice! it sure makes falling a lot more comfortable too.

we also met a former coworker of my brother's who was kind enough to let us all stay at his cabin, and the girls found a new adopted grandpa. there are a few more skiing pictures here. we also got to meet up with my friend liz hicks and her family for lunch before we headed home on tuesday.

 

 

i am always amazed at how much traveling takes out of you. tuesday after we got home, the girls and i just lounged around the rest of the day. of course, after spending a day lounging, i was seriously lacking photo inspiration... so i did a quick scout for something to take a picture of tuesday evening. my collection of multi-colored extra fine point sharpies were a handy choice.

as for the rest of the week, we've been enjoying watching the trees start to bud and bloom. it's so much different from our super snowy year last year, to see the trees coming to life in february. there are a few more shots of our pretty little flowering cherry here.